NEW: WPI Sets Goal of $200 Million for Fundraising Campaign

Thursday, May 31, 2012

GoLocalWorcester Lifestyle Team

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) plans to raise $200 million, making this latest endeavor the university’s largest capital fundraising campaign in its history. The effort, entitled “if…The Campaign to Advance WPI,” begins today and will be finalized in 2015, WPI’s one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary.

Funds raised will promote three of WPI’s initiatives: student financial assistance; faculty and academic program support; and campus facility development.

“For nearly 150 years, WPI has provided a distinctive type of education, based on a strong command of the theory and practice of engineering and science, and complemented by rich experiences in the arts and humanities,” said WPI’s President and CEO Dennis Berkey. “Increasingly recognized as an ideal model for high-value, effective education, WPI’s curriculum and educational philosophy have inspired similar developments at numerous other colleges and universities.”

Berkey added that in his eight years as president of the university, WPI has demonstrated its dedication to these three core initiatives.

“Our ethos of collaboration and our focus on important challenges and opportunities, in both education and research, provide invaluable, sustaining momentum, and now we have an important opportunity to add importantly to that momentum,” he said.

In total, 37.5 percent of “if…The Campaign to Advance WPI” revenues – about $75 million – will directly benefit students through scholarships and financial aid. Other areas include faculty and academic support ($50 million); improving campus life and academic facilities ($55 million); and contributions to unrestricted support ($20 million). This amount to benefit future students is just one of the school’s ways of giving back.

“Much of this has been funded by our generous donors, including individuals, foundations, and corporations. Our graduates are in high demand by employers, and they gain admission to leading graduate and professional programs,” Berkey said. “Students have enrolled in record numbers, and our faculty are increasingly recognized for leadership in their fields.”

The presidents said that this next step will ensure WPI’s excellent as they approach their sesquicentennial anniversary and will show their commitment to “…providing access and support for those exceptionally capable students in need of assistance with the cost of a WPI education.”

In a time when college education is increasingly difficult to afford, Berkey maintains this will ensure that the decision to enroll at WPI is a sound investment.

The university’s Board of Trustees approved the fundraising effort in 2008. More than $112 million has already been raised during an initial Leadership Phase. During this time, 25 significant gifts of $1 million and above already have been made. Nearly $55 million was raised from alumni, while $43 million came from foundations, corporations, and other organizations, and $14 million was committed by parents and friends.

To aid in fundraising, there have been tree annual giving challenges from alumni and friends to maximize the revenues raised during the Leadership Phase. They are the Faculty and Staff Challenge, established by two anonymous WPI Trustees, who match dollar for dollar, annual gifts from faculty and staff with the match directed toward a scholarship fund for deserving WPI students; the Senior Gift Challenge, established by Trustee Emeritus Win Priem ’59, who has inspired every senior class since 2003 to raise money for a legacy gift to WPI by matching the dollars raised; and the Dolan Young Alumni Challenge, established by Trustee Mike Dolan ’75, Senior Vice President of ExxonMobil and National Campaign Chair, who has pledged to match, dollar for dollar, the gifts of recent alumni.