Donations to the College for the purpose of building the new science center will have more impact thanks to a "bricks-and-mortar" challenge put forward by the Kresge Foundation. Here's how it works: The fundraising goal for the complex is $34 million for construction, renovation, and equipment and $2 million for endowment. As of August 15, the College had raised just over $30 million toward that goal. If Mount Holyoke raises another $5 million in new gifts and pledges by January 1, 2003, Kresge will award the College the remaining $1 million necessary to complete fundraising for the science project.

Says President Joanne Creighton, "This is a splendid opportunity for donors who want their own generous investments in the future of Mount Holyoke to leverage additional gifts to the College. Every gift or pledge to the new science center will help meet the Kresge challenge." A $150,000 grant to support the science center from the Booth Ferris Foundation was recently applied toward the challenge goal.

The largest campus building project since the renovation and expansion of Williston Library in the early 1990s (for which the Kresge Foundation also awarded a $1-million challenge grant), the science center has already attracted several of the largest gifts in Mount Holyoke's history, including an anonymous $10-million naming gift for the new Kendade Hall, the nexus of the center.
The Kresge Foundation, an independent, private foundation, was created in 1924 by Sebastian S. Kresge "to promote the well-being of mankind." The foundation contends that "a challenge grant toward an organization's capital project does more than just build a building or reward good programs. It presents an opportunity to build institutional capacity by helping an organization broaden and deepen its base of support from the private sector and by encouraging volunteer involvement in the fundraising effort and beyond."

To learn more about the science center project, visit http://www.mtholyoke.edu/campaign/science/index.html.