Despite a troubled economy, UC Berkeley's largest fundraising campaign ever closed the month of October with $100 million in donations, the second-highest amount raised in the campus's history in the span of one fiscal quarter.

But David Blinder, UC Berkeley's associate vice chancellor for university relations, said that given the dismal state of the economy, donations for the Campaign for Berkeley are expected to decrease in the upcoming months.

"I assume that with the rather dire news coming out of Wall Street that will be tough for us to continue for the rest of the year," he said.

The public phase of UC Berkeley's fundraising campaign will continue until June 30, 2013, by which time the campus hopes to raise $3 billion. The private phase took place from July 2005 to September 2008.

As of Oct. 31, the campaign has received more than $1.3 billion in donations, with 40 percent of the money invested in the campus's endowment fund.

Blinder said campus officials hope that ultimately half of the donations will go to the endowment fund, which is used to sponsor professorships, graduate services and financial aid.

Currently, however, donors are choosing to allocate their money to more immediate services, like research support and the construction of facilities, possibly because of the poor economy, he said.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also proposed a $65.5 million cut to the university last week in light of the state's weakening economy.

"One thing we may find is that donors are particularly keyed into the budget situation and are changing what areas they want to donate their money to based on that," Blinder said of the proposed cut. "We're really in a position where the donors achieve their own goals."

Roughly 15 percent of the campus's donors are currently contributing to nearly 85 percent of its total funds, a trend Blinder said is likely to continue.

Donations to universities on the national scale are predicted to increase in the 2008-09 year by 5.3 percent annually, according to a July survey conducted by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. For the past two decades, the yearly growth rate of donations to education has stayed steady at 7.2 percent.

The president of the council, John Lippincott, said universities need to reassess their fundraising goals in light of the financial hardships many potential donors are facing.

"Historically, economic downturns have slowed the rate of growth in charitable giving to educational institutions and, on rare occasions, resulted in small reductions," he said. "Institutions should carefully review their current fundraising performance against prior years and begin to adjust their projections accordingly."

Tags: CAMPAIGN FOR BERKELEY