The capital campaign is back on track after a semester marked by a national tragedy and an economy in recession.
Since reaching its initial $1.5 billion goal last June, the campaign has raised over $200 million, bringing its total to $1.706 billion.
Both President Nan Keohane and Director of Communications and Donor Relations Peter Vaughn said the campaign is on pace to reach its goal of $2 billion by 2003, but neither made any predictions of whether and by how much the campaign might surpass its goal.
Vaughn said no individual school or department had yet reached its target, but that each had raised at least 75 percent of their goals. The Pratt School of Engineering is the closest to completion, with nearly 95 percent of its $170 million goal.
"Duke is doing well. There's no question about it," he said. "For the past few months, we've done well."
Between August and mid-November last year, the campaign raised $47 million. In the following two months, contributions increased and the campaign raised an additional $80 million.
"It does appear that the campaign is Oback in full swing,'" Keohane wrote in an e-mail. "The momentum has picked up again in November and December after an understandable low period in September and October, when we suspended many solicitations, and people's minds were on other things."
Vaughn said the capital campaign made no solicitations in the New York metropolitan or Washington, D.C., areas through early November.
He added that pledge reminders were not sent out for about three months, and that development travel was curtailed and some activities were postponed.
Keohane noted that the Annual Fund is below its target because of recent national events, but added that the fund is recovering.
Among the gifts last semester: $1.57 from the sale of Amico Island near the Delaware River--the island was donated by C. Merrill Ambler, Jr., Trinity '64, to pay for an improved outdoor tennis stadium; $1 million from Greensboro native Evelyn Hunter Longdon to the Duke Eye Center for proposed research; $3.26 million from the Ford Motor Company for various projects; two gifts to the Divinity School totaling $2.5 million; $2 million from the McCormick family for Duke athletics; $2.5 million from the Nasher Foundation to fund the planned Nasher Art Museum; $2 million from the Lilly Endowment to encourage careers in ministry; $13.9 million from the Duke Endowment for a variety of initiatives.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.