When Georgia Tech Foundation President Al Trujillo attended a donor/scholarship recipient brunch earlier this month, he met a young woman who had received a scholarship to attend Tech. While speaking with her at the event, it became clear to Trujillo that she would no doubt one day achieve her goal of becoming a pediatric surgeon, and that the opportunity to come to the Institute was a launch pad for that success.
Trujillo says the interaction made him proud of the recent financial commitments the Georgia Tech Foundation has been able to make. In January, Tech publicly launched the Invest in the Best Scholarship Challenge, a campaign initiative designed to secure $50 million in endowed support for undergraduate scholarships. Thanks to their unrestricted assets, as well as support from GTF’s Board of Trustees, the Foundation made a promise to match $25 million in new gifts and commitments of $100,000 or more for endowed need-based scholarships.
The challenge certainly triggered action. By early March, all the matching funds were claimed.
Seventy donors participated, resulting in the creation of 44 new need-based scholarship endowments and additional gifts for 26 existing endowments. To build on the momentum, GTF’s Board of Trustees approved an additional $25 million match. When combined with the initial investment, the second wave of matching funds will result in $100 million for endowed undergraduate scholarships.
“I challenge anyone to show me something that adds greater philanthropic return on investment than putting a student with financial need through Georgia Tech,” says Trujillo. “You’re going to help that individual not only change their life, but also the life of their family.”
Helping the next generation of young adults is a key component of Tech’s comprehensive campaign, Transforming Tomorrow: The Campaign for Georgia Tech.
“When we set goals for this campaign, it was intended to be about people,” says Jim Hall, vice president for development at Georgia Tech. “With $700 million of our $2 billion goal pointed at students, we are very intentional about students being a top campaign priority.”
Hall and Trujillo say that, while the campaign’s efforts are going well, Tech is behind its goals related to scholarship endowments. Georgia Tech is a national leader in ROI, outcomes, and value, but in a typical year, 34% of all undergraduates require financial aid, and the Institute can only meet about 40% of their need. Each year, more than 1,500 students admitted to Tech end up enrolling at another college with a lower net cost.
“Part of being a public institution is to have perspectives from all walks of life,” Hall says. “But we’re missing perspective from a segment of our undergraduate student body, one that is very important.”
Invest in the Best is helping to close this gap and fulfill the Institute’s mission as a public university by expanding access to people of all backgrounds while placing the highest value on developing individual talents, regardless of students’ financial circumstances. A $100 million endowment will generate over $4 million for scholarships each year, potentially funding 200 or more scholarship awards, and enabling Georgia Tech to make a tremendous stride toward becoming the most attractive option for talented students of all income levels.
According to Hall, matching fund challenges have a history of resonating with donor bases. Why? One reason is because the amount a donor decides to give will automatically be doubled in an endowment in their name. Another reason Hall says they are successful is that people want to follow institutional priorities. And when the leadership of the Georgia Tech Foundation says, “This is such a priority that we’re applying our unrestricted funds,” it creates a sense of importance and urgency.
The challenge is certainly historic. Raising $100 million for scholarships in six months is an ambitious goal, and GTF has never before provided unrestricted endowment funds for matching scholarships. But Hall says the challenge is unique in another way.
“This isn’t the same donor base supporting this initiative,” he says. “These are new donors from around the globe, ranging from recent graduates to those who graduated decades ago. It’s a great cross section of our alumni base who are raising their hands and participating.”
The extended challenge ends June 30, but Hall and Trujillo believe the matching $25 million funds will be gone before then and they urge donors to act soon. Gifts and commitments will be matched dollar-for-dollar on a first-come first-served basis. New gifts or commitments of $100,000 or more to endowed need-based scholarships qualify for the challenge. Donated funds may be used to establish a new named fund or allocated to support an existing endowed scholarship. Donors are encouraged to designate new scholarships for students with the greatest financial need across the Institute or through existing scholarship programs such as Tech Promise and Dean’s Scholarships.
“With this scholarship challenge, I keep going back to why Georgia Tech exists,” Trujillo says. “It’s described in our mission: to improve the world we live in. We do that in a number of ways, through things like research and inventions. But the primary thing we do is to educate the next generation of young people. Programs that enable a wider group to have that opportunity are core to what we’re doing.”