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From The Daily Star,
July 19, 2007
By Amy L. Ashbridge
Staff Writer
The College at Oneonta Foundation has exceeded its fundraising goal for
its most-recent campaign.
Alumni and other donors gave $12 million. The foundation set a goal of
$10 million, according to a news release Wednesday from the State
University College at Oneonta. The five-year campaign ended late last
month.
"We’re amazed," said Ken Kellerhouse, immediate past president of the
foundation’s board of directors. "We’re very happy, and we’re very happy
with the response."
The theme of the campaign was "Changing lives since 1889," the year the
college was established.
"It resonated with alumni," said Paul Adamo, vice president for college
advancement and executive director of the foundation.
The college’s endowment nearly doubled during the campaign. It was $17.1
million at the beginning and was more than $31 million when it ended,
according to the news release.
That money goes to support SUCO and scholarships for students. Adamo
said there were 119 named scholarships at the beginning of the campaign,
and there are now 182 scholarships. Those scholarships will provide more
than $1.5 million in aid to students this academic year, Adamo said.
Many of those awards go to local students.
Adamo said 19.1 percent of alumni donated to the college this past
fiscal year. That compares to the State University of New York average
of 9.3 percent.
"It takes almost 1,000 alumni donors to move 1 percentage point," Adamo
said. "That was phenomenal."
Alumni aren’t the only ones who want to help their college. Kellerhouse
said many faculty and staff, past and present, also donated to the
campaign.
Kellerhouse said that shows the employees are "very happy with the
college."
The college’s first campaign had a goal of $4 million, said Board of
Directors Past President Karen Elting.
"We were nervous because we never raised that much money," she said.
This campaign raised three times that amount.
"We did extremely well," Elting said. "It’s just very gratifying."
Adamo said the foundation will start raising money for the sciences.
That campaign will include money for scholarships for science students.
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