Southwestern

Engaging Minds, Transforming Lives

Giving

The history of philanthropy at Southwestern

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    Durwood Fleming, president; Ambassador Edward A.Clark, campaign director; and A. Frank Smith, Jr., Chair of the Board of Trustees, celebrate the successful conclusion of the 1979 Brown Challenge goal. (Southwestern University, Publications Department)
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    The results of the Brown Challenge during the five years of the Fleming administration.
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    George and Alice Brown being presented with the plaque naming the Brown College of Arts and Sciences after The Brown Foundation and all the Browns. (Southwestern University, Special Collections)

TBD

TO ADD: Pic of 100,000 plaque, Pic of Fountain, George Brown (p 479) 

 

The Weiss Grant, 1937

Named for Louisa Carothers Weiss who attended Southwestern University in the 1870’s and her son Harry.  The Weiss Grant helped move the University from a “debt-ridden institution with little productive endowment“  in the mid-1930’s to a “debt-free institution with over half a million dollars in productive endowment on March 1, 1937.”  (p 290) Although named for the primary benefactors, the total funds were contributed by nearly two hundred employees, alumni, patrons or close friends of the University.  

 

The Brown Challenge 1976-1995

There were actually three phases of the Brown Challenge but it the third phase that “was so remarkable in its conception and so successful in its execution that most people now think of it alone when the phrase “Brown Challenge” is mentioned. “ (p 486)  Herman and Margerett Root Brown (SU 1915), and George and Alice Pratt Brown (SU 1924), founders of The Brown Foundation, Inc., Houston, initiated a twenty-year challenge grant to Southwestern University which was completed in 1996.  Through the Brown Challenge alone, The Brown Foundation, Inc. granted more than $26.8 million to build Southwestern’s endowment, which it grew from $21.8 million in 1976 to $236 million in 1996.  Alumni participation in the annual fund increased from six percent to nearly thirty-five percent.  Faculty compensation increased from the forty-third percentile to the ninetieth percentile among national liberal arts colleges.