Carothers launching $100M capital campaign for URI

URI PRESIDENT Robert L. Carothers says that fundraising, including this new capital campaign, is key for the university as state support dwindles. /
URI PRESIDENT Robert L. Carothers says that fundraising, including this new capital campaign, is key for the university as state support dwindles. /

Since taking charge at the University of Rhode Island in 1991, President Robert L. Carothers has taken the onetime party school through a physical and cultural transformation by pushing for more research, top-quality faculty and new facilities, all financed in part through substantially increased fundraising.

Now URI has launched a new capital campaign, “Making a Difference,” that aims to raise $100 million by 2010. He and his wife, Dean of University College Jayne Richmond, kicked off the campaign with a $100,000 contribution.

PBN: Why is now the right time to undertake this capital campaign?

CAROTHERS: Increasingly, public institutions have to generate more of their own resources as states have reduced their commitments – across the country – to higher education. So institutions that might, in the past, have been able to rely on the state can no longer do so. I think sometimes of the state of Rhode Island as one large, unreliable donor, but one of many now. So the challenge is to build an endowment that allows you to ride out the rough times in the economy and also to provide the edge of quality in the recruitment of students, faculty members and research programs.

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PBN: When the campaign goes public this week, how much will already have been raised?

CAROTHERS: We’ll identify at that time anybody who made gifts at whatever levels and we’ll make the push to get to the next phase of the campaign. When we announce on the 13th, there will probably be about $53 million. But in fact there’s more than that. There are several large gifts where the donor has made a verbal commitment, just hasn’t signed the paperwork yet.

PBN: How will students and faculty benefit from the enhanced endowment?

CAROTHERS: It really means, on one side, scholarships. That’s probably our greatest need, to get more private-sector funding for scholarships. For students, also, it tends to mean an enriched experience by virtue of support for some facilities that are important to their college experience. For faculty, it means endowed chairs and professorships, which allow us to recruit and retain high-performing faculty members and to support their work while they’re here.

PBN: How have capital campaigns been instrumental at URI in the past?

CAROTHERS: Well, URI has only run one comprehensive capital campaign. That started in 1992. That was a $50 million campaign, and we ended up raising about $67 million. Since, we’ve run a number of building campaigns – the Ryan Center, Ballentine Hall and Green Hall – which kind of diverted us a little bit from doing another comprehensive campaign. So this one kicked off, in the silent phase, two years ago, and the total campaign runs [five] years. Hopefully we’ll go well over [our goal].

PBN: How will this campaign continue to benefit the university after it ends in 2010?

CAROTHERS: Hopefully it will have built our endowment substantially, and that generates dollars in perpetuity. And we will have identified more people who will give in the future. In a capital campaign, while you want these million-dollar gifts, you want the $1,000 givers, too. Because those $1,000 givers are probably going to be $100,000 givers in 10 years and hopefully million-dollar givers in 20 years.

PBN: Has support from alumni grown since you took the helm at URI?

CAROTHERS: We got started late in the fundraising business. When I got here I think we had just a few people donating. We had something less than $13 million in the endowment and it took some time. We had lost over half the alumni addresses; we didn’t know where they were. [Vice President for University Advancement] Bob Beagle and I really had to start from zero, build a database and build a program for fundraising. So, while we’ve done OK in that period of time, we were in such a hole that we’re not where we want to be or need to be.

PBN: How does the new campaign fit into statewide plans for higher education?

CAROTHERS: I think all of us in the public sector understand that public money alone won’t run these institutions. The state is now about 14 percent of our operating budget. It’s 28 percent of the general-fund budget, but that doesn’t count dining halls, residence halls, the health center, the student union, Ryan Center, and the Alton Jones Campus; so when you put the whole mix together our budget this year is about $560 million. The state this year gave us $77 million. •

Interview: Robert L. Carothers

Position: President, University of Rhode Island

Background: A Pennsylvania native, Carothers came to Rhode Island in 1991 to lead URI. Previously, from 1983 to 1986, he served as president of Minnesota’s Southwest State University and then as chancellor of the Minnesota State University System from 1986 to 1991. In his time at URI, he has worked to raise the school’s academic profile, helped put it on the “college with a conscience” list in The Princeton Review, introduced the Centennial Scholarship program and been nationally lauded for his alcohol-abuse prevention campaigns.

Education: B.A. in English, Edinboro University, 1965; Ph.D., Kent State University, 1969; J.D., McDowell School of Law, University of Akron, 1980

Age: 65

Residence: Kingston

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