Alumni, friends and other private donors gave the Johns Hopkins Institutions $185.1 million in the just-ended fiscal year, better than 12 percent more than in any previous year.

The record figure for the year that ended June 30 includes only cash actually received by the university and the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System. Both new gifts and payments on pledges from previous years are counted, but pledges of gifts to be made in future years are not.

The fiscal 1998 total surpassed the record of $164.6 million set a year earlier, when Johns Hopkins ranked 11th in the nation among colleges and universities in private gifts received. It was Hopkins' third consecutive record year; the total has increased more than 65 percent over that span from the previous record of $111.8 million, set in 1990.

Gifts to Johns Hopkins Medicine accounted for more than half the amount raised in fiscal 1998, $96.2 million, more than $15 million ahead of 1997's record level of support for the School of Medicine and the Hospital and Health System.

"We are tremendously grateful for the continuing generosity of our alumni and friends, as well as for the outstanding support we have received from foundations, corporations and organizations," said Robert R. Lindgren, vice president for development and alumni relations. More than 85,800 gifts have been received during the course of the Johns Hopkins Initiative fund-raising campaign, he said.

The campaign surpassed its original $900 million goal in April, less than four years after its public announcement in October 1994. In May, the university's board of trustees set an expanded goal of $1.2 billion for the campaign, to be completed in 2000.

As of June 30, commitments to the campaign--that is, both cash received and pledges of future gifts--totaled $954.6 million, or 79.6 percent of the expanded goal. Of that amount, $198.2 million was committed during fiscal 1998.

The year's largest commitments were for facilities. Hopkins trustee A. James Clark, chairman and CEO of Clark Enterprises Inc., pledged $10 million toward a biomedical engineering building on the Homewood campus. Construction of the building is the first step in the planned creation of the Johns Hopkins Biomedical Engineering Institute, which will expand the scope of the university's nationally prominent Department of Biomedical Engineering.

A commitment of $7.5 million for a $17.5 million planned student arts center, also on the Homewood campus, was made by an anonymous donor. Another anonymous gift, of $5 million, has allowed the School of Public Health to move forward with plans for an eight-story, $6.2 million addition to its Wolfe Street building.

In addition, Hopkins received three commitments of $3 million in fiscal 1998: from alumni Wayne and Elaine Schelle, providing $1 million each for construction of a pavilion and grandstands at Homewood Field, a planned student recreation center on the Homewood campus and a distance learning center in the School of Nursing; from Maryland business leader Roger C. Lipitz to endow a professorship and policy center on integrated health care at the School of Public Health; and from Swiss nutritional products firm Hoffmann-LaRoche to endow the Sight and Life Institute at the School of Public Health.

Other commitments announced during fiscal 1998 included $2.9 million from the Pew Charitable Trusts to fund a program at SAIS to train American journalists in international affairs; more than $2 million in honor of retiring Vice President and Secretary Ross Jones, from trustees and from Jones' classmates and friends; $2 million from university trustee Benjamin H. Griswold IV and his wife, Wendy, to support renovations and scholarships at the Peabody Institute; $2 million from the Theodore and Vada Stanley Foundation to endow a professorship at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center, one of 10 commitments for new professorships at Johns Hopkins Medicine during the year.

Also, $1.7 million in computer equipment and services from Intel Corp. to benefit the schools of Arts and Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, and the Peabody Institute; $1 million from Loretta Lee Ver Valen to her alma mater, Peabody, and $500,000 to Johns Hopkins Medicine; $1 million from Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. for scholarships at the School of Continuing Studies plus $500,000 for research at Johns Hopkins Medicine; a $1 million unrestricted gift to the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences from Connecticut businessman and alumnus Monroe Sarezky and his wife, Roslyn; and $1 million from trustee emeritus and alumnus Willard Hackerman and Whiting-Turner Contracting, which he heads, for medical research.

The top priority of the expanded Johns Hopkins Initiative is endowment for scholarships and fellowships. Hopkins is also seeking major support for the university's libraries and will continue to seek gifts for several not-yet-completed building projects.

Lenox D. Baker Jr., a cardiac surgeon from Norfolk, Va., and R. Champlin Sheridan of Hanover, Pa., chairman of the Sheridan Group, are co-chairs of the Johns Hopkins Initiative. Both are Hopkins graduates and are trustees of the university and of Johns Hopkins Medicine.