In the past year, alumni and community members have increased their contributions to Sacramento State by donating large amounts of money for projects, departments and scholarships.

According to Public Affairs, Sac State received $16.2 million in the 2006-07 fiscal year. This number is higher than the previous year and is the second time the school has met its fundraising goal.

Assistant Vice Chancellor for Advancement Services Lori Redfearn said all the campuses in the California State University system have goals of meeting a certain amount of resources provided by the General Fund. The current goal was put into place three years ago.

“Prior to that, there was a 10 percent goal that was established in 1993 that applied to all of the campuses,” she said. “We reevaluated it (and) realized that campuses are at different stages of development, so we took into consideration these other indicators of success for developing these peer groups that provided more reasonable benchmarks for the campuses.”

Redfearn said the CSU campuses are broken down into three separate peer groups. Which group each university belongs to depends on many factors, including how long they have been fundraising, how many full-time professors they have and what the value of their endowment is. The group a campus is in determines the amount of fundraising they are expected to do.

The smallest group, which includes CSU Channel Islands, has a fundraising goal of up to 10 percent of the A1money provided by the General Fund. Campuses in the middle group are expected to raise 10 to 15 percent, and the large campuses, such as San Jose State have a goal of more than 15 percent.

Campuses in the middle category are referred to as emerging campuses, a group which Sac State is a part of. Redfearn said that characteristics of these campuses include 10 to 25 full-time fundraisers, 5,000 to 10,000 donors, and $10 million to $50 million in endowment market value.

“Of the peer group that Sacramento belongs to, there are eight campuses,” she said. “And of those eight campuses, half of them reached their ten percent goal, Sacramento being one of them.”

Among the money meant to benefit academics directly, the Curien family and the Bernard Osher Foundation donated $1 million each for scholarship programs. In testamentary gifts, $2.9 million was donated for math programs, and another $3 million to the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics.

Mary Bitterman, president of the Bernard Osher Foundation, said they have scholarships at 59 universities across the country.

The purpose of the scholarships is to aid people between the ages of 25 and 50 who are reentering college to complete their degrees.

“Others donated money for the construction of new structures on campus, including $1.3 million from Follett High Education group for the new Hornet Bookstore, $250,000 toward the Sokiku Nakatani Tea Room and Garden, and $100,000 to cover expenses of equipping the proposed Broad Athletic Facility.

Of the $16.2 million given, $7.5 million was in testamentary commitments.

Fran Baxter-Guigli, director of development operations, said gift commitments and testamentary commitments are two different things.

“A gift is…cash or an asset that’s ‘in the door,'” she said. “It’s either a check or it’s a gift that we actually have possession of here. (With a testamentary commitment) we are informed that the donor has made a specific bequest in their estate plan for Sac State. So we don’t have the money, but we have information about future money that has been designated for the university.”

Baxter-Guigli said the amount of money alumni have donated to the school speaks volumes.

Natalye Childress Smith can be reached at [email protected].