Tradition Continues As Erskine College Embarks On Largest Campaign In History Capital funds are making a difference at Erskine College and Seminary – one campaign at a time. That tradition continues next week, with the kickoff of the Gold Campaign Oct. 23. The new campaign is expected to be the largest in the history of the college. For generations, Erskine people have been asked to give sacrificially. For generations, Erskine people have responded. Their gifts have sustained Erskine College more than once during its 165-year history. In its darkest hours, Erskine relied on gifts to stay alive. Now that the school is healthy and thriving, it looks to its people for greatness. Greatness for Erskine, and for this country, seemed far away when the Civil War broke out in the 1860s. Erskine sent its students to fight and invested its $70,000 endowment in Confederate stocks. Neither the students nor the endowment survived. Erskine, too, was dealt a near-fatal blow by the war. Disuse and urgent war needs left the campus in disrepair and no pre-war students were able to return to school. But the first post-war commencement took place in 1866 – without a graduating class – to honor those lost in the war. The Erskine people rallied behind the newly-formed alumni association and its leader, R.A. Fair, who spoke at the ceremony to more than 1,000 Erskine people and said, “It is but for you to do and she lives – to neglect and she dies … let us look hopefully and prayerfully to the future.” Neglect not being in the Erskine vocabulary, 1855 graduate W.R. Hemphill was hired to raised funds for the college, and Erskine’s first capital campaign was born. Two hundred people were asked to give $20 each for five years to replace the endowment, and ARP congregations were asked to send students. The precedent for sacrificial giving to Erskine was set. The school was saved. By the time of Hemphill’s death in 1876, the endowment was nearly restored at $60,000. Erskine’s endowment flourished and reached $300,000 in the 1920s when the college began seeking accreditation. Erskine, Erskine Seminary and the Due West Women’s College all merged in the late 1920s to help achieve accreditation, but a new campaign was necessary to get the endowment to the required $500,000 level by the Southern Association of Schools and Colleges. Erskine embarked on the “Quarter Million Dollar Campaign,” and by May 1929 had received pledges of more than $340,000. Months later, in October 1929, the “Great Crash” occurred, and threatened to break the Erskine spirit. The entire endowment was again lost, but proving their word more reliable than the stock market, the Erskine people somehow came through with payments on their pledges that totaled $225,000 by 1932. Again the endowment was replaced. Again, the Erskine people, through a capital campaign, saved the school and paved the way for accreditation. Timing at Erskine wasn’t much better for its next campaign, the “Centennial Campaign” in 1939. Erskine was seeking four new buildings and a $1 million endowment before World War II began and abruptly ended the campaign. The campaign did last long enough for the college to initiate the Living Endowment Campaign, the school’s annual fund campaign that is now known as the Erskine Annual Fund and raises nearly $1 million a year. Erskine’s first modern all-encompassing capital campaign began in the mid-1950s and was called the “Development Fund.” This well-planned and well-executed campaign, with leaders such as Erskine professor Dr. Gordon Parkinson, raised more than $650,000, far surpassing the $450,000 goal. A “master plan” of development was adopted by the college to acquire property to combine the campuses, and new dorms were planned. Erskine’s “125th Anniversary Campaign,” another successful campaign that raised more than $780,000, had as its focal point the construction of Belk Hall and a new Student Center. “The Greater Distinction for Erskine Campaign,” started in 1973, brought Erskine the Galloway Center and had a goal of $13 million. The “Campaign for Erskine” in the early 1990s brought sacrificial gifts in record numbers. More than $35 million was given to Erskine, providing a new baseball and tennis complex, a new arts center, and a new science center. The endowment surged past $40 million. Erskine unveils Oct. 23 a new capital campaign, called the “Gold Campaign,” to make a difference. Erskine’s people won’t be asked to save the school, only to make it better.