In what has been a challenging year, the true colors of law school alumni, faculty and students have shown in countless ways. For Indiana University Maurer School of Law, that included accepting $8.9 million in financial gifts within a six-month period to add to its $63 million total at the end of September.
The gifts were part of the For All: The Indiana University Bicentennial Campaign that began in 2015 to honor Indiana University’s 200th anniversary this year. The goal of raising $2.5 billion by the anniversary was surpassed when the campaign closed at the end of September with a total of $3.9 billion. The Maurer School of Law’s set goal was $60 million.
Lisa Hosey, director of stewardship and financial gifts at Maurer, said going in to 2020 the law school was down from its goal by $9 million. And the fact that people donated, and then some, was tremendous.
“It really helped the moral with staff and faculty and students,” she said. “They knew the alumni were standing behind them.”
More than $4 million came from faculty, staff and retirees of the law school.
“This campaign was very different from the previous one,” she added, where the law school raised $93 million. “So many stepped up and gave smaller gifts.”
On the student scholarship side, some of the money will fund students who are facing emergency situations. It will also has help the law school to keep debt levels low. At Maurer, 25 to 30% of students graduate with no debt, Dean Austen Parrish said.
In a span of two weeks, the law school raised $12,000 for The Fromm Emergency Fund, which helped support approximately 10 law students during the height of the pandemic.
Parrish said the effort is a testament to how much alumni, faculty and staff care about the school, the students and its future.
“For many alumni, it’s because they had life altering experiences in Bloomington,” Parrish said. “Their experiences, and the support alumni provided them when they were students, made a major difference in their lives. The gifts in many ways are often a thank you for those who led the way in earlier days.”
A few places where the gifts will support the law school include the Stewart Center on the Global Legal Profession, moot court and trial advocacy programming and the creation of several faculty chairs in support of research.
