USC Sets Private Fundraising Goal At $1 Billion

With flocks of Gamecock alumni descending on Columbia for Homecoming weekend, the University of South Carolina announced the most ambitious university fundraising goal in the state's history.

University President Harris Pastides said the Carolina’s Promise capital campaign goal is $1 billion by June 2015.

More than $529.9 million has been donated by alumni, corporations and private individuals since the effort began in 2007. Pastides said the silent phase of the initiative was necessary to get private and corporate donors to have confidence in the campaign and gain momentum.

Even though higher education giving is down about 14 percent since the economic downturn, each year since 2007 USC has brought in more money than the last.

“The economy is tough, but the need is profound,” Pastides said.

He said that though a fundraising goal this lofty is typically reserved for private institutions, and only three dozen universities have aimed this high, it’s necessary to take a page from their book in light of cuts in state funding. Over the past decade the USC system’s state appropriations have been more than cut in half, and now only make up 10.9 percent of the operating budget.

He said decreasing quality or significantly hiking tuition are the only other ways to fill the gap, and he and the students find both “unthinkable.”

The money will go toward facilities, new programs, scholarships and recruiting and retaining faculty at all eight campuses. Each school and each department has a fundraising goal based on their different areas of need and past fundraising patterns.

Pastides said most donors do earmark their funds for a specific program, rather than a building with their name or a general gift for “Good Ol’ Carolina.” Alumni William and Lou Kennedy’s September 2010 gift of $30 million is going toward a pharmacy research center, and Darla Moore’s March gift of $5 will create an aerospace center.

Pastides said that similar donations for high-tech programs will help invigorate not only the students’ education, but the whole state’s economy.

“Some of our initiatives are all about increasing South Carolina’s competitiveness,” Pastides said. “We need to capitalize on the corporations that we’ve seen move into the state recently and give them what they need to be world class and then we need to attract many others. An investment in an aerospace initiative or an energy initiative is going to lead to companies moving to the state or new companies being birthed in the state and that will lead to jobs for our graduates and others as well."

USC Alumnus and Flour Corporation CEO David Seaton agreed that private business has a stake in the university’s success and expansion.

“At the end of the day it’s about creating talent in that job force for the next century. That is absolutely paramount if the United States is going to be a competitive player on the global scale,” Seaton said. “When you look at corporations and what we want to do participate in this, it’s somewhat self-serving. We have to have the talents.”

He attributed Boeing’s move to the state to the quality of the workers, not the location, and said that cutting edge research will bring the next corporation of that size.

The University’s only other system-wide capital campaign, which ran 1995 to 2002, generated $506 million.