$25 Million Gift Puts Fundraising Goal in Reach

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The $25 million donation that John and Marion Anderson announced last week for their namesake Graduate School of Management at UCLA will help the school meet its fundraising goal – just as the end of a four-year, $100 million campaign approaches.

What’s more, the donation is likely to strengthen the case for the business school to end its reliance on state funding and become financially self-sufficient. That plan, introduced last fall, is being evaluated by university administrators and could be voted on this fall.

“Any time you have vulnerabilities related to state support, you have to fall back on private donations,” said Judy Olian, Anderson dean. “This donation provides some offset in this challenging environment.”

With the $25 million donation, the Anderson family has given a total of $42 million to the graduate school, becoming by far its most substantial donor. The school was renamed in the family’s honor after the first gift of $15 million in 1987.

John Anderson, 93, received his bachelor’s degree in business administration from UCLA and his two sons received graduate degrees from the university. He has since gone on to establish a business empire of more than 40 separate companies under the Topa Equities Ltd. banner. Holdings include real estate, auto dealerships and beverage distribution companies. The combined value of Topa’s companies is nearly $2 billion.

“I was very lucky to come to UCLA on a scholarship and I’ve never forgotten that,” Anderson said in a press release announcing his most recent donation. “The lessons and values I learned while attending UCLA shaped my thinking throughout my business and community life. Giving back to the school is my way of enabling future generations to have the kind of opportunities that UCLA offered me.”

The timing of the gift is crucial. The $100 million four-year fundraising campaign draws to an end this fall, coinciding with the business school’s 75th anniversary.

Olian said the school will announce the final numbers when the campaign ends. But she acknowledged that the school now expects to meet its $100 million goal thanks to last week’s donation.

Judy Munzig, the Andersons’ daughter and vice president of Topa, confirmed that the donation was timed for the closing months of the campaign. She would not say whether her father intends to donate any more to the school as part of his estate.

Money raised through the campaign is going directly to the school’s general endowment, which stood at roughly $115 million before the latest $25 million donation from the Andersons. The endowment supports scholarship funds for students and continued expansion of the school’s curriculum as well as efforts to recruit faculty from around the globe, and support them in their teaching and research.

This campaign, begun in fall 2007, is separate from the self-sufficiency initiative announced last fall. That initiative was launched in response to several rounds of state budget cuts to the University of California system. If it goes into effect, it would end the business school’s acceptance of state money. The school would instead rely upon fundraising and it would increase tuition from the current $41,000 for state residents and $49,000 for nonresidents.

The self-sufficiency initiative was originally slated to go into effect at the beginning of the 2011 academic year. But it ran into some turbulence last fall as the executive board of the UCLA Academic Senate voted against the plan, saying its impact on the entire university needed more consideration.

Olian said last week that UCLA administrators were still evaluating the plan and that it could be finalized later this year.

The ability to raise substantial sums of money could strengthen the case for the self-sufficiency proposal.

“This donation builds our endowment, and that’s crucial at a time when state funding is being cut back,” Olian said.

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Howard Fine
Howard Fine is a 23-year veteran of the Los Angeles Business Journal. He covers stories pertaining to healthcare, biomedicine, energy, engineering, construction, and infrastructure. He has won several awards, including Best Body of Work for a single reporter from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers and Distinguished Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists.

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