“For this generation of students, higher education is a private good,” Simon said at the Sept. 12 MSU Board of Trustees meeting.

MSU’s capital campaign, or Campaign for MSU, began in 1999 to actively solicit donations and funds from groups and individuals to benefit university scholarships, programs, endowments and facilities.

Some of the campaign’s contributions include $300,000 to fund student scholarships in the College of Veterinary Medicine, research on feline health disorders and scholarships for student athletes, as well as more than $27 million raised from current and retired faculty and staff. In 2006, Simon deferred her salary raise to the campaign.

Bob Thomas, director of annual giving and marketing programs, said more than 95 percent of donors dictate to the university what their money will be used for.

“People don’t write just general checks of millions of dollars,” he said. “They always earmark it for something. Donors make specific gifts for a specific project. Folks will give general gifts to programs they graduated from.”

As of Aug. 4, the university surpassed its overall goal of $1.2 billion, raising $1.373 billion from more than 2,100 donors in that timespan. MSU officials said the final numbers would be released the first week of October, when the campaign ends.

Campaign for MSU is the university’s second fundraising campaign; it held its first from 1988 to 1993 and raised $218 million.

Thomas said once the university eclipsed its original goal in 2006, it has turned its focus toward the endowment goal of $450,000 to secure long-term results. An endowment is a financial insulation often in the form of a private donation that secures the university in a situation where the state and federal government may not provide funding.

“We needed to bring a new sense of urgency, and one of the main issues was to raise endowment dollars — that was something we had not done a lot of in the past,” Thomas said.

According to a report by the Chronicle of Higher Education, of 26 major American universities involved in similar campaigns, MSU has collected more money than universities such as Dartmouth College, Brown University and North Carolina State University.

The campaign began with a private phase for the first three years, where the university personally sought funding from individual donors, with $607.9 million being raised before the campaign became public.

He said private institutions have been conducting similar campaigns for decades, but public universities are finding they need to do the same.

“All major universities now have just concluded a campaign, are planning one or are in one,” Thomas said. “It is a reality in today’s world that you have to have comprehensive funding efforts to raise money from the private sector because you can’t be funded by the public sector anymore. It just doesn’t work.”

Two of the most significant private donors have been Eli and Edythe Broad. The Broads donated $3.5 million to the Eli Broad College of Business to be used for student scholarships and the MBA program.

“We’re more and more dependent on private funds because we don’t get all the support we need from the state,” said Robert Duncan, dean of the Eli Broad College of Business. “That’s why these fundraising campaigns are absolutely essential.”

Duncan said the donations to the college, which have amounted to about $110 million from a variety of donors, have gone toward faculty endowments, student scholarships and new curriculum and academic programs.

The Broad family also donated $26 million for MSU’s new art museum in June, which also will bear their name.

“It certainly is relationship building and building that trust between me, as a representative of the university, and the donor,” said Mark Terman, director of principal gifts. Terman worked personally with the Broads and donors for MSU’s new medical facility in west Michigan.

“Truly, philanthropy at that level is a real investment,” Terman said. He added that the majority of the entire campaign has been focused on private contributions.

“When we talk in terms of public dollars, it’s government grants and state investment,” he said. “The state, given its economic woes, hasn’t been able to give any structure. MSU needs all it can get just for operating this campus.”

Terry Denbow, vice president for university relations, said MSU has raised some of the funds for universities without their own hospitals.

“We’ve made some real progress,” Terman said. “We’ve addressed some needs on this campus. Not only bricks and mortar but endowment. We’ve gone from the bottom of the Big Ten in endowment to the middle of the Big Ten, roughly speaking.”

Just because the campaign is coming to a close doesn’t mean the university will turn down donations before its next plan.

“You typically take a breather,” Thomas said. “You typically wait at the end of a campaign — give the donors a chance to rest, since there are many multi-year pledges. You don’t take your foot off the gas for fundraising.”