Dartmouth College's capital campaign has raised $3.7 billion, a record for the institution.
Dartmouth College announced today that it is concluding its comprehensive capital campaign - The Call to Lead - after raising more than $3.7 billion. The campaign was launched in 2018 under the leadership of Dartmouth President Philip J. Hanlon, with an initial goal of $3 billion.
The official end of the campaign, the largest fund raising effort in the college’s history, will be June 30, which also coincides with Hanlon turning over the helm of the institution to incoming President Sian Leah Beilock, who was previously the president of Barnard College.
Among some of the highlights of the campaign:
- Undergraduate alumni participation exceeded 60%;
- 28,000 individuals made their first-ever gift to Dartmouth;
- The campaign received gifts from donors in 105 countries;
- More than 100 women made donations of $1 million or more, and 318 made financial aid gifts of $100,000 or greater;
The campaign supported a number of initiatives, including:
- $100 million to improve the success and leadership of historically underrepresented students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM);
- Expansion of Dartmouth’s First Year Summer Enrichment Program that has helped more first generation students succeed in college;
- A $500 million investment in endowed financial aid that eliminated loans from all financial aid packages by replacing them with scholarships. As a result, Dartmouth claims to be one of only seven U.S. institutions to offer need-blind admissions to all undergraduates while meeting 100% of demonstrated need regardless of citizenship;
- Creation of 56 endowed professorships;
- The launch of Dartmouth’s West End District, constituting a hub of interdisciplinary learning designed to help students address challenges ranging from climate change to equitable health care access;
- Expansion of Dartmouth’s Arts District;
- Research and teaching initiatives in fields such as Arctic studies, global security, Black intellectual life, and tribal sovereignty;
- Advancement of Dartmouth’s goals to create a more inclusive, accessible, and interdisciplinary academic future for students.
“Our community’s historic accomplishment—a campaign with $3.7 billion in commitments to date and 60 percent undergraduate alumni participation—is a resounding affirmation of the core values that define Dartmouth and our aspirations for the future,” said President Hanlon in a university release. “Ultimately, our success is measured not by funds raised but by lives changed and the impact we are having on the world.”
Dartmouth’s successful campaign is the latest example of an American college or university concluding a multi billion dollar fundraising effort in just the past six months, joining the University of North Carolina, Carnegie Mellon University (which has extended its campaign), the University of Utah, and the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Philanthropic gifts to American colleges and universities totaled $59.5 billion in Fiscal Year 2022, according to the latest annual report from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education’s (CASE) Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) survey. The FY 2022 level was a 12.5% increase over the prior year, a gain of about $6.6 billion.
