From the Nominator

"In 2017, The Governor's Academy publicly launched With True Courage: The Campaign for Governor's, a comprehensive $75 million fundraising campaign, and the largest in our school's 250-year history. The campaign's funding priorities are inspired by our school values and include a redesigned and expanded student center to facilitate a more inclusive student life experience, a deep commitment to expanding resources for financial aid and faculty excellence, a groundbreaking coastal research center, and new faculty housing. 

As we approached our $75 million goal in 2021, we secured a transformational $15 million gift from a donor who wanted us to leverage $10 million of his gift as a matching gift challenge and increase our campaign goal to $100 million. In close partnership with the donor, we designed the Bass Challenge--a 1:2 matching gift challenge for all endowment or expendable gifts of $50,000 or more with a specific strategy in mind--to broaden our community of major gift donors by offering an opportunity to increase the impact of their giving dramatically to help bring our vision to life. 

The $15 million gift, also the largest in our school's history, presented a special opportunity to "refresh" our campaign, with a new goal, collateral, visual identity system, and an energized message for what we now call "Our Next Bold Moment." Since the reveal of our refreshed campaign in October 2021, and our fundraising momentum has accelerated and we have raised more outright gifts for Governor's than at any other moment in our school's history."

From the Judges

A strong vision and narrative re-energized this fundraising campaign in the midst of a very tight turnaround--roughly 90 days! We also appreciated the collaborative efforts of the entire advancement staff working together on donor outreach in order to make the initiative a success.