The University of California Press has completed a three-year fund-raising campaign with a total of $3.5 million in the bank, having raised $250,000 more than its goal of $3.25 million.
The Publishing for the Centuries Campaign got a jump-start with a four-to-one challenge grant of $575,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities--which meant UC Press had to raise $2.3 million in private, charitable contributions by July 31, 1999. UC Press, under the direction of development director Deborah Kirshman, designed the campaign to establish seven new, named endowments. A $700,000 donation from the L.A.-based Ahmanson Foundation--underwriting an art and architecture imprint--set the pace early on. Four more imprints were eventually funded in American music, classics, Jewish studies and African-American studies.
At the same time, individual sponsors could establish a book fund for a particular subject area by making a minimum gift of $25,000. Four such endowments were inaugurated in the areas of 20th-century architecture, Renaissance studies, Southern California history and California public policy and politics.
"In terms of fund-raising, we have positioned ourselves as a cultural institution," Kirshman told PW. "As a press, we are on a par with Harvard, Princeton, Yale and Chicago. But we are the only one associated with a public university." UC Press receives only 9% of its $14 million annual revenues from the University of California. Nearly half the new books the press publishes require financial support. UC Press distributes more than one million books a year.
The core of UC Press's development activity is its Associates program, started in 1981, which currently has 300 members. A new membership drive will begin in the fall. UC Press has three employees working part-time on development. The press publishes a newsletter called "Imprints" twice a year and is still actively seeking gifts for three named endowments in the areas of music,ecology and the environment, and film.
In related news, UC Press has launched a new p try series: New California P try, edited by former U.S.-P t Laureate Robert Haas along with critic Calvin Bedient of UCLA and p t Brenda Hillman. The series will feature living p ts and will launch in the spring with three initial titles by Carol Snow, Fanny Howe and Mark Levine. Funding for the series comes from the general UC Press endowment.
