Yale Tomorrow, the University’s five-year comprehensive fundraising campaign, concluded June 30 having raised $3.881 billion — the largest such total in Yale history.
The sum includes alumni, parent, corporate and foundation gifts to the University endowment, capital projects and construction, and current-year funds that immediately benefit areas like financial aid. In a Tuesday press release from the Office of Public Affairs and Communications, Vice President of Development Inge Reichenbach hailed the campaign’s result, which resisted the downward pull of the global financial crisis that struck in the middle of the campaign.
“Despite challenges that included a historic worldwide recession, donors at every level of giving rallied behind the University’s goals and took us to an amazing final total,” Reichenbach said in the release.
University President Richard Levin publicly launched Yale Tomorrow with a $3 billion goal in September 2006 and the intention that it would improve the University across four areas: the arts, the sciences, Yale College and international efforts.
With strong giving early in the campaign and the announcement that Yale would construct two additional residential colleges — together costing upward of $500 million — the University increased Yale Tomorrow’s goal to $3.5 billion in June 2008.
But despite the recession that struck later that year, the campaign always remained ahead of schedule to reach its revised goal, in part due to $1.147 billion having been raised before the campaign’s public launch. The final total includes $172.8 million raised toward the colleges’ construction, according to the release.
Some of the campaign’s most notable gifts include the construction of the Smilow Cancer Hospital, the establishment of the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and a gift from Denise and Stephen Adams ’59 that eliminated tuition payments for students at the School of Music.
The Office of Development is currently planning an on-campus celebration in the fall to thank donors to the campaign.