Toia Conde Rodrigues Da Cunha, Senior Photographer

Yale’s fourth and most ambitious capital campaign, “For Humanity,” has raised over $5 billion toward its $7 billion goal. University President Peter Salovey, who intends to depart from the role this summer, told the News that he is planning to get the campaign close to $6 billion in his final months as president.

So far, over 80,000 individuals have donated to the campaign, with 60 percent of commitments coming from alumni and the rest from corporations, foundations and “friends” of the University. Of the over $5 billion raised so far, 49 percent has been raised for the University’s endowment, 36 percent for current use and 15 percent for facilities.

“We’re making great progress on the For Humanity campaign; that’s what’s paying for all those initiatives and University priorities,” Salovey told the News. “I want to get us as close to $6 billion by the end of this year … this is an important year. It’s why so much of my travel is oriented around fundraising because I really want to give the campaign a good push.”

Salovey told the News that after “stepping away” from the presidency, he plans to continue his involvement in the campaign, in part by attending all future campaign events.

He also said that he will continue engaging in one-on-one relationships with donors, including parents, alumni and “special friends” of the University.

“If I couldn’t continue to be a big part of the campaign, then I wouldn’t be able to step down,” he said. “I’m not stepping down; what I’m doing is I’m stepping away from the day-to-day administration of Yale and that will free up my time and make it more flexible for me to help finish the campaign, which I know we will finish successfully.”

Yale’s next president will not be the first to ascend to the University’s helm amid an ongoing capital campaign. 

Richard Levin GRD ’72 GRD ’74 became president during the University’s $1.5 billion “… and for Yale” capital campaign, which his predecessor — Benno C. Schmidt ’63 LAW ’66 — started in 1992. Schmidt unexpectedly resigned after accepting a position heading the Edison Project, which was focused on constructing what would be the nation’s first for-profit private school system. 

To Salovey, a capital campaign tasks the president with two primary objectives: focusing on a set of goals for the University and creating a new campaign run rate, which is the amount of money the campaign is expected to raise annually. 

Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Joan E. O’Neill said that fundraising has been a key part of Salovey’s presidency.

“Fundraising is a significant role that any university president plays,” O’Neill said. “I don’t think in today’s day and age you can be a successful university president and not raise funds because you are the chief ambassador for the university.”

Expanding contributions to New Haven, financial aid

Associate Vice President for Development and campaign director Eugénie Gentry said the For Humanity campaign was initially focused on funding for the sciences; the campaign’s four focus areas include “arts and humanities for insight,” “science for breakthroughs” and “collaborating for impact.” 

The final area, “leaders for a better world,” is about students and focuses on financial aid, Gentry said. 

With more fundraising specifically geared toward financial aid, campaign co-chair Randolph Nelson ’85 told the News that the University may have more money to channel contributions to New Haven — efforts that Salovey hopes to expand. 

In November 2021, Salovey announced a $140 million pledge to the City of New Haven, increasing the University’s voluntary payments to the city by $52 million over six years — until 2027 — and amounting a sum contribution to the city of $135 million over that same six-year period. 

Concurrently, the University declared plans to establish the Center for Inclusive Growth with an investment of $5 million to “develop and implement strategies to grow the city economically,” with additional agreements to compensate New Haven for financial losses incurred when the University removes a property from the tax rolls during this period. In April of this year, Yale and New Haven officials launched the search for the center’s inaugural director.

Salovey said that in his last year as president, he wants to focus on getting the Center for Inclusive Growth “off the ground,” which primarily involves hiring of an executive director. He added that city officials will take the lead on the search process and that Kerwin Charles, Dean of the School of Management, has taken charge of forming the workforce that will do the analytic work that the Center requires.

“I’m asking every school at Yale to create a New Haven strategy,” he said. “So the Center has an amazing strategy, but I want every school to have a partnership with New Haven as well.”

University spokesperson Karen Peart told the News that one-third of the University’s operating budget comes from the endowment, and roughly 75 percent of that money is restricted — meaning that the University is bound by law to use those gifts only for the intended purpose. 

The unrestricted 25 percent, Peart said, has partially funded new teaching and research programs. Donations to the capital campaign reserved for some of those programs could free current unrestricted funds, which the University can then put toward New Haven. 

“Even though we may not necessarily be raising money from donors to support that specific effort, by raising money for other priorities, which are currently funded with unrestricted monies that the university has and by endowing those programs which are currently being being funded with unrestricted dollars, we’re freeing up unrestricted resources in the university that can be channeled to New Haven,” Nelson said. 

Combined with Yale’s January 2022 expansion of a program helping local students pay for college andits December 2022 announcement of a fellowship supporting local students who choose to attend Historically Black Colleges and Universities, these initiatives account for a more than $100 million contribution to New Haven over a six-year period, Peart said. 

While Salovey said he hopes to expand the Center, Yale’s investments in New Haven have faced community backlash in recent years.

Davarian Baldwin, professor of American studies at Trinity College and author of “In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering Our Cities,” wrote an opinion column in 2021 claiming that there is a disparity between the University’s efforts to contribute to the city and its launch of a $7 billion fundraising effort to fund initiatives on campus property — property that is tax-exempt in New Haven. 

Baldwin, an organizer for the New Haven Rising “Yale: Pay Your Fair Share” campaign in 2020, told the News that he thinks that the innovations that might come from research that the campaign is set to fund may have a “profound impact on humanity.” 

However, he said, that work would be conducted “on the backs of, not contributing to the host community.”

Baldwin added that while the University has made efforts to contribute more to New Haven, its total contribution still lags behind the support he feels the University should give the Elm City.

According to the most recent data that City Acting Assessor Alex Pullen presented to New Haven alders on the Finance Committee, more than half of the Elm City’s $17.9 billion in real-estate value is non-taxable. Yale owns $4.3 billion of the $9.9 billion tax-exempt property in the city.

“This campaign is in alignment with many universal standards across the country over the last 15 years, where the argument that raising funds for innovation in data, computer science, biotech and engineering are all for the good of humanity,” Baldwin said. “These are all part of an elaborate business model where schools champion their public good status, but actually this research and development … bolsters and balloons the coffers of both the University in the form of royalties and [intellectual property] … But it does nothing for the humanity of the actual residents that immediately surround the campus.”

Peart wrote to the News in an email that the University is New Haven’s third largest taxpayer and that it “remains focused” on working with local leaders to increase investment in the city, both financially and through partnerships for inclusive economic development.

Gentry also said that University also intends to launch a new leg of the campaign next month. The $1.2 billion “Be the Key” marketing effort will focus on expanding financial aid across the University. O’Neill added that this is the only sub-goal of the $7 billion campaign and that the campaign has already begun raising money for this effort. 

According to Salovey, the For Humanity campaign overall has now raised more than half of its goal. As of April 2022, the figure of total funds accrued stood at over $603 million and included gifts that have allowed the University to offer universally free tuition at the David Geffen School of Drama, as well as for the Divinity School to provide full-tuition scholarships to students with demonstrated financial need.

“We’ve increased the financial aid budget quite a bit in [Yale College] and then we still have professional schools where students graduate with a lot of debt, so we want to fix that problem, too,” Salovey said.

The For Humanity capital campaign is co-chaired by five volunteers — including senior trustee of the Yale Corporation Joshua Bekenstein ’80, chair of the Library Council Nancy Marx Better ’84, Donna Dubinsky ’77, Randolph Nelson ’85 and Lei Zhang GRD ’02 SOM ’02 — and scheduled to end in June 2026.

Correction, Oct. 24: A previous version of this article mistakenly attributed a quote, about the capital campaign “freeing up unrestricted resources” for Yale to give more to New Haven, to University spokesperson Karen Peart. The quote should have been attributed to Randolph Nelson ’85, and the article has been updated to reflect this.