University of Washington’s $5 billion fundraising push shifts to public phase
The University of Washington is going public with a 6-year-old philanthropic campaign that’s already quietly raised $3 billion since it launched in 2010. The campaign is moving to its public phase, and the UW aims to raise $2 billion more during the next four years to support everything from scholarships to research to new buildings on campus.
As part of the hoopla, the UW is getting businesses and other organizations to fly UW flags and light up their buildings in the color purple Friday. CenturyLink Field will be bathed in purple light, for example, and so will the Seattle Great Wheel on the waterfront that evening.
This campaign is the UW’s third, and most ambitious, fundraising effort since 1987, when the university raised $280 million. The second campaign, which ran from 2000 to 2008, raised $2.67 billion.
In this third campaign, the $3 billion raised to date includes many well-publicized corporate and private donations, such as a series of gifts totaling $100 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the $10 million that Amazon and Microsoft each contributed toward a new computer-science center, and $50 million that went toward a remodel of Husky Stadium.
Read more: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/education/uws-5-billion-fundraising-push-shifts-to-public-phase/