Hollins Raises $161.6 Million Despite
Formidable Odds

A Message from President Gray

It was called The Campaign for Women Who Are Going Places and it was tremendously successful, raising $161.6 million against a goal of $125 million. It could as easily, however, be called The Campaign Against All Odds.

Consider the facts:

• With the shocking death of former President Nora Bell shortly after the campaign started, the effort spanned two presidents and an interim.
• The campaign was carried out without a feasibility study, without additional campaign staff, and without a campaign budget.
• Begun as a campaign to raise $100 million for endowment, it soon grew into a comprehensive campaign with a larger goal of $125 million.
• The public kickoff of the campaign in the fall of 2008 coincided with the steepest downturn in the economy since the Great Depression.
• Nationally individual giving to education at all levels fell nearly 9 percent between 2007 and 2009, according to a report from Giving USA released in June 2010.

So how did Hollins manage to surpass its goal by 29 percent with the right to claim the biggest fundraising success of any women's college in the south? Three reasons:

• Wyndham Robertson '58,
• an extraordinarily dedicated board of trustees, and
• loyal and generous alumnae who believe in perpetuating the kind of educational experience from which they so greatly benefitted.

In serving as our campaign chair and head cheerleader, Wyndham put her own life on hold while dedicating herself to Hollins' mission. She traveled from Florida to California for Hollins, often getting up at dawn and working until late at night. She engaged our alumnae, persuaded prospective donors, attended countless breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and cocktail parties, brainstormed, strategized, and opened doors for Hollins. Most of all she strengthened the network of Hollins supporters, who in response to her leadership supported Hollins in extraordinary ways.

She was backed by a supportive board of trustees, many of whom served on the campaign cabinet with her. Every trustee made a campaign commitment, most stretching beyond their comfort zone to do so. We are profoundly grateful to all who served on the board during the eight years of the campaign as well as the alumnae board and the parents council, and we applaud their leadership by example.

And then there are our donors without whom there would have been no campaign, no campaign success, truly no tomorrow for Hollins. Your willingness to give and keep on giving enabled Hollins to defy national trends and succeed against all odds.

As the money was raised over the past eight years, it was invested into Hollins – into our endowment which will support the institution in perpetuity, and into buildings, infrastructure and campus improvements. While we can't go into the vault and run our hands through $161.6 million, we can look around the campus and see the imprint of the campaign everywhere. The purpose of the following Web pages is to take that look around, to recap the accomplishments of this campaign and to recognize and thank the donors who made them possible. I hope that as you read you will take great pride in your institution, in what you did to support the effort, and in what more than 8,000 other donors did to help sustain Hollins.

On behalf of the campus community, I extend heartfelt gratitude to you, alumnae and friends, who have supported Hollins so generously. Because of you, we were able to pull off the greatest fundraising campaign in Hollins' history, in the history of any southern women's college – the campaign against all odds.

Thank you,

Nancy O. Gray
President