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Inside BrownTogether: Unpacking the University’s most ambitious fundraising campaign

The funds will support financial aid and campus facilities, among other initiatives.

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Over the past decade, Brown has received donations from over 76,800 alums, parents, faculty and friends in a campaign called BrownTogether — the largest fundraising campaign in University history.

The campaign raised over $4.4 billion to support financial aid, new professorships, campus facilities and student support centers, among other projects, The Herald previously reported.

In the three years leading up to the campaign’s launch, the University averaged around $180 million annually in gifts and pledges, Senior Vice President for Advancement Sergio Gonzalez told The Herald. 

Under the BrownTogether campaign, the University averaged $440 million a year. The campaign hit an all time high of $503 million last year, Gonzalez said.

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The campaign’s success came even as a surprise to top administrators.

“I don’t think — rolling back the clock 10 years ago — anybody could have imagined that Brown's alumni and friends and supporters would have been so generous as to help us complete a more than four-billion-dollar campaign,” President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 said in an interview with The Herald.

But “the most important thing is not the dollars but what they’re doing for the University,” she added.

Priorities for the gifts were established before BrownTogether launched and were laid out in the campaign’s operating plan, based on the University’s 2013 strategic plan.

Throughout the campaign, they tracked whether the funds being raised were “fulfilling the priorities that we laid out in the beginning,” Paxson said.

Paxson said gifts from BrownTogether were not directly raised to address the University’s $46 million budget deficit, as it “is not inspiring.”

“It’s very important that people know that we’re managing our resources well and our gifts have impact,” she added.

Funds from the campaign will be used to support some of the University’s biggest expenses, such as financial aid. Paxson hopes that using endowed funds to finance major functions of the University will help reduce Brown’s budget deficit. 

Gifts raised from the Brown Annual Fund were included in the total revenue of the BrownTogether campaign. 

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Donations given to the Annual Fund help support “student experience and student needs,” Gonzalez said. This includes immediate-use funds that support a variety of programs, including athletics, professional schools and efforts to increase student diversity.  

The University adjusted donor outreach methods depending on the types of gifts being given, Gonzalez explained. Gifts given to the Annual Fund were solicited through mail, student phone calls and direct conversations with donors.

Major gifts, on the other hand, typically required outreach over a longer period of time and involved understanding donor interests in addition to explaining University priorities. 

“Larger gifts, and especially endowed gifts or capital gifts, are given for very specific purposes,” Paxson said. That involves a “much more tailored campaign where we’re identifying specific people or foundations sometimes who we think have the capacity and inclination to support Brown,” she said. 

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There are currently no plans for a new formal fundraising campaign, but the University will continue to fundraise for “a number of priorities,” Gonzalez said.

“It’s very important that we continue to fundraise at the levels we’ve been fundraising because the opportunities for our donors to invest are very significant and very consequential,” he added.

Clarification: This story has been updated to more accurately represent the number of donors who contributed to the BrownTogether campaign.


Roma Shah

Roma Shah is a senior staff writer covering University Hall and higher education. She's a freshman from Morgan Hill, CA and studies Neuroscience. In her free time, she can be found doing puzzles, hiking or curled up with a book.



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