North Carolina A&T State University raised a record $181.4 million in its eight-year capital campaign.
Record alumni giving along with 35 corporate and individual donations of at least $1 million, the most being a $45 million gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, lead to the university reaching this benchmark, surpassing the $85 to $100 million goal set in 2019.
The campaign total has elevated A&T’s total assets under investment, including endowment, as of March 31 to $153 million, which is the most of any public HBCU (historically Black colleges and universities).
“More than 21,300 donors took a hard look at North Carolina A&T and invested in its promise and potential. Our students, faculty and academic programs earned those investments, and the total of that generosity is a reflection of the quality of this community of scholars,” said Chancellor Harold L. Martin Sr. “We’re grateful for what this says about our university now and excited about what it means for our future.”
The campaign began to gain momentum in FY 2017 after the university took in $14.7 million. Every fiscal year after, N.C. A&T has raised at least $15 million, eclipsing $18 in FY 2020 before the current fiscal year’s total of $88 million.
Scott’s $45 million gift garnered notable attention to A&T, but the majority of donations the university received, approximately 70%, were from alumni.
Funds raised by leading graduates, including 14,837 alumni givers overall, were responsible for making the Willie A. Deese College of Business and Economics and the John R. and Kathy R. Hairston College of Health and Human Sciences A&T’s first donor-named colleges.
“It seems as though only yesterday, we were announcing the public phase of the campaign and hoping we might reach $100 million,” said Royall Mack, campaign co-chair. “The degree by which we exceeded that total is remarkable, but it is no accident. This is only the beginning of what is possible for North Carolina A&T, and I believe the coming years will bear that out emphatically.”
The university endowment of $153 million reflects the infusion of principal from the capital campaign, as well as the assets of the A&T Real Estate Foundation, which was created to manage the university’s growing land and property holdings.
Initiatives at the university that are being funded by the campaign gifts include:
- The February One scholarships, merit-based awards named in honor of the A&T Four civil rights activists of 1960. The first class of February One scholars has been admitted this spring for Fall 2021.
- 270 additional new scholarship funds, many of which support multiple awards, in colleges and departments across the university, as well as university-wide student awards.
- New centers of excellence in product design and advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, entrepreneurship, health and human sciences, education and the liberal arts. The latter three are wholly new centers being established in the wake of the campaign’s conclusion.
- Investments in new faculty related to the university’s research mission typically require start-up funding for laboratory needs, computing infrastructure, graduate student support and more.
- Visibility initiatives for programs and disciplines of critical strategic importance to the university’s growth and development as a comprehensive land-grant institution and doctoral research university with high activity, as classified by the Carnegie Foundation.
Willie A. Deese, A&T alumni and campaign co-chair, said the campaign has shown that the future of the university is “very bright.”
“Over the past 130 years, North Carolina A&T has developed as a university through serious individual and collective commitment, often charting success despite the availability of public and private investments rather than because of them,” Deese said.
“The funds raised in this campaign are making possible a great many things that some longstanding research universities may take for granted, and the excitement around that makes its own mighty contribution to the success and momentum of our university.”
