ASOR ANNOUNCES A MAJOR LEGACY CHALLENGE GIFT ($475,000) AS A PART OF THE BUILDING A FOUNDATION FOR ASOR CAMPAIGN
As ASOR moves into the final nine months of our Building a Foundation for ASOR Campaign, we are pleased to announce that we have received a major legacy gift and challenge. An anonymous ASOR trustee has pledged to make a legacy gift that has a current market value of $475,000 and has given ASOR two challenges:
- Donor Participation: 300 donors in this fiscal year by January 31, 2014. Our goal is 400 donors between July 1, 2013 and June 30, 2014, so meeting the benchmark of 300 by January 31st would put us well on our way to meeting our annual goal. Last year ASOR had 352 donors in the fiscal year, and we have seen dramatic increases in participation every year for the last five years (see graph below).
- Total Contributions to ASOR this fiscal year: Receive $200,000 in total gifts and pledges by January 31, 2014. As of December 14, we have already received $127,000 in gifts and pledges this fiscal year (which began July 1). Therefore, we need to raise $73,000 in new gifts and pledges by January 31, 2014 to meet this challenge. Our goal is to meet this challenge by December 31, and everyone gift to ASOR (whatever the designation) helps.
Challenge Gift Ensures Successful Foundational Campaign
The Foundational Campaign was officially launched with a unanimous vote by the ASOR board at the 2011 Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The primary goals of the first phase of the campaign were to expand ASOR’s donor base, while concurrently seeking to make substantial progress on the $1.3 million goal of the campaign. We are pleased to announce that the campaign has met and exceeded both of these goals! We set a new record last year with 352 different donors—equivalent to more than 1 in 5 ASOR members—who made a charitable contribution, and we have received $900,000 in gifts and pledges toward the campaign!
Now that we are entering the final seven months of the campaign, we have set our sights on meeting the $1.3 million goal by June 30, 2014. We need $300,000 in seven months to reach our goal. We also have a goal of reaching 400 separate donors this fiscal year, which ends June 30. Any gifts made to ASOR for the annual fund, scholarships, or any other program or area, will count towards our comprehensive campaign goal.
Highlights of Achievements Made Possible Last Year by the Foundational Campaign
The following are some of the highlights of things that we accomplished because of your generous particpation in this campaign:
- Expanded the annual page count of BASOR by 25%
- Moved BASOR to full color and the journal was completely redesigned
Launched an outreach e-newsletter, titled The Ancient Near East Today and the Friends of ASOR program through the assistance of trustee Stevan Dana and the Lanier Theological Library- Launched a new member-oriented e-newsletter, News@ASOR, with the assistance of the Kershaw Family Trust
- Awarded 55 field scholarships and excavation grants
- Awarded 3 complete scholarships to enable one scholar from Iran and two scholars from Jordan to attend the Annual Meeting
- Awarded 15 travel scholarships to help students attend the Annual Meeting
- Established a new endowed scholarship fund in honor of Board Chair Emeritus P. E. MacAllister
- Our endowment accounts (for operations and scholarships) have grown from $750,000 in 2007 to over $1,100,000 today in spite of some turbulent years in the stock market
- Began a new digital archives project with the assistance of the David Berg Foundation to make ASOR’s Nelson Glueck collection more accessible online
- Published four books and site reports in the last year
- Continued to publish NEA, JCS, and BASOR on time, and continued to maintain and increase their quality
- Experienced growth in the ASOR Facebook page—grew to more than 6,500 “Likes”
- Experienced dramatic growth in the readership of the ASOR Blog—more than 12,500 unique visitors per month and more than 1.5 million hits in the last year
- Partnered with 67 affiliated excavation projects (34 field and 33 publication)
- Supported the work of our three affiliated research centers in Jerusalem, Amman, and Nicosia.
Launched an outreach e-newsletter, titled 
