Temple University just completed the most successful fundraising year in its history, with a total of $65.8 million in new gifts and pledges made by 45,567 donors, and support for student scholarship leading the way. The fiscal year ended June 30.

Since the end of Temple’s last fundraising campaign four years ago the university has raised an average of $45.48 million annually, making this year’s increase a nearly 45 percent spike. The previous single-year fundraising high was $65.4 million in 2008, at the peak of the Access to Excellence campaign.

“Philanthropy is a vital component of our university’s mission and enterprise,” said Temple University President Neil D. Theobald. “It has a tremendous impact on our students by keeping the costs of their educations down as well as providing the spaces and resources they need to live, work and grow."

"This is an incredible show of support and is proof of the growing commitment of our friends, alumni and community to Temple’s vision,” said the president.

Fueling Temple’s sharp rise in fundraising was a massive increase in gifts and pledges to scholarships. Support for students rose from $8.8 million last year to $16.5 million in FY13 – an unprecedented 88 percent increase in a single year.

An emphasis on scholarship fundraising, along with keeping tuition increases to a minimum and cutting administrative costs, has been part of Temple’s strategy to be at the forefront of tackling the national trend of rising student debt and higher education costs.

Another area that showed a large increase was support for faculty and research initiatives. In FY12 the university raised $8.14 million toward its instructional and research enterprises; that was almost exactly doubled in FY13, increasing to $16.26 million.

That jump in student scholarship support coincided with a research output that itself broke records, as licensing revenues, federally funded research awards and new patents by Temple researchers all showed significant or record-breaking increases this past year.

Other notable increases:

• 3,095 young alumni gave to Temple, a 58.9 percent increase from FY12, and they raised $515,805, a 46.9 percent increase. Young alumni have been defined as those who received their degrees from Temple within the last ten years.
• Donors who made gifts of $999 or less also rose dramatically, with those levels of donations providing 20 percent more in funding than they had the year before.
• Contributions to the university’s endowment totaled nearly $20 million this year, more than double that of FY12.

The increases in young alumni donors and smaller donations indicate a growing grassroots base of support for the university, while the contributions to the endowment also ensure that this year’s record-breaking fundraising has an impact far into the future.

“To have broken this record in a non-campaign year, in what has also been a year of transition with a new president and many new deans, is a truly remarkable achievement,” said Tilghman H. Moyer IV, interim senior vice president for Institutional Advancement.

“We have set a new high bar for philanthropy at Temple, one that has not been matched in 129 years of history, and it’s an incredible vote of confidence from our friends and alumni in Temple’s mission, its direction and its impact on the world,” said Moyer.

Visit giving.temple.edu to learn more about philanthropy at Temple University.