Big Give

In the 24 hours known as the Big Give, over 14,000 donors contributed more than $12 million to UC Berkeley students and programs. Not only did the Big Give highlight the power of the campus community but emphasized the importance of philanthropy in the face of ever-dwindling state funding as well as the lengths people are willing to go to win.

Major goals for the campaign include campus housing for all freshmen, sophomores and first-year transfer students, 100 new tenure-track faculty positions and 300 new graduate fellowships.

Chancellor Carol Christ announced Monday in a campuswide email that UC Berkeley reached a balanced budget, ending the $150 million deficit and also raised $1.2 billion in revenue from “two consecutive, record-breaking years of fundraising.”

The administration hired consultants from Marts & Lundy to conduct studies on different aspects of the campus's fundraising enterprises over the past year.

A campus report shows that about 66,000 donors contributed toward the grand total, which is composed of funds from 108,000 individual gifts.

The Big Give, a campus fundraiser, raised more than $11.6 million this year to support more than 400 campus programs including student organizations, research, financial aid and athletics.

Members of the public gathered in the rain Wednesday to celebrate the return of a whale statue to the Lawrence Hall of Science after the sculpture was removed in order to undergo a structural makeover.

UC Berkeley hosted its second year of the Big Give Wednesday, a campus-wide online philanthropy event.

On Thursday evening the campus wrapped up the first of what is planned to be an annual fundraising drive, the Big Give, organizers hope to make the event a tradition coinciding with the week of the Big Game against Leland Stanford Junior University.

UC Berkeley is underway in advertising its newest online fundraising campaign, the Big Give, which encourages members of the community to donate to campus programs in a 24-hour period during the week of the Big Game.