The vacation season is a time to specific gratitude for the nice issues in life, and for generations of New Yorkers a kind of issues has been the entry they must public greater training. With its reasonably priced tuition and help companies for college students, CUNY helps New Yorkers of each background obtain their instructional objectives and private desires, elevating the town within the course of.
CUNY awards some 50,000 levels annually — and that’s extra than simply an summary quantity as a result of 80% of our graduates keep in New York Metropolis and grow to be key contributors to its workforce, financial system and high quality of life. Maybe nobody higher understands CUNY’s potent function driving these graduates up the financial ladder than our philanthropic companions. These foundations, organizations and people improve our capacity to supply a top-quality system of public greater training that’s accessible to college students of all circumstances and means.
In recent times, CUNY and its 25 campuses have raised an annual common of greater than $180 million from donors starting from philanthropic organizations to people. With their help, CUNY is doubling down on the priorities set by “CUNY Lifting New York,” our new strategic roadmap for reworking CUNY into the nation’s foremost student-centered college system by the top of this decade.
The strategic plan units a aim of accelerating our total degree of fundraising by 30%. You may be a part of that ongoing drive by contributing to CUNY Tuesday, a part of the worldwide fundraising day generally known as Giving Tuesday. Go to cunytuesday.org to donate now and all through the vacation season.
On the coronary heart of our attraction to donors is the chance to take a position not simply in an establishment, however within the college students who make CUNY’s mission so important: Most are graduates of the town’s public excessive colleges, and almost half are the primary era of their household to attend school. Half come from households with family incomes beneath $30,000 and almost half are working whereas at school. Greater than 10% of our undergraduates are caring for dependent kids.
The Carroll and Milton Petrie Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Robin Hood, and lots of others help a lot of CUNY’s most transformative packages to advance our college students’ tutorial success, preserve them on monitor for commencement and create pathways to fulfilling careers.
A lot of our college students have wants that transcend the classroom. Almost 4 in 10 inform us they’re anxious about having steady housing or sufficient to eat, amongst different stresses that pose boundaries to tutorial success. And so we’re grateful for beneficiant help akin to a $2.25 million grant from Trinity Church Wall Street to supply housing for college students; and the thousands and thousands for scholarships that the Jewish Foundation for the Education of Women gives to CUNY girls of all backgrounds who’ve monetary want.
That is the type of philanthropy that goes to the guts of CUNY’s elementary mission of fairness and entry. This was by no means extra clear than it was three years in the past, when so a lot of our philanthropic supporters stood up to assist CUNY college students persevere in the course of the darkest and most attempting moments of the pandemic.
The Petrie Basis was a kind of donors, and it stays considered one of CUNY’s most dedicated benefactors. Simply final month, the inspiration made grants totaling $2.4 million for a broad array of packages selling tutorial success, profession preparation and internships, meals entry and migrant training. That’s along with the $2 million a yr that Petrie contributes to fund pupil emergency grants and campus food pantries.
Philanthropic help can be essential to our efforts to advance profession success for our college students and graduates, significantly in areas like well being care and the STEM fields, which provide alternative to rising numbers of scholars whereas strengthening the town’s financial system and well-being. We’re grateful for the help of donors such because the Grey Basis and hope to draw further help for a whole lot of health- and science-related packages.
In the previous few years, we’ve additionally seen a rise in help from employer companions akin to Centerbridge Companions, Bloomberg LP, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, BNY Mellon, Google, CD&R, Blackstone and Amazon. They’ve all gone past hiring to make necessary investments in CUNY profession success initiatives that put together our college students for jobs in key sectors like finance, entrepreneurship and tech.
As we rejoice the vacation season, we categorical deep gratitude to all our donors, whose help all year long is so necessary to the way forward for CUNY’s college students — and to that of New York.
Félix V. Matos Rodríguez is the chancellor of The Metropolis College of New York (CUNY), the biggest city public college system in america
