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ast Carolina’s premier academic scholarship program, the EC Scholar Award, is offered only to the best and brightest freshmen applicants. The scholarships are worth $40,000 over four years, plus a $5,000 travel allowance for study abroad. Sixteen are awarded each year. By comparison, the premier academic scholarship at N.C. State University, the Park Scholarship, is worth $65,000; 50 are awarded each year. The Morehead-Cain scholars program at UNC Chapel Hill awards packages worth $80,000 to 85 students.

Besides the cash value and number of recipients, there’s another big difference in the three scholarship programs. East Carolina has to raise its own money to pay for the EC Scholars while State and Carolina have wealthy alumni whose foundations pay for theirs.

Closing such glaring financial gaps is one reason East Carolina is launching the biggest fundraising campaign in its 100-year history, aiming to raise $200 million over the next four years. Officials say ECU, after years of phenomenal growth in enrollment and academic programs, simply must have greater financial resources to support the larger mission it has embraced to serve eastern North Carolina, particularly in the areas of health care, economic development and access to higher education. The university’s new strategic plan, ECU Tomorrow: A Vision for Leadership and Service, estimates that meeting all those needs over the next 10 to 15 years will cost $1 billion. State appropriations will only cover the bare necessities, meaning East Carolina will need a lot more money to pay for scholarships, endowed professorships and other extras that many universities of similar size provide in abundance.

“We don’t have a Park Scholarship or a Morehead at East Carolina, and we need to have one to be competitive,” said Bill Clark, president of the ECU Foundation that raises money for scholarships. “We like to think of East Carolina as a major school that is serving this region, but in some ways we don’t have the tools we need to attract the best students who hopefully will remain here after college and help build this economy. We don’t have the endowed professorships we need to retain and attract the best faculty. There are many other needs here that are going unmet.”

Besides the disparity in scholarships, Clark and other officials point out that East Carolina also lags behind its peer universities in study abroad opportunities for students, support for faculty research and many other benchmarks.

The $200 million fundraising campaign was quietly announced at the February meeting of the Board of Trustees. “We will raise these numbers up from $90 million to where you’re going to see extraordinary things,” said Trustee Mark Tipton, a Raleigh homebuilder. Mickey Dowdy, vice chancellor for university advancement, told trustees that the Second Century campaign will be a long, tough effort. “It’s a NASCAR race,” he said. “It’s not drag-racing.” Dowdy said the campaign will run through December 2012.

The trustees confirmed that ECU has been quietly raising money since the arrival of Chancellor Steve Ballard in May 2004. The trustees’ approval moved the campaign into its public phase, which was marked March 27 on campus during Founders Day ceremonies.

Ballard said the campaign intends to raise $30 million for need-based and academic scholarships; $55 million for distinguished professorships and research funds; $30 million to help pay for completion of several new buildings; and $85 million to build the university’s endowment to support initiatives by the various colleges and schools.

Tafts endow professorship Former state senator Thomas F. Taft and his wife, Dr. Elizabeth Doster Taft, a professor in the College of Education, have stepped forward with a major gift to the Second Century Campaign. Their contribution, plus matching grants from the C.D. Spangler Foundation and the State, will provide $1.25 million to fund a distinguished professorship for science education and endow a scholarship fund for students studying math and science in the College of Education. Taft is senior partner in the Greenville law firm of Taft, Taft & Haigler. “Senator and Dr. Taft’s donation is a truly incredible gift for the university and our College of Education,” said Dowdy. “This contribution to the Second Century Campaign will not only improve the education offered to science educators at ECU, but it will improve science education across the state as those students graduate to become teachers themselves. Senator and Dr. Taft’s connection to and love for ECU are obvious, and I am so grateful they chose to support ECU in this way.”

ECU’s slim bank account

ECU starts the Second Century Campaign with about $90 million in assets, which is the total value of the holdings of the university’s three foundations—the ECU Foundation, the Educational Foundation of ECU (the Pirate Club) and the ECU Medical & Health Sciences Foundation. The endowment fund has grown steadily in the past few years, rising from just $35 million in 1998.

Certainly, $90 million is a lot of money, but it pales in comparison to the endowments of many elite schools. Harvard, the nation’s richest school, has an endowment worth $35 billion. Duke University’s $6 billion endowment only ranks 15th in the country, according to statistics tracked by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO). With an endowment of $2.2 billion, UNC Chapel Hill’s ranks 30th in the nation but tops in the UNC system, followed by N.C. State with $535 million. UNC Greensboro and UNC Charlotte both have substantially larger endowments than ECU, whose bank account is roughly the same as Meredith College, the Baptist women’s school in Raleigh.

Viewed another way, $200 million is a lot of money that may be a stretch for East Carolina to raise. But in reality the size of ECU’s fundraising campaign also pales in comparison to efforts underway at other schools. Sixty-eight campuses in the U.S. have completed or are currently raising more than $1 billion, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Actually, East Carolina sits somewhere near the middle of the pack in money in the bank, ranking 396th out of 850 institutions tracked by NACUBO. Among North Carolina schools, ECU’s endowment ranks eighth. But officials say the most insightful way of looking at a school’s endowment is in relation to the size of its student body. Considered that way, East Carolina ranks 20th in the state (see chart).

Among its Carnegie Foundation peers, ECU’s endowment is on the same order as the University of Nevada Reno, Wright State and Florida International. Some of ECU’s peers have deeper pockets: Virginia Commonwealth has $329 million in the bank, SUNY Buffalo has $566 million and the University of Louisville has an endowment worth about $800 million.

The conventional wisdom is that ECU has a relatively small endowment because for years it mostly graduated school teachers who didn’t earn enough to send big checks back to their alma mater. Appalachian State University, another of the state’s traditional teachers’ colleges, also has a relatively modest endowment. Furthermore, while East Carolina has been producing doctors for 30 years—the type of alumni who can write the big checks—a great many of them practice family medicine in eastern North Carolina and are less wealthy than the norm.

East Carolina last launched a major fundraising campaign in 1993, when it set out to raise $50 million, a mission it accomplished in five years. “The campaign that we completed in 1998 was great,” Dowdy said, “but then we stopped. Most other schools would have kept right on and done at least one and maybe two other campaigns in the time since then.”

Officials concede that East Carolina’s fundraising suffered in the last several years from some self-inflicted blows. Turnover at the top—two new chancellors in three years—created a leadership vacuum that hobbled fundraising and led to a lot of personnel turnover in University Advancement. Ballard paid a lot of attention to rebuilding University Advancement, the fundraising arm of the school. The arrival of Dowdy two years ago from Virginia Commonwealth was seen as a signal that East Carolina was back in the game.

Small as it may be in comparison to other schools, ECU’s endowment is praised by officials here as the little engine that could, generating $13.2 million for scholarships, academic programs and athletic facility enhancement last academic year. Those are record amounts. The university received more than $24 million in philanthropic support last fiscal year, including $7 million in new endowment gifts. ECU also launched Access Scholarships, a new need-based financial aid program that pays for tuition, books and fees for 26 deserving students who might not otherwise be able to afford college.


Reaching out to alumni

Alumni are being counted on to contribute most of the $200 million the Second Century Campaign hopes to raise, which for East Carolina is both good and bad.

It’s bad because officials concede that East Carolina historically has not emphasized a culture of giving among alumni, a fact that Dowdy said is reflected in the percentage of alumni who maintain close ties with the university. Schools like Carolina and State do emphasize this culture of giving and thus have higher alumni participation rates. At N.C. State, 21 percent of alumni have given money to their alma mater. At UNC Chapel Hill the figure is 19 percent. At East Carolina, the alumni participate rate is 7 percent, Dowdy says.

The good part is that Dowdy believes the alumni giving rate here is low only because they haven’t been asked, at least not in the decade since the university’s last fundraising campaign. “I do know that every time a critical financial need has come up recently, we have been able to turn to a few donors and they always have come through. I think we will see the same response when we widen our perspective to talk to the average alumni.

He says that broad outreach to alumni is under way. About every person whose name is in the ECU database of friends and alumni, more than 100,000 people, will be contacted in coming months by phone, mail or in person about the Second Century Campaign. Dowdy and other staff members will do most of this legwork but the university is counting on volunteers to lead the campaign. Members of the Board of Trustees as well as the boards of the three foundations will play prominent public roles in fundraising efforts. An honorary steering committee of prominent alumni will be announced soon.

Dowdy said plans call for the volunteer leaders to host several meetings of small groups of friends and alumni. Chancellor Ballard will travel extensively around the region holding public receptions and private meetings with large donors. The Alumni Association and Pirate Club also will stage many events keyed to the campaign.

Most of these meetings will involve explaining ways alumni can give to the campaign. Cash is the easiest way for most people. Most donors can make gifts and pledge payments by check, credit card or even through automatic bank drafts. Larger donors can take advantage of tax savings that come from donating appreciated stocks, shares of mutual funds or real estate. Donors also can contribute gifts-in-kind, such as rare books and manuscripts for the library. Dowdy said campaign volunteers also will emphasize the long-term benefits to alumni of including the university in their estate plans.

The success of the Second Century Campaign likely rests on the ability of East Carolina to identify a dozen or more wealthy individuals or their foundations who can each contribute $1 million or more. Above that, the search is on for six or seven who each can contribute up to $5 million. And at the very top of the chart, East Carolina hopes to find someone to step forward with $10 million for a major university program, perhaps the school’s premier scholarship program.

“Since coming here I’ve noticed that East Carolina has relatively few ‘named’ entities. We have the Brody School of Medicine but not many other things carry the names of philanthropists. We have some naming opportunities at East Carolina which I think matches up nicely with the opportunities we are identifying to make East Carolina an even greater institution that is strong enough financially to serve this region.”


Focus on the faculty

While one goal of the Second Century Campaign is to lessen the scholarship gap between East Carolina and other schools of similar size, it also aims to transform the faculty. The plan earmarks $25 million for distinguished professorships, which East Carolina needs to attract and retain the best professors.

East Carolina has 19 endowed professorships and all are funded from outside sources. The latest was awarded to the College of Nursing through the C.D. Spangler Foundation in Charlotte and the state General Assembly. By comparison, Carolina has 532 endowed professorships.

The campaign also hopes to raise $30 million that will be earmarked for research. Scientists at East Carolina are closing in on treatments and cures for diabetes, obesity and other maladies. Researchers in other disciplines also are doing ground-breaking work that would receive critical support from the campaign.

Another major chunk of money raised by the Second Century Campaign will support the construction of several new campus facilities, such as the Family Medicine Center, the Monk Geriatric Center and the East Carolina Heart Institute on the Health Sciences Campus—as well as the new dental school. The university also has identified a need for an alumni-university conference center and a Visual and Performing Arts Center.

At the Pirate Club, which is coming off a record-breaking year in membership growth and money raised, officials are talking about expanding seating at the football stadium by enclosing one end zone, and increasing athletic scholarships. Plans also involve a new softball complex and improved facilities for several women’s sports teams.

Officials with the Medical & Health Sciences Foundation also see the need for scholarships as well as bricks and mortar. Anchored by the Brody School of Medicine and the William E. Laupus Health Sciences Library, the Health Sciences Campus also is home to the College of Nursing and the College of Allied Health Sciences. Construction for the East Carolina Heart Institute is nearing completion, ground has been broken for the dental school and plans for a new Family Medicine and Geriatric Center are nearing completion. State grants and a few large private gifts are funding most of that construction, but how well equipped and outfitted those facilities will be depends in large measure on the success of the Second Century Campaign.

“The Second Century Campaign brings into focus the continued need for the community we serve to provide private support,” said Carole Novick, president of the ECU Medical & Health Sciences Foundation. “Together we can ensure the continued success of these entities that are important to the physical and economic health of our region.”

Novick added that scholarships remain a critical need along with support to recruit and retain fine faculty through creation of endowed professorships and research. “Contributions to renovate, build and maintain our facilities are also high on our list of priorities,” she said.

Years from now people likely won’t recall the name of East Carolina’s new fundraising campaign, but Clark hopes at least one name will become memorialized. “I am acutely aware of the need for more scholarships at East Carolina,” he said. “We need $20 million to accomplish what we need to do. Carolina has the Morehead and State has the Park Scholarships. It’s time East Carolina had one like that, where you just say the name and you know what it means.”

While it will be critical for East Carolina to attract a few major donations, the bedrock of the campaign will be the support of thousands of alumni who each can write smaller checks. “Of course it’s important for a few people to write big checks, but the true test of whether this campaign is successful is how many hundreds, even thousands, of alumni write smaller checks,” Dowdy concluded.

“As I said, this campaign will be a marathon, not a sprint, and every donation we receive of $20, $100, $500, will be one of the steps that we take toward the goal.”