The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville topped $100 million in fundraising support for the third straight fiscal year, it announced Wednesday, producing $108.4 million in new gifts and pledges between July 1, 2012, and June 30.
In doing so, the university topped its goal for the year of $107 million, a news release said.
The total for fiscal 2013 is slightly better than the $108.1 million the Fayetteville campus raised in fiscal 2012. It raised $121.3 million in fiscal 2011, the second-highest total since a major capital campaign ended in 2005.
Roughly $18 million, or 16.9 percent of the total raised, will go toward the university’s endowed accounts.
“That’s a better year for the endowed fund than we’ve seen in most of the last five years,” said Jennifer Holland,a spokesman for the Development Office. Its best year within that time frame was the fiscal year ending 2011, when $22.2 million, or more than 18 percent, of the fundraising total went toward the endowment.
About $27 million of the total represents gifts to athletics and the Razorback Foundation, the release said.
The $108.4 million raised for academics and athletics is what the university defines as its “production total,” which covers outright gifts of cash, new pledges, in-kind gifts and new “planned” gifts.
Donors sometime pledge a gift with the option of paying it out over a period of years, UA officials have explained in the past. And in some instances with certain planned-giving, a gift is payable to the university upon the donor’s death.
The university’s actual cash receipts totaled more than $111 million for fiscal 2013, compared with $97.5 million for the previous fiscal year.
About 49 percent of the money raised in fiscal 2013 will support students and programs, 37 percent will go toward capital improvements, 9 percent will support faculty and staff and 5 percent will go for other initiatives, according to the university’s news release.
The campus brought in a record86,976 gifts and new pledges from 47,332 benefactors , the news release said, and new donors numbered 12,258.
Corporations gave most of the money, 37 percent. Tied for second place at 28 percent each were foundations and individuals. The remaining 7 percent came from other organizations, according to the release.
Advertising revenue does not count toward fundraising totals, Holland said.
On Feb. 1, the university announced its midway-point production subtotal for fiscal 2013, having raised $61,798,225 between July 1, 2012, and Dec. 31, 2012. At the time, Holland noted that it’s not unusual for the midpoint figure to be more than halfway toward the end goal, because givers tend to ramp up donations toward the end of a calendar year for tax purposes.
UA is about a week away from calculating its latest endowment total, which involves many accounts, Holland said.
The endowment market value reported to the Voluntary Support of Education survey for fiscal 2012 was $779,225,588, she said.
UA officials said last year that UA began the so-called “silent phase” of the university’s next major capital campaign on July 1, 2012.
Five months later, UA Chancellor G. David Gearhart and other university administrators acknowledged the campus Advancement Division, which oversees the Development Office that does much of the academic fundraising, had accumulated a multimillion-dollar deficit from several years of overspending. The shortfall was estimated at around $3.37 million for fiscal 2012.
So the university is approaching this new capital campaign while awaiting the results of an audit by the Arkansas Division of Legislative Audit and making internal efforts to rein in the deficit.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 07/25/2013