Taylor University launches $500M capital campaign

Taylor University on Friday announced the public launch of a capital campaign to raise $500 million that will be used to support the university’s strategic plan detailed last November.

“Life to the Full: the Campaign for Taylor” is the largest campaign in the 178-year-old school’s history and aims to capitalize on record enrollment and provide resources to grow the university’s student body by 25%.

The Upland university, which has 1,901 undergraduate students, 24 graduate  students and 436 distance-learning students, launched the quiet phase of the campaign three years ago and has raised $275 million toward its goal to date.

In an interview with Inside INdiana Business, Taylor President Michael Lindsay said he is encouraged by the response thus far and the positive momentum the university has seen recently.

“We welcomed our largest incoming class (565 freshmen and 41 transfer students) this last fall, and this coming fall appears to be even larger,” Lindsay said. “It’s also our most academically talented class and our most diverse class. So we’re seeing great momentum on a whole host of measures, and we’re excited about how this campaign will catalyze a number of investments that can make a huge difference in the lives of our students.”

During the quiet phase, the university received a record 47 gifts of seven figures or more, including a $20 million gift for scholarships announced a year ago, as well as a $40 million gift for academic initiatives, marking the single largest gift in Taylor’s history.

The campaign lists three core objectives the university aims to achieve with its funding.

The first is “A Thriving Campus,” which includes boosting undergraduate enrollment by 25%, expanding graduate offerings, and investing in academic programming in the health sciences, innovation and entrepreneurship, data and computing sciences, and leadership.

“We’re in a growth mode, where a lot of universities are shrinking and subtracting, Taylor is growing and adding,” Lindsay said. “We’re adding new academic programs like a PhD in leadership [and] new undergraduate programs like nursing. So, this is an opportunity for us to significantly expand the opportunities for students.”

The second objective is “A Thriving Community,” which Lindsay said he believes is a first-of-its-kind effort in which a university has set a campaign priority on community economic development.

“We’re hoping to raise $75 million through our Main Street Mile initiative that would help support a whole host of community and economic development initiatives,” he said. “A few of those will be located on our campus, but the vast majority will be just trying to be a benefit to our community.”

In December, Taylor received a $30 million grant from Indianapolis-based Lilly Endowment Inc. to launch the Main Street Mile initiative, which is being coupled with $23 million in additional public and private investment.

The initiative aims to support economic development projects along the one-mile stretch between the Taylor campus and downtown Upland.

The third objective in the campaign is “A Thriving Mission,” which aims to reduce student debt through new scholarships and amplified work experiences, while also expanding campus infrastructure, including residential, dining, chapel, classroom, and athletics facilities to support student growth.

“We believe that combination of both scholarship and on campus employment opportunities, nurtured together through the campaign will cause our mission to thrive,” Lindsay said.

“We believe this campaign provides an opportunity to show an institution that’s going a different direction than most of the sector, and that is really trying to do these three things quite significantly, not for our own purposes, but to try and be a blessing and encouragement to our campus, our community, and our mission,” he said. “And we hope that this encourages much wider generosity. Indiana is a place filled with generous people, and we’re honored to be able to be a part of this.”