The University of Georgia kicked off a celebration for it’s largest fundraising campaign in history: Commit to Georgia. The gathering was to celebrate the success of the campaign since 2012, bringing in nearly $650 million dollars to date. This may sound like a lot of money but compared aspirational institutions, UGA is at the bottom of the list for fundraising.

This money goes into something called an endowment. According to UGA’s official website, an endowment is an investment in the future of the University of Georgia. When you use your charitable gift to establish an endowment, the gift is invested with two goals in mind: to provide spendable income for whatever specific purpose you have designated and to make the principal grow faster than inflation. The original principal (or gift) is never spent, and any investment return over allowed spending and fees is channeled back into the fund to keep it healthy and growing. UGA’s endowment is now 1.004 billion. Once again, this seems like a large number but when it is compared to other universities it compares itself to it is the lowest.

Grady Newsource looked into the endowment of other aspirate universities. The following is the ranking of the value of endowment from 2015 for the University of Georgia and the 12 aspirational institutions in the nation. As you can see UGA is number 13 of the 13 universities.

1. University of Michigan- Ann Arbor: 10.26 billion
2. University of Virginia: 7.53 billion
3. Cornell University: 6.03 billion
4. University of California- Berkeley: 4.045 billion
5. Pennsylvania State University: 3.64 billion
6. University of California- Los Angeles: 3.49 billion
7. University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign: 3.3 billion
8. University of Minnesota: 3.297 billion
9. University of Texas- Austin: 3.27 billion
10. University of Washington: 3.076 billion
11. University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill: 2.989 billion
12. University of Wisconsin- Madison: 2.357 billion
13. University of Georgia: 1.004 billion 

The goal of the Commit to Georgia Campaign today was to improve these fundraising numbers so UGA can keep up with other universities.

by: Elizabeth Reid