Carolina’s Promise, an eight-year USC initiative to bolster private donations, is nearing its ultimate goal of $1 billion. USC Columbia and its satellite campuses need to raise $47.4 million by June 30 a target that Jancy Houck, USC’s vice president for development and alumni relations and leader of Carolina's Promise, believes it will reach.
Whether that goal is met or not, it hardly needs to be said that $953 million is a staggering amount of money, especially when one considers how quickly it was raised.
The Promise was created in 2007 in the wake of a terrifying financial crisis and reflects a time when states strapped for cash, including SC, began cutting funding to public universities.
The purpose of the Promise initiative was to help USC through a long period of economic instability and, fundamentally, it has.
The overall message that comes out of Promise is unclear. Either its success means that the university is becoming less dependent on state money overall, or that the university will become more dependent on state funds after the Promise date passes. (The amount of money the state is willing to allocate to public universities at present is depressing to consider.)
In any case, the Promise showcases the strength and support of our donor community in times of need. While setting an eight-year period to reach $1 billion seems arbitrary, it has produced tangible results, or seems to — in the end, it's hard to tell whether the Promise is directly responsible for the funds raised.
In order to fully process and understand those results, we would like to see a final tabulation of how this money was distributed over the years.
Additionally, figures like how much was tied to specific projects or areas, the nature of donations themselves (small long-term donations or large one-time donations) and how much of the money is left would be worth knowing.
These statistics are especially important now that the Promise is almost complete, and June 30 approaches. It seems logical to consider a new question: is this a promise worth renewing?
And, if so, would USC be justified in pursuing it? While we’re no longer in dire straits like in 2007, an initiative that has garnered so much income for the university is worth looking at again.
If nothing else, the data about Promise will be useful in determining whether another, similar fundraising pledge is feasible, and we believe that they are worth releasing publicly.