{"id":98569,"date":"2018-07-29T15:25:33","date_gmt":"2018-07-29T21:25:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-foundation-fundraising-comes-in-strong\/"},"modified":"2018-07-29T15:25:33","modified_gmt":"2018-07-29T21:25:33","slug":"fort-lewis-college-foundation-fundraising-comes-in-strong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-foundation-fundraising-comes-in-strong\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Lewis College Foundation fundraising comes in strong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Fort Lewis College Foundation raised more than $3.3 million in its 2018 fiscal year, which ended on June 30.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Fort Lewis College Foundation raised more than $3.3 million in fiscal year 2018, about $600,000 more than the previous year.<\/p>\n

The donations are dedicated to scholarships and projects across the college, rather than one big endeavor, said Mark Jastorff, vice president for advancement.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery corner of campus has been helped through the year\u2019s fundraising,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For example, Community Concert Hall is getting a new sound system, the School of Business Administration will receive six new televisions to monitor the stock market and the purchase of a river rafting company will allow faculty and staff to take academic and recreational trips.<\/p>\n

The foundation<\/a> has also created 14 new scholarships worth more than $667,000 in endowments and scholarships, and provided $100,000 for faculty grants and undergraduate research.<\/p>\n

In addition to outstripping fundraising in 2017, the college also exceeded its $3.2 million fundraising goal.<\/p>\n

The increase in giving can be attributed, in part, to greater outreach by the college, Jastorff said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are seeing the fruits of the investment we made a couple of years ago,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Jastorff\"
Jastorff<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

In the last few years, the college has hired more foundation staff, brought back the alumni magazine and held more events for alumni locally and outside the area.<\/p>\n

Reaching out to alumni on the Front Range, in particular, helped attract new donors. This fiscal year, the college had 2,224 donors, which included 804 new donors, he said.<\/p>\n

Locals are also understanding that investing in the college is important as it continues to set itself apart from the competition in the face of declining enrollment, he said.<\/p>\n

He described the successful fundraising year as good momentum ahead of welcoming the college\u2019s new president, Tom Stritikus, who takes over Wednesday. He will replace Dene Thomas, who is retiring.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe foundation and our benefactors and the college are feeling good and understand the challenges before us,\u201d Jastorff said.<\/p>\n

In the coming years, the foundation will be responsible for raising more than $8 million for the new Health Sciences and Athletics Complex. The total cost of the project will be about $57.5 million.<\/p>\n

The college will need to raise between $2.1 and $2.4 million for the academic wing, which is the first phase of construction. The expanded athletic spaces, classrooms and offices will be built in the second phase, and they will require $5 million to $5.5 million in donations.<\/p>\n

Jastorff said he believes there will be strong support from the business community for the complex because it will help meet workforce needs in the health industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe facility itself really should be considered as a tool just like a book or a computer,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

mshinn@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Benefits spread across campus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742,5735],"tags":[132,13,93],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-98569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-students"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98569"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=98569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}