The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill attracted $297.5 million in private gifts and grants in fiscal 2014. The total marked the second-best year in University history and was 9 percent higher than the $272.8 million raised in 2013.
Commitments also rose by 9 percent, from $284.3 million to $310 million. Commitments, which include pledges as well as gifts, helped create five endowed professorships, plus 58 undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships.
“We are grateful to our donors for such a high level of support,” said Chancellor Carol L. Folt. “These results reflect the confidence that our students, parents, alumni and other loyal supporters have in Carolina’s future.”
Examples of gifts and commitments from fiscal 2014 include:
- A $3 million gift from the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust will create a scholarship program to inspire North Carolina’s best medical students to pursue careers in primary-care medicine in rural and urban underserved areas of the state. The program will be collaboratively run by the School of Medicine and Mountain Area Health Education Center in Asheville. The trust made the gift to honor Dr. Richard M. Krasno for his influential development of the program, his 15 years of exemplary service as executive director of the William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust and for his highly respected tenure on, and leadership of, the UNC Health Care Board of Directors.
- A bequest of more than $3 million to the School of Education will honor the memory of former faculty member Donald G. Tarbet by establishing the Donald G. Tarbet Endowment Fund for Faculty Support. The fund will provide faculty stipends to develop innovative educational interventions and programs, support for junior faculty and other areas of faculty support. Tarbet joined the School of Education faculty in 1952 and served 18 years as director of the Summer School. The gift, the largest in the school’s history, comes from the estate of Tarbet’s wife, Justeen Tarbet, a longtime Chapel Hill resident who died in January 2013 at the age of 94. She and Donald Tarbet had been married for 54 years when he died in 1995.
- A $7.1 million pledge from Local Government Federal Credit Union (LGFCU) to the School of Government will fund initiatives to support North Carolina local governments. Over the next 10 years, the school will receive: $2.84 million for its Development Finance Initiative to expand opportunities for economically distressed communities in North Carolina by increasing their access to and use of cutting-edge development finance instruments; $2.22 million to support the LGFCU Fellows program, which provides mid-level public executives with the skills needed to build the pool of local government talent prepared for leadership succession; and $2.04 million in undesignated funds to create an Innovation Fund to support new and existing projects that maximize the school’s impact and support its mission of improving the lives of North Carolinians.
- A $600,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Carolina Performing Arts (CPA) will support the presentation of symphony orchestras. CPA will use the funds over three years to present American orchestras during the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons.
Published July 24, 2014.