The University of Wisconsin’s All Ways Forward campaign, a fundraising program that launched in October 2015, will come to an end in December.
AWF is the fourth comprehensive fundraising campaign at UW the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association has led according to the AWF website. The campaign raised over $4 billion by Nov. 1, 2020, with 262,463 donors in total, according to the website.
Among the many UW programs AWF has benefitted, the School of Veterinary Medicine has been especially impacted, according to a statement from the SVM website.
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The fundraising goal for the school was initially $35 million, but the goal changed twice over the years, increasing to $70 million and then $100 million, School of Veterinary Medicine Dean Mark Markel said.
In total, AWF helped SVM raise over $135 million, according to the SVM website.
“We have dramatically exceeded what we and they thought we were going to raise at the beginning,” Markel said.
This money was used for various purposes to enhance the learning and research spaces, Markel said.
As a result of the campaign, the SVM benefitted from an increased scholarship endowment of $2.7 million, a new learning center and enhanced COVID-19 response efforts, according to the AWF website. The school also renovated lecture halls, laboratories and conference rooms to make a hybrid model possible through estate gifts.
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Though the school was asked to raise $30 million for a building project, they succeeded in raising over $52 million for the new facility, Markel said. Last year, the SVM had also received a quarter of all of the campus’s estate gifts.
The SVM’s mission is to educate and train the next generation of veterinarians, hoping to expand strategic areas of research and incorporate their findings into modern veterinary practices, according to the SVM website.
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In order to do so, the school must continuously improve its teaching and learning spaces for students and professors, Markel said.
The SVM still has about $7 million left to raise after December in order to buy new equipment for a building that is set to open in 2023, Markel said. In addition, the money they raise will go toward providing support in scholarships, programs and education for the students, as well as enhancing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts within the school itself.
Though the AWF campaign will conclude in December, the $90 million in future estate gifts can support the school for decades, Markel said. Markel believes a new campaign will begin within the next five years.
The AWF campaign was initially scheduled to end at the end of 2020, but has been extended until Dec. 31, 2021, partially due to COVID-19 impacts over the past two years, according to the Wisconsin Alumni Association.
