At Thursday's meeting of the UNC Board of Trustees, Trustee Paul Fulton said the seven-year, $1.5 billion fund-raising campaign, which already has earned more than $760 million, will now begin its public phase a year after it was originally scheduled.
"We've decided to defer until next fall -- we will use that time to focus on accelerating our progress as much as we can and re-evaluating our goals," Fulton said.
Speed Hallman, director of development communications, said the decision to again push back the beginning of the public phase of the campaign to Oct. 12, which is University Day, was made so officials can consider raising their goal.
The "quiet," or private, phase of the campaign started in July 1999. The public phase was set to begin on University Day, Oct. 12, of 2001, but was delayed until April 26 as a result of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"I don't know how much of a party atmosphere it will be, but we will lay out our goals and how much we've raised," Hallman said.
"The fund raising is going so well that we want to raise our goal, and we want to reassess over the summer and see how things can go."
Fulton said he hopes the campaign will have raised more than $900 million by the time it moves into its public phase in October, a level that Hallman said indicates a need to re-evaluate the original $1.5 billion projection.
"If we can do that well in the early quiet phase, we should raise the bar," he said.
Hallman said that it is too early to say what the increased goal might be and that officials will work over the summer to set a new number.
