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The University of Saskatchewan has hit a significant milestone when it comes to raising money for the largest fundraising campaign in Saskatchewan’s history.
The school announced on Wednesday that it exceeded its goal for the “Be What The World Needs” campaign of $500 million and instead raised over $570 million, which will go towards growing the University of Saskatchewan.
“It was an ambitious goal, but we felt that the university was at a point in its history where it could achieve something like that,” said University of Saskatchewan president Peter Stoicheff.
“It’s five times the size of the previous campaign goal that we had a couple of decades ago, and many times the size of the campaign before that.”
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The half a billion dollars that was fundraised by the school will go towards four different categories: research, Indigenous student success, building first-class buildings and labs and student success.
“We are a research powerhouse in this country in select areas such as vaccines and food security, crop development, and water security, (we’re) a powerhouse internationally as well,” Stoicheff said.
“As you continue to grow to 27,000 students, they need first-class buildings, labs, classrooms, all the things that university students need in order to excel. Student success itself … (includes) student scholarships and other forms of financial support for students.
“All of those things contribute to the university’s success, but most importantly, to students being successful at the university.”
The donations made towards the university came from alumni, individuals in the community and also corporate donors.
In total, more than 100,000 gifts have been made to the campaign that’s lasted over a decade.
Stoicheff feels the donations made towards the school have led to it helping students not only succeed in the classroom, but also helping them stay in Saskatchewan.
“As recently as about 10 years ago, up to 70 per cent of the graduates of our university left the province of Saskatchewan to achieve their professional ambitions and personal ambitions elsewhere – now over 70 per cent of the people we graduate at the University of Saskatchewan stay in the province to contribute to the prosperity of the province and our livelihoods as well,” he said.
Over the decade-long fundraising campaign, Stoicheff was asked what project stood out to him the most that the money has gone to help build.
Stoicheff said Merlis Belsher Place is the project that stands out.
“In a way, this campaign began with Merlis Belsher’s contribution of over $12 million to what became Merlis Belsher Place. I remember when I became president, everybody said, ‘You’ll never be able to replace Rutherford Arena.’ Merlis came along and showed us how we could do it,” he said.
“He wanted that money to be included in the campaign total and that told me people want to support financially and in other ways, because our men’s and women’s hockey programs have stood for excellence over decades.
“It’s not just a rink exclusively for the Huskies. There’s a second rink there that is exclusively for community use and even the big main rink, a lot of different community teams use that too, and that to me represents what this university is all about.”
In total, the University of Saskatchewan raised $570,739,155.
