The College's Will to Excel capital campaign received 77.6 percent of its $425 million target, and may very well surpass its goals.
So far, the campaign has received $329 million in gifts in the three years after the campaign began.
The Will to Excel campaign is a five year endeavor to raise funding for the College. The campaign supports three economic divisions: endowments, current use and facilities.
Donations to the campaign come from individuals, corporations and foundations. Individual donors include parents, friends and alumni.
One sub-division of the campaign, the Major Gifts Leadership Initiative, which targets extraordinary donors, has already surpassed its goal, said Paul Scheff, director of Major Gifts.
Contributors to the Initiative are asked to donate sums of money that range in the six and seven figure ballpark.
Major Gifts has accumulated $135 million in contributions, already 102 percent of its goal. It is responsible for 32 percent of the overall Will to Excell campaign's target.
The proceeds of the Major Gifts Initiative go directly into endowments, a portion of College funding that creates educational programs, financial aid scholarships and building programs like the Sudikoff Laboratory and the Berry Library, Sheff said.
The endowment portion of the campaign will also be used to fund the new professors and academic development associated with the new curriculum, which will be implemented next fall for the Class of 1998.
Last spring Dean of Faculty James Wright decided to postpone implementing the new curriculum for the Class of 1997 because the endowment portion of the capital campaign had not received enough funding.
In February, Wright announced the College possessed the resources to implement the curriculum changes. But the endowment portion is still lagging behind the campaign's other two categories, Scheff said.
Scheff attributes the success of the entire Will to Excel campaign to the loyalty Dartmouth graduates have to their college.
"Dartmouth Alumni have always been interested in helping the College. The success of the campaign really reflects that level of interest and support of the College," Scheff said.
Alumni who donate significant amounts of money do not have to be convinced to make gifts to Dartmouth, Scheff said.
"The people who make major gifts already have a level of interest in the College. We try to inform them of the College's needs and try to see if those needs coincide with their interests," Scheff said.
The gifts can be offered in support of any department or program on campus depending on the interests of the alumnus, Scheff said.
Another incentive potential donors have for making large gifts is that endowments make long term contributions to future generations of Dartmouth students.
"We are not going to spend it. Only the income it and other gifts earn is spent each year," Scheff said. The remaining funds contribute to a cash reserve that resembles a savings account, Scheff said.
Supporting the capital campaign gives Alumni the opportunity to give future Dartmouth students what the College gave them, Scheff said.
