All gifts that St. Thomas receives during the Opening Doors campaign will be applied to the campaign goal. There are 19 academic and building priorities that account for $438 million of the $500 million goal.
The remaining goal of $62 million is composed of $10 million in unrestricted Annual Fund gifts and $52 million in gifts that donors will restrict to a wide variety of uses.
Unrestricted gifts are gifts given with no special instructions attached. They are extremely important to St. Thomas because they enable the university to address the most pressing need at the time of the gift or to address critical needs as they arise.
Restricted gifts are those that donors give with specific uses in mind: purchasing microscopes, baseball bats, library books, chapel supplies, new sod or light bulbs (437 different accounts were contributed to last year!).
It is important to note that this "Gifts restricted by donors" total will fluctuate widely throughout the campaign because, in addition to encompassing all restricted gifts outside of the 19 uses covered by official Opening Doors priorities, this category will reflect gifts that donors have committed to the university but have not chosen a designation for yet. It will be a "holding area" of sorts.
Thus, already at the outset of the campaign, this figure is above the $52 million "goal," but it will fall below that when some large gifts already committed are finally designated to a campaign priority.
The hope is that when the campaign ends, and all donors have made final decisions regarding the assignment of their gifts, "Gifts restricted by donors" still will total more than $50 million.
This will require thousands of gifts, large and small, from thousands of generous St. Thomas donors.