GREENSBORO — An anonymous donor has given $6 million to UNCG, the largest gift in the school’s history.
“Frankly, this couldn’t come at a better time,” Chancellor Linda Brady said.
The donor designated $5 million of the gift to go directly to student financial aid, Brady said. That’s a game-changing amount at a time when a cratering economy is creating unprecedented need.
More than 60 percent of UNCG’s estimated 17,000 students receive financial aid amounting to $125 million, mostly from state and federal sources. The school awarded $1.6 million in need-based scholarships last year, and students took out more than $75 million in college loans. But students still had $30 million in unmet need.
And that number is on its way up.
The school already has received 12,000 applications for financial aid for the fall semester — up 30 percent from last year.
Worse, the plummeting stock market has decimated both the school’s endowment and the investments funding many of its scholarships. A number of scholarships have lost so much value that they can no longer be paid out, Brady said. The loss will be about $250,000 in need-based scholarships for incoming freshmen.
“It’s happening everywhere,” Brady said. “In fact, there is a scholarship named for me at my old school, N.C. State. And I just got a letter in the mail asking if I would donate to keep it going, because it’s lost its value.”
Brady said she wrote a check — and she’s hoping other donors will do the same. Her office has sent more than 900 letters to donors this year, asking them to give what they can to keep the scholarships going until the economy rebounds.
Endowed professorships also have been hit hard by the market. The other $1 million from the anonymous gift will go toward creating two new distinguished professorships. The donor’s contribution of $417,000 for each professorship makes UNCG eligible for matching funds that could double the value of the original donation.
“We’re trying to address the near-term needs of our students and also think about the future, and invest in that,” Brady said.
“The two areas we’ve been concentrating on in our Students First fundraising campaign have been student aid and faculty recruitment and retention.”
Including the new $6 million gift, that campaign has raised more than $110 million since it launched in 2004.
“We continue to go to alumni and donors and ask them to give what they can,” Brady said. “And when we get a gift like this we’re of course extremely grateful.”
Contact Joe Killian at 373-7023 or joe.killian@news-record.com
Interesting.
Interesting.