Alumna donates $1 million
It’s not every day that GCSU receives individual donations as large and generous as the one Martha Newell, a GCSU alumna, recently made to university.
Newell donated $1 million that will fund a visiting scholar endowment. The visiting scholar endowment allows GCSU to bring in scholars from renowned universities all over the U.S. The program gives students and faculty the chance to hear from scholars who have extensive knowledge in many of the arts and science areas of study.
Newell graduated from GCSU, which was then Georgia State College for Women, in 1942. According to Newell, the university was a small school with about 600 girls attending and the education she received was not nearly as challenging as the one GCSU offers today. Newell said she can see all the changes GCSU has made since she graduated in 1942.
“When I took a look at it (GCSU) a few years ago I saw a lot of things happening that I really liked, that I thought was making a wonderful change,” Newell said. “I liked what I saw and the more I looked, the more I liked it. So, I decided if I was going to do something for myself that was what I was going to do.”
GCSU President Dorothy Leland said she is very thankful for the gift that Newell has donated to GCSU.
“She’s clearly a very philanthropic person, and she was sort of following the Georgia College story and decided that she might want to do something for us,” Leland said. “We talked about it and she was very interested in this visiting scholars endowment. Over the years it will bring distinguished faculty from across the United States to this campus to work with our students and we will build connections throughout the United States to this school, which is wonderful.”
Newell believes that the endowment that her donation is funding will greatly benefit GCSU.
“Oh, I think it’s wonderful, as Elizabeth Hines (GCSU’s director of Annual and Planned Giving) was saying today, it will put the college on the map,” Newell said. “They haven’t chosen a scholar yet, but whoever it is will be somebody of some note, and so that will really enhance Georgia College’s reputation among other schools I think.”
According to Amy Amason, the vice president for External Relations and University Advancement, GCSU raises money through donations all year long, every year.
“Fundraising includes different kinds of fundraising, annual gifts that you ask people for each year, like you see requests from other nonprofits, so we do it through mail and by a phone-a-thon,” Amason said. “We have a phone-a-thon that has students that call our alumni and ask for donations and then we ask people in person as well.”
Not all donations given to the university are the same. GCSU is the recipient of restricted gifts and unrestricted gifts.
“We get gifts that are unrestricted which means that can be used for various things on the campus; that’s a small percentage of what we raise,” Amason said. “The majority of what we raise is designated to a certain area like music or theater or athletics, an academic unit, a student organization, a certain program.”
All donations made to GCSU are allocated to be used timely and efficiently according to needs.
“If they’re a gift that is intended to be used immediately and for some purpose then it is,” Amason said. “Mrs. Newell’s gift is an endowment gift and it’s being paid overtime which most people do that because they’re larger amounts. So they pay it over a certain number of years and then we have to wait a year after the last payments in for it to generate interest and then it’s used.”
GCSU has received donations from both individuals and foundations. According to Amason, Newell’s gift was unprecedented for an individual.
“Mrs. Newell’s was the largest gift from an individual,” Amason said. “The largest gift to Georgia College was $2.5 million for a library endowment gift from the Watson Brown Foundation.”
Posted by Lauren Davidson
on Mar 19 2010. Filed under News.
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