We can all take pride! About two months ago we reached our Collaborate Campaign objective of $300 million, and tomorrow (April 17) we will officially close the campaign with more than $308,000,000 raised. Please join us in the celebrations!
There are so many impressive statistics about this incredibly successful campaign. My three favorites are: more than 29,000 donors in total, 404 new scholarships and bursaries established, and 191 FutureFunder projects launched and championed by Carleton community members.
The government gives Canadian universities enough money to fulfill our mission, but if we aspire to do truly great things for our community and the wider world, we need the visionary support of partners and benefactors. It’s not about giving to Carleton, it’s about giving through Carleton to make a difference.
A prime example is the late Clay Riddell who imagined a better political system for his country and saw Carleton as the means to build it. In the same vein, the Crabtree Foundation’s love of our city and the arts came together in the acquisition of the wonderful Carleton Dominion-Chalmers Centre.
I am especially proud of the success of our FutureFunder crowdfunding platform and want to thank all community champions for your vision and commitment. To name but a few of these amazing projects: Therapy Dogs, Pius Adesanmi Memorial Fund, Diversity Matters: Supporting Women in Computer Science, Ravens Swim Team, and the Fund for Good.
We’ve talked about the campaign’s impact in terms of being Here for Good: the social, economic and common good of our society – how it matters for all of us. It’s not about money, it’s about impact.
To show our gratitude and to commemorate the outcomes we achieved together, we’ve launched a nine-week digital initiative called Thank You Thursday. I am blown away by the positive impact realized through the campaign in various priority areas thanks to the generosity of our donors. THANK YOU for all your support—cheers to being Here for Good!
What’s next? The campaign comes to a close but the goodwill and momentum it has engendered must carry on. In a time of fiscal restraint, philanthropy becomes even more important – we need donors and champions to partner with us to change lives and build a better future.
Looking to our own future, we must let the success of this campaign, and the principles and philosophy that fuelled it, guide our next steps. In the upcoming Strategic Integrated Plan process, we’ll ask ourselves: How can we better serve our community and the greater Good? How can Carleton uniquely solve the critical issues we face, as individuals, as a society and as a planet?
And in this age of partnerships, we need to be asking: Who shares this vision with us? How can we make our community and the world better through partnership? Who is Here for Good?
Chief Advancement Officer Jennifer Conley and President Benoit-Antoine Bacon celebrate reaching and surpassing the Collaborate Campaign’s $300 million goal.