December 24, 2005

Ira A. and Mary Lou Fulton give Arizona State University $100 million for Christmas

Gift among largest in the history of higher education

TEMPE, Ariz. – The faculty, staff and students of Arizona State University are getting an unexpected gift this holiday season: Ira A. and Mary Lou Fulton put $100 million under the university’s Christmas tree.

The Fultons, already the university’s largest single donors, had been thinking about this gift for some time. This gift, one of the largest single donations in higher education history, puts their total gifts to ASU at more than $160 million. They have also given $72 million to Brigham Young University.

“The spirit of Christmas is giving to others,” said Ira Fulton. “During the Depression, my mother ran a café in Tempe near ASU’s campus and never turned anyone away hungry, whether they had money or not. The best gift I can provide today is the opportunity of a college education. It unlocks the door for young people and enables them to build a brighter future for themselves and their families.”

Fulton, a self-made millionaire, is concerned about the level of private investment in Arizona’s universities. He continued, “A lot of people think the responsibility for funding higher education belongs only to the state and the students. They don’t realize that state taxes pay for less than a third of the cost and tuition paid by students covers another third. Private citizens in Arizona are giving less than half of what citizens in California, Texas, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma are giving to their universities. I’d like to see that change.”

The gift will be used for special educational initiatives, which the university will establish after discussions with the Fultons. Those educational initiatives will be announced at a later date. The gift will not be used for general budget relief or construction projects.

Describing the gift as “unprecedented and magnificent,” Arizona State University President Michael Crow praised the Fultons for their “incredible generosity, their unwavering commitment to ASU's future, and their confidence in ASU’s emergence as a New American University.”

“What better Christmas present could anyone ever hope for than this enormous gift of philanthropic support for ASU’s promise and potential?” Crow added.

Previous gifts by the Fultons have named the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering at ASU, one of the nation’s premier institutions for technology research and applied teaching; created the Mary Lou Fulton Program at the ASU College of Education, Arizona's leading educational laboratory and center for excellence in teacher training; and helped to launch ASU's Decision Theater, the region's only interactive, three-dimensional institute that allows civic leaders to engage in visualizing the effects of public choices on issues ranging from water and air quality to transportation and land-use.

Recently, ASU also launched the Fulton Challenge, matching donations by faculty, students, staff and alumni at ASU's Colleges of Nursing, Design, Education, Law, Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Katherine Herberger College of Fine Arts, and Barrett Honors College through a challenge grant provided by the Fultons.  More than $560,000 has been raised to date from 4,149 students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends, achieving 187% of the original goal of $300,000.  The Fultons have now extended the Fulton Challenge to include ASU at the West Campus (Phoenix) and ASU at the Polytechnic Campus (Mesa), the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and the College of Public Programs. The Fulton Challenge for Athletics at ASU has also raised more than $1 million, which has been matched by Ira and Mary Lou Fulton.

In its November 28, 2005 cover story on the 50 most generous Americans, Business Week profiled Ira and Mary Lou Fulton in a piece entitled: “Teaching others how to give.”  It cited $160 million in lifetime giving by the Fultons, the only Arizonans on the list, including $141 million to educational and community needs since 2001.

Ira Fulton grew up in Tempe and attended ASU, where he had a newspaper delivery route that included the then-president of ASU, Grady Gammage.  Mary Lou Fulton is a graduate of ASU's College of Education.

Additional details of the $100 million gift by the Fultons will be provided in the coming weeks and months in three separate announcements built around major events where ASU’s future plans and programs will be fully articulated and to which the public will be invited.

Describing their motivation for giving, Mr. Fulton observed: “ASU is a university on a roll. It is picking up momentum on every front—rising enrollment, increasing federal research funding, new academic buildings and residential dormitories, and impressive faculty recruitment and distinction. To sustain this momentum, what ASU needs now is the backing of the entire community, and substantial investment by private individuals, corporations and local foundations. Our Christmas gift to ASU is meant to strengthen ASU and to demonstrate the reality that great universities must be built and backed not only by student tuition and research grants and state assistance—as important as all those are—but by people such as ourselves who have a stake in the health and prosperity of our region which is directly tied to ASU’s future success.”

This year, ASU enrolled more students at its Tempe campus than any other university in the nation. Growth in enrollment to more than 61,000 students has been matched by record increases in the number of new faculty, and double-digit increases in federal research funding. ASU enrolls more National Merit Scholars than any other university in the West except Stanford. Faculty have recently been awarded a Nobel Prize for Economics and the largest awards in ASU’s history ($45 million from the Department of the Army to develop flexible computer displays and a $15 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for cutting-edge research on a potential cure for infantile pneumonia).