KINGSTON – The University of Rhode Island has reached the $100 million goal for its Making a Difference capital campaign 15 months ahead of schedule, URI President David M. Dooley announced Saturday at the school’s Distinguished Achievement Awards dinner, held at the Westin Providence.

The milestone was achieved two years after URI opened the public gift phase of the campaign and a little more than five years after the school started the fundraising program to bolster its resources. Major goals for the campaign included improving URI’s ability to recruit and retain faculty, increasing undergraduate and graduate financial aid, funding advanced research, and improving campus facilities.

“Reaching the $100 million mark for the University’s campaign is remarkable progress, and … is inspiring,” said Dooley. “Together, we can make amazing things happen.”

To this point of the campaign, nearly 34,000 alumni and others have contributed, with almost 10,000 of them being first-time donors.

“It is also both amazing and humbling that giving to URI in general was up 11 percent in the last academic year, while giving to education declined by 5.5 percent nationally,” said Glen R. Kerkian, president of the URI Foundation, which administers fundraising and endowment activities of the university.

Nearly $26 million of the campaign has been earmarked for endowments across a wide swath of the university, while about $8.5 million has been given to support construction projects which were primarily funded by taxpayer-approved bonds, including the Graduate School of Oceanography’s Undersea Space and Exploration Center and the Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences building.

The University of Rhode Island’s Making a Difference Campaign is a drive to raise $100 million to advance the university’s standing. To learn more about the campaign, visit www.urifoundation.org.