UC Santa Cruz: Private donations topped $50 million last year

Private donations to UC Santa Cruz during the fiscal year that ended June 30 topped $50 million for the first time.

The record sum came in the same year that UCSC launched a new comprehensive fundraising campaign.

Alumni and other friends of the campus contributed $19.2 million, foundations added $21 million and corporations gave $8.7 million.

About 7 million of the donations were bequests made in donors’ estate plans.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation contributed roughly $13 million, which will support construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The funds are part of a nine-year, $200 million commitment the Moore Foundation made in 2007 to the University of California and the California Institute of Technology, who, with an international consortium, are building the most advanced and powerful optical telescope on Earth.