Dean's Message
Fifty years ago, a group of far-sighted
alumni created the Law School Foundation. Organized as a trust
in 1952, the Foundation subsequently became a non-profit corporation.
Its purpose is to receive alumni bequests and donations and
to ensure that those gifts are used for the Law School’s
benefit.
Although the existence of the Foundation
stretches back fifty years, its role as an active agent in
developing private support is more recent. The idea that the
Law School should actively seek financial contributions from
its graduates began with Hardy Dillard, who launched the first
annual giving campaign in 1965. The sum raised that first
year was only $97,000. Dean Dillard was fond of saying that
private support would provide the “margin of excellence”—a
thin veneer of private funding on top of a generally adequate
state budget.
Today, all that has changed. The state subsidy
has disappeared. The Law School depends entirely on tuition
and private giving. Private funds now account for thirty-five
percent of all Law School expenditures. For 2001-2002, the
Foundation’s contributions to the Law School’s operating
budget, including both currently expendable gifts and income
from endowments, exceeded $9 million. Without this extraordinary
private support, the University of Virginia School of Law
would not be—could not be—the institution it is
today.
All of us in the Law School community have
reason to be grateful for the talent and dedication of the
staff of the Foundation and for the loyalty and generosity
of our alumni. It’s been a great fifty years.
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