only after another appeal for private gifts.
The taxpayers eventually pitched in
brick and mortar. And then there came a
moment just after the end of World War
II that seems to have been prophetic. As
Carolina scrambled to accommodate a
daunting surge in growth, John Motley
Morehead III (class of 1891) gave it a
planetarium laced with lavish lounges and
a state dining room.
The state will give you the basics, he
explained. I want you to have something
special.
Less than five years later, Charles Milton Shaffer ’ 35 took the job as UNC’s
first director of development, a job he did
essentially by himself for several years.
Alumni Annual Giving had started with
the General Alumni Association under
longtime Alumni Secretary Maryon
“Spike” Saunders ’ 25. Shaffer directed the
University’s first capital campaign in the
late 1970s, with a goal of $100 million.
Thirty years later, by the end of 2007,
the pharmacy school by itself had raised
more than half that amount during the
eight-year Carolina First Campaign. Carolina First hit its $2.2 billion goal 10
months ahead of time.
Shaffer’s job today is in the hands of a
platoon of fundraisers, in a central office
and in the College of Arts and Sciences,
in the athletics department and in every
professional school. When James Moeser
assumed the chancellorship nearly eight
years ago, he said he expected fundraising
would be his most important role. “It
turned out to be even more important
than I had imagined,” he said.
These days, when you run into someone in the academic administration and
ask what’s happening, you’re as likely to
hear about a gift — and what it will
enable a school or department to do —
as you are to hear about a research breakthrough or an extraordinary student. For
an increasing number of people on campus, money is job one.
Moeser said the campaign in its early
stages was an agent of healing, with UNC
“reeling” from the death of Chancellor
Michael Hooker ’ 69 and then facing
budget cuts in the wake of the dot-com
collapse. “Carolina First, however, never
faltered,” he said. “It literally carried the
University through those down years.”
The “first” in Carolina First was a
The ‘first’ in Carolina First
was a direct reference to the desire
to make Carolina the top public
university in the country, the quest
to not be ordinary, to build labs,
endow professorships, build archives
and serve students unconstrained
by the limits of public funding.
direct reference to the desire to make
Carolina the top public university in the
country, the quest to not be ordinary, to
build labs, endow professorships, build
archives and serve students unconstrained
by the limits of public funding. The
money rolled in — $2.38 billion by the
official close of the campaign at the end
of the year; the original goal had been
$1.8 billion. The University said it is the
fifth-largest completed campaign in
higher education (other schools are now
pursuing more ambitious drives), the
highest ever in a Southern school.
Miscellany: Scholarship and bricks
Ten years ago, Carolina was noticeably
behind its peer universities in an area of
vital importance to high-achieving students and their families: merit scholarships. It had become an issue in competitive admissions.
When UNC received $28 million
from the bequest of David Benjamin
Clayton ’ 49 of Bessemer City in 2000,
the largest gift ever at the time, $12 million of it was tagged for National Merit
Scholarships. By the end of the Carolina
First Campaign, academic merit grants
were catching on: The University gave $1
million worth to freshmen in 2007 alone
— renewable for three more years for a
total value of $4 million.
Some gifts stipulated the locations
recipients would come from — particular
schools or North Carolina counties, and
from outside the state; the class of 1992
set up a scholarship award as its gift; some
were anonymous, some named, others in
honor of friends, family members and
prominent citizens past.
A strong undergraduate honors pro-
gram is regularly cited as a drawing card
in the competition for elite students, and
a $5 million anonymous gift created a
significant increase in what the program
could offer, including five new professorships and an immediate 30 percent boost
in student participation. The gift automatically grew to $7.5 million by qualifying
for a match from the N.C. Distinguished
Professors Endowment Trust.
The landmark bond referendum
approved by the state’s voters in 2000 gets
most of the credit for transforming the
campus landscape over the past decade,
but where state money left off, private
money embellished two science buildings,
the Global Education Center, the School
of Government, the remade Memorial
Hall, the Center for Black Culture and
History, the reinvented House Undergraduate Library and others.
The Kenan family, already with nam-ing-level gifts for the business school,
football stadium and a dorm, helped put
more vertebrae in the backbone of the
Arts Common with the Kenan Music
Building now under construction. The
William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable trust and
related entities and family members
accounted for $70 million given to many
areas of the campus.
Campaign donations built the softball
stadium and the just-opened Rams Club
headquarters named for its former boss,
Ernie Williamson ’ 51; finished the Eddie
Smith Field House and funded most of
the new Boshamer Stadium. But athletics
scholarship endowments, said Rams Club
President John Montgomery, represented
the most important growth. The endowment grew from about $90 million in
2001 to more than $170 million, in support primarily of nonrevenue sports. Athletics exceeded its $175 million goal by
$65 million.
The campaign gave a huge boost to
endowed professorships, adding 208 to
the existing 339. The total in gifts designated for faculty is $419.5 million.
The University’s endowment is now valued at $2.2 billion, a combination of more
than $500 million in gifts (of a total of $960
million in gifts and pledges) and investment
returns. Slightly more than $200 million of
the total is monies Carolina manages for
other UNC System schools.
The largest-ever gift now is that of
