PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 26, No. 6, Sept. 21, 2006

Private gifts to university increase by 22 percent

Gifts to the UI and the UI Foundation for the fiscal year that ended June 30 totaled $184.9 million, an increase of more than $33 million over the previous year, according to Stephen K. Rugg, UI chief financial officer and treasurer of the foundation. Of the $184.9 million received, $40.9 million was given to the UI directly and $144 million was contributed through the foundation.

Rugg announced the private gift figures during the business session of the foundation’s 71st annual meeting, held Sept. 15.  The foundation is the private gift procurement arm of the UI.

Of the $184.9 million in private support received last fiscal year, $64.3 million (35 percent) came from alumni and friends, $50.5 million (27 percent) was from corporations, $47.7 million (26 percent) was from foundations and $22.4 million (12 percent) was from associations.

Private gifts support a number of programs across the three UI campuses. Last fiscal year, $49.3 million of the $184.9 million raised was added to the endowment. Student financial aid in the form of scholarships, fellowships and student loans received $3.2 million in contributions. Donors to the UI provided more than $28 million to academic divisions, $43.4 million for research, $10.1 million for buildings and equipment, $16 million for public service and extension, and $2.3 million for faculty and staff member compensation. Gifts to UI athletics at all three campuses increased slightly over the preceding year to $7.6 million.

Of the $184.9 million received last year, 68 percent or $126.4 million was designated by donors for current use. Those funds provided support to a number of programs across all three campuses. Twenty-seven percent ($49.3 million) was invested in endowed funds, which are held in pooled investment accounts under the policy supervision of the Investment Policy Committee of the foundation board and the Finance and Audit Committee of the UI Board of Trustees. Earnings from endowed funds help support university endeavors, including student financial aid, faculty and programs. Such investments also provide specified annuity and life-income funds for many donors.

The UI’s combined active and deferred endowment stood at $1.787 billion as of June 30. The active endowment, which represents 70 percent of the university’s endowment picture, grew to $1.252 billion.

Also included in the UI’s total endowment is $394.9 million designated as revocable deferred gifts. Another $139.7 million of the endowment is in charitable trusts and other irrevocable gifts held by the UI Foundation and others.

The foundation’s endowment goal is to provide a distribution to the university each year to meet its spending needs, coupled with a desire to protect the purchasing power of the endowment against inflation. Over the past 10 years, the investment return allowed the foundation not only to meet the spending and inflation objectives, but also permitted a net real return to the endowment of 3.6 percent.

Growth of the endowment over the past decade, Rugg said, has enhanced many important academic efforts at the UI. The library’s endowment has risen from $13.6 million in 1996 to $31.9 million as of June 30 this year. The endowment for professorships has increased from $29.9 million to more than $86.9 million.  Graduate fellowships have climbed from $24.9 to $79.2 million. Endowed chairs have risen from $42.3 million to $138.6 million. And undergraduate scholarships and student aid endowment jumped from $49.1 million to $170.5 million.

“Total market returns,” Rugg said, “combined with new-gift development have produced a total endowment today that is nearly two and one-half times what it was 10 years ago, rising from $729.7 million to $1.786 billion. That translates to total endowment growth of 9 percent annually over the past decade,” he said.

One challenge for the foundation, according to its president, Sidney S. Micek, is to continue to raise the level of participation. “While annual giving support for the university has increased, by comparison we do not currently have the level of participation from our donor or alumni base that other peer universities have,” Micek said.

Private gifts announced
Private gifts totaling more than $15 million earmarked for UI programs at Chicago, Springfield and Urbana-Champaign were announced at the UI Foundation’s annual meeting.

Gifts made to the Urbana-Champaign campus include:

• $4.5 million to the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics from the Irwin Family Foundation to double the size of the Irwin Academic Services Center. Richard Irwin was a UI graduate and founder of the publishing house of Richard D. Irwin Inc., now Dow Jones-Irwin Inc. The foundation’s other major gifts to the DIA include $1.5 million toward construction of the football coaching and training headquarters near Memorial Stadium and $7 million for the construction of the Irwin Indoor Football Facility.
  
  
• $2 million from Marlyn Whitsitt Rinehart, of Urbana, to endow the Kenneth L. Rinehart Jr. Chair in Natural Products Chemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The chair honors the late professor Rinehart, who for many years led the department of chemistry’s marine natural products division. Marlyn Rinehart earned her master’s degree in English from the UI. John F. Hartwig, most recently at Yale University, will serve as the first Kenneth L. Rinehart Chair.
  
  
• $1.5 million from Sandford “Sandy” and Mimi Furman, of Tenafly, N.J., to enhance educational programs and promote academic excellence in the School of Architecture. The Furmans also have given 47 Frank Lloyd Wright plates to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Sandy Furman, who earned his bachelor’s degree in architecture at the UI, is the founder and partner emeritus of FDS Architects in Tenafly. Mimi Furman is an accomplished interior designer.
  
  
• More than $1 million from Charles Hammond Jr., of Key West, Fla., in support of scholarships, with preference given to graduates of Canton High School. A native of Canton, Hammond earned three degrees from the UI, including a doctorate in economics. He retired as a loan officer and international economist with the Export-Import Bank of the United States.
  
  
• More than $1 million from Keith R. Westcott, of Newbury Park, Calif., to establish and support the Westcott Bioscience Fellowship in the department of biochemistry. Westcott earned his master’s degree and doctorate at the UI, both in biochemistry. He was a protein chemistry scientist with Amgen Inc., a biotechnology company in Thousand Oaks, Calif.
  
  
• $1 million from David and Meredith Mills, of Champaign, to endow the head coaching position for men’s tennis in the Division of Intercollegiate Athletics. Their gift marks the fourth head coaching position at Illinois to be supported by private gifts. David Mills is president and chief operating officer of Busey Bank in Urbana. Meredith Mills is a financial analyst for Irwin Mortgage Co., of Indianapolis.
  
• Seven-figure support from Ruth V. Shaff, of Savoy, and the late Genevie I. Andrews that creates the Math Careers for Women Scholarship Fund in the College of LAS. Their gift will support scholarships, especially for Illinois resident women and incoming female freshmen majoring in math or combinations of math, computer science and statistics. Their fund will also support graduate fellowships and provide support for academic excellence in the department of mathematics. Shaff and Andrews both graduated from the UI and worked together for many years at People’s Gas, Light and Coke (now People’s Energy) in Chicago, retired to Arizona and then returned to Champaign-Urbana in 1990.
  
  
• Seven-figure support from Edgar Tafel, of New York, N.Y., that has established the Edgar Tafel Endowment in the School of Architecture, which will fund the Edgar Tafel Chair in Architecture and provide unrestricted funding for the school. A renowned architect , Tafel began his career as an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, the residential architecture school founded in Spring Green, Wis., by Wright. UI professor Botond Bognar has been named as the first Edgar Tafel Chair.
  
  
• $600,000 from Phillip C. and Beverly K. Goldstick, of Chicago, to fund the Goldstick Initiative for the Study of Communicative Disorders in the department of special education. The Goldstick Initiative supports the College of Education’s goal to find new ways to help children with communicative disorders and their families bridge communication gaps, as well as to train faculty members who will expand the body of research and practice in this field. The Goldsticks are both UI graduates, and Phil was a member of the 1952 UI Rose Bowl football team. He is a lawyer, former state representative, and serves as chairman of G. Equity Investment Group Ltd.
  
  
• Six-figure support from Richard L. Chavez, of Joliet, a UI graduate, to endow scholarships that will assist students from Joliet, as well as undergraduates in the College of Education, with preference given to Latina/Latino students, and those in the Illinois Promise program. Chavez recently retired after a 40-year teaching career.

The three-day annual meeting of the UI Foundation also included the dedication of Doris Kelley Christopher Hall, a new three-story building on the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Nevada Street in Urbana, which will house The Pampered Chef Family Resiliency Program. Funds to construct the new facility – as well as to establish an endowed faculty chair – came from a 2002 donation of $11.5 million from Christopher, a UI home economics graduate, and her husband, Jay.

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