Brown goes public with $3B comprehensive campaign, ‘BrownTogether’

BROWN UNIVERSITY again has the best value in Rhode Island, according to SmartAsset. /COURTESY BROWN UNIVERSITY
BROWN UNIVERSITY again has the best value in Rhode Island, according to SmartAsset. /COURTESY BROWN UNIVERSITY

PROVIDENCE – Brown University has launched a $3 billion comprehensive fundraising campaign titled BrownTogether Friday evening, the largest in its history.
The previous comprehensive campaign, which concluded in 2010, exceeded its goal of $1.4 billion, raising $1.61 billion, senior university officials said in advance of Friday’s celebration, which was held on Pembroke Field.
“This is not a capital campaign [for] bricks and mortar,” said university President Christina H. Paxson earlier in the week. “This is a comprehensive campaign and it has reach beyond the Brown campus.”
As a major employer in the city, Paxson said, the campaign’s investment in the university will result in part in more university jobs, but also have an impact statewide and even globally in such areas as medicine and public health, science and entrepreneurship.
Fund-raising investment goals are focused on four areas, Paxson said: people, education and research, campus and community, and the Brown annual fund. The fund ensures Brown can make immediate investment in strategic areas and address needs as they arise.
“To do this kind of work at the level and scale [that] we want requires resources,” said Provost Richard Locke.
Relying on the university’s “Building on Distinction” strategic plan and the momentum from its recently celebrated 250th anniversary, the campaign is focused on seven “integrative themes” ranging from the arts to science and the humanities, said Locke and Patricia Watson, senior vice president of university advancement.
Besides reaching out to 100,000 alumni, the university hopes to raise funds from foundations, corporations and others, said Locke and Paxson.
Brown is seeking to elevate the university’s contribution not only to cross-disciplinary academic scholarship and research, but also “to work on big problems beyond the borders of Brown,” Locke said. More broadly, the scope includes the city of Providence, the state of Rhode Island and the world, he and Paxson said.
As an example, they cited the newly launched Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute as the type of university project that someone who is not an alumnus could be interested in helping fund. The institute is focused on healthy weight, nutrition, fitness, autism and asthma.
In a two-year silent phase, the campaign already has raised $944 million, Paxson said, not just through a small number of large gifts, but rather through “gifts on many levels” from 40,000 donors.
For the new, $88 million school of engineering, $100 million was raised, with the balance being used to fund faculty expenses, a university spokesman said. A ground-breaking for the new research building was held Thursday.
The university named a dozen co-chairs of the campaign, including:

  • Brickson E. Diamond – BA, class of 1993, current member of the board of trustees, chief operating officer of the Executive Leadership Council
  • Charles H. Giancarlo – BS, class of 1979, former member of the board of trustees, entrepreneur
  • Theresia Gouw – BS, class of 1990, current member of the board of fellows, former member of the board of trustees, founder and managing partner of Aspect Ventures
  • Martin J. Granoff – former member of the board of trustees, philanthropist
  • Samuel M. Mencoff – BA, class of 1978, member, board of fellows, former member, board of trustees, founding partner and co-CEO of Madison Dearborn Partners
  • Jonathan M. Nelson – BA, class of 1977, current member, board of fellows, former member, board of trustees, founder and CEO of Providence Equity Partners LLC
  • Alison S. Ressler – BA, class of 1980, treasurer of the Brown Corporation, member of the board of trustees, partner of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP
  • Carmen M. Rodriguez – BA, class of 1983, former member of the board of trustees, philanthropist
  • Ralph F. Rosenberg – BA, class of 1986, member of the board of trustees, global head of real estate for Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts
  • Pablo Salame – BS, class of 1988, partner of Goldman Sachs & Co.
  • Joan Wernig Sorensen – BA, class of 1972, member of the board of trustees, philanthropist
  • E. Paul Sorensen – BA, BS, MS, PhD, 1971, 1975, 1977, retired co-founder of ABAQUS

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