By Vic Cox

	Gary Greinke is associate vice chancellor for development.

With nearly $250 million in private gifts already raised, the first-ever Campaign for UC Santa Barbara is going on the road. Invitation-only events to broaden interest in supporting the campus and its aspirations have been organized for next month in San Francisco and Los Angeles, according to Development Office officials.

Other informational and celebratory gatherings are planned for San Diego in April, and later this year for Orange County; New York City; and Washington, D.C., said Gary Greinke, associate vice chancellor for development. He also expects to organize smaller events in Chicago, Boston, Seattle, and St. Louis.

“This is a comprehensive (not just capital) campaign,” explained Greinke, “so it includes all gifts received between July 1, 2000, when we began the silent phase, and June 30, 2007, when this campaign concludes.” The current goal is $350 million.

The public phase of the fund raising launched with a big thank-you celebration last October for the donors, deans, faculty, and staff who had generated such a successful silent campaign. As actor/producer Michael Douglas, class of ’68 and honorary chair, said on videotape about the campaign goal: “We’re already more than halfway there.”

At the same event, Chancellor Henry Yang congratulated and thanked UCSB’s supporters. He noted that during his 10 years as chancellor, “I have found it tremendously rewarding to witness UCSB’s rapid upward trajectory in every measure of excellence….I am confident that the future holds even greater promise for this university.”

Douglas was also confident in that future and had already donated $1 million to the planned Center for Film, Television, and New Media, an example of the projects and programs the comprehensive campaign is designed to fund. The $10-million center, with state-of-the-art production facilities and a theater, will be built with private funds and located in a complex of two new, state-funded academic structures.

Similarly, the recently completed 10,000-square-foot expansion of Kohn Hall, home of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, was financed by industrialist-inventor Fred Kavli, whose Kavli Foundation and Kavli Institute have made grants totaling $7.5 million to support the KITP and its programs. These and other projects, ranging from the planned Mosher Alumni House at the campus’s north entrance to the College of Engineering’s Solid State Lighting Center, graduate fellowships, and undergraduate internships, are illustrations of how private funding is being invested in UCSB.

“The Campaign for UC Santa Barbara is benefiting tremendously from the outstanding leadership of volunteers from all around the state and across the country,” said John M. Wiemann, vice chancellor, institutional advancement. “These individuals include alumni of UCSB and trustees of The UCSB Foundation as well as other supporters of our campus.”

The campaign’s Web site <www.ia.ucsb.edu/campaign/index.shtm> lists four “priority campaign components” for donations. They are 1) campus-wide “major naming and endowment-building opportunities;” 2) new program development and/or program enhancement; 3) program and project innovation ”within and across the disciplines;” and 4) “resource competitiveness to principally benefit faculty and students.”

As sweeping as some of these categories sound, individual donors find their gifts can be narrowly targeted, if desired. “The great majority of funds, especially the large gifts, are designated for specific projects, endowments, scholarships, buildings, faculty chairs/professorships, and program support,” Greinke explained.

Broad categories provide the flexibility “to address emerging priorities,” he said, adding, “Opportunities arise that cannot be predicted beforehand for a dynamic research university.”