Why aren’t 135,000 donors enough?

Sara Kornfeld Simpson (CAS’18, CFA’18) The Harry Hung Sheng Chou Trustee Scholarship Fund has helped Sara to fulfill all of her academic passions—neuroscience, oboe, and flute—at the highest level of intensity and instruction. “BU alone welcomed my desire to pursue a dual degree with open arms,” she says, “and I have been flourishing here ever since.”

This past April, the Campaign for Boston University hit a milestone. The milestone, actually. Thanks to an overflowing well of generosity filled by friends, alumni, and students, we passed our original goal of $1 billion more than a year ahead of schedule.

But here’s the rub. How do you pump the brakes on a good thing? Why should we? Our momentum is charged and only promises to bring us ever closer to our strategic goals. In fall 2015, the Board of Trustees green-lighted an extension of the fundraising effort, boosting our goal to $1.5 billion by 2019.

Some of the campaign’s highlights so far, benefiting faculty and students on both the Charles River and Medical Campuses: the founding of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and Arvind and Chandan Nandlal Kilachand Honors College, the $50 million gift from Trustee Allen Questrom (Questrom’64, Hon.’15) and Kelli Questrom (Hon.’15) to endow the Questrom School of Business, and 71 new professorships and 266 new scholarships. The campus landscape has morphed, too, thanks to the construction of the Yawkey Center for Student Services, the building named for Sumner M. Redstone (Hon.’94) at the School of Law, the Engineering Product Innovation Center, and the Medical Student Residence on the Medical Campus.

Getting over
The Hump

You can’t put a price tag on a changed life. That’s why keeping BU affordable for all qualified students—no matter their economic circumstances—is such a top priority. In fall 2015, undergraduates were awarded $218.8 million in need-based academic assistance, with $195.6 million coming directly from the University. Since the campaign launched, we have raised $99,068,488 toward scholarships.

Freshmen enrolled:

3,629

Number who applied for need-based aid:

1,401

Number who were judged to have need:

1,320

Average percent of need met:

93%

Average need-based financial aid package:

$42,183

Average need-based loan:

$5,640

More than 135,000 donors can stake a claim on this progress, with 12 percent of gifts coming from overseas—121 different countries, in fact. Closer to home, BU faculty and employees have contributed more than $30.2 million to the campaign. Given this sort of energy and drive, the new extension further ignites the imagination. Who knows what frontier we might cross, what discovery we might make, what disease we might help cure? All we know is that, together, we’ll find out.