UVA President John Casteen has been highly successful in raising money for the University. Last September, despite the struggling economy, UVA raised $2 billion and it’s now in the home stretch to reach its goal for its $3 billion capital campaign.
Evidently, Casteen really likes fundraising. In fact, sometime in September, just one month after he is slated to retire after 20 years at the helm of the University, he will join the Board of Directors of the Virginia Foundation for Community College Education.
The foundation raises scholarship money to help students and increase philanthropy for community colleges.
Jennifer Gentry, executive director of the foundation, says that Casteen’s addition to the foundation would bring “much vision, credibility and influence to our board.”
Although she says the foundation’s endowment is nearing $3 million, in the last five years, they have raised more than $5 million.
“I think we are at a very critical point in our growth and development and John Casteen can help us be strategic in our thinking and decide how we can best position our foundation to go to the next level to greatly enhance this endowment,” she says.
In a statement, Casteen says that he will join the board because the support to community colleges from the state isn’t “adequate,” thus crippling the services and courses provided by the colleges.
“During this recession, a time when more people need community college courses and services, the state is cutting its support even more deeply than it has in the past,” he said.
“Private philanthropy is really the only available remedy for the state’s failure to pay realistic support costs. This foundation seeks that philanthropic support at the community level, where the needs are most pressing and most visible to people who can give."
Although fundraising efforts have been on decline in the last few years, Gentry says that 2009 was the most successful year the foundation has had. “We had more donors and more gifts from more individuals than we have ever had,” she says.
Piedmont Virginia Community College President Frank Friedman, who has been dealing with reduced state funding for the past few years, says that Casteen has always been a “huge” supporter of community colleges in Virginia and a believer in the mission of community colleges.
“For him to say after he retires that one of the things he is going to devote time into is raising money for community colleges is just another statement to his great leadership, his vision, his passion for education, and I am just very excited,” says Friedman. “To have Dr. Casteen working with the community college system is a huge plus.””
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