Saving One of America’s Last Black Women’s Colleges

Threatened, a historic university reaches an emergency fundraising goal—and then some.

Courtesy of High Point University

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Just two months ago, Bennett College looked like it might have to close its doors. One of the last two remaining historically black colleges for women, Bennett lacked the funds needed to meet its accreditation requirements.

But over 55 days, the 146-year-old North Carolina school used social media and found an array of allies in its mad dash to raise $5 million by the February 1 deadline. Bennett ended up raising $8.2 million from 11,000 donors, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

Of that total, $1 million came from nearby High Point University, another Methodist-affiliated institution. The university’s graduates and staff made significant individual donations.

“In your toughest times, you know who your friends are,” said Bennett President Phyllis Worthy Dawkins.

High Point’s president, Nido Qubein, put it this way: “We as a neighbor school cannot just stand by.” Later, at a news conference announcing that Bennett had reached its fundraising goal, he added, “This isn’t about money. This is about the future of tens of thousands of young women who will exit Bennett to serve the world and plant seeds of greatness.”

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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