Earlier this month, Princeton University launched a $1.75-billion, five-year fundraising drive called "Aspire: A Plan for Princeton."
The campaign, which is the largest in Princeton's history, focuses on increasing the university's involvement with the "changing" world by "responding to the challenges of our time," according to the campaign's Web site.
The campaign's priorities include "strengthening the core Princeton experience, providing unrestricted funds through the Annual Giving program and raising funds to enhance the university's capacities in the critical areas of engineering and the environment, the creative and performing arts, neuroscience and national and global citizenship," according to the Web site.
"Princeton aspires to make the world a better place through the power of the mind and the imagination, the insights and discoveries of its faculty and the contributions of its alumni in their careers and communities," Princeton President Shirley Tilghman said in an official university press release.
"If we want to open the doors of opportunity even wider and continue to provide the best possible learning environment for our students and faculty, we must constantly be moving forward. Through this campaign, we're encouraging all Princetonians to help shape the future of the University by providing the resources necessary to meet its highest priorities."
Robert Murley, a Princeton trustee and chairman of investment banking for the Americas at Credit Suisse, and Nancy Peretsman, a Princeton trustee and managing director of the investment banking firm Allen & Company, will serve as the campaign's co-chairs. Murley and Peretsman will head a 30-person executive committee to coordinate the campaign.
"There are areas, even areas of great strength, where Princeton must make strategic investments to stay on the cutting edge," Murley said in a statement. "Quality is expensive, and Princeton's stellar faculty, outstanding undergraduate and graduate programs, and commitment to teaching and research on the frontiers of human knowledge require significant resources."
Princeton officials have set a $250 million goal for the university's Annual Giving fund, which directly supports Princeton's operating budget, $325 million for research in engineering, energy, and the environment, $325 million for exploration of the arts, $300 million for neuroscience, genomics and theoretical physics, $300 million for national and global citizenship and $250 million to improve financial aid, teaching and residential life.
A quiet phase of the campaign, which commenced in July 2005, has already raised $611 million, about a third of the campaign's goals.
"In this campaign, we are aspiring to respond to the challenges of our time, and make Princeton an even better place for teaching and learning," Peretsman said in the statement. "This is our responsibility to the generations that came before us and the generations who will follow."
"The theme of this campaign is encapsulated in a single word - 'aspire,' " Tilghman told the Daily Princetonian. "Princeton has always aspired to be better than it is."
The campaign goal is slightly higher than the Boldly Brown campaign, which seeks to raise $1.4 billion. The Brown campaign had raised $1.1 billion as of Oct. 22. Princeton also seeks to raise more money than Dartmouth College, whose current campaign, the Dartmouth Experience, aims to raise $1.3 billion by 2009.
The goals are considerably smaller than those of comparable campaigns at other Ivy League and peer institutions. Cornell University is currently in the middle of a $4 billion campaign entitled "Far above ... the Campaign for Cornell" that seeks to reach its goal by December 2011, Stanford University is attempting to raise $4.3 billion by December 2011 through the Stanford Challenge and Yale University is in the middle of a $3 billion campaign.
