The Johns Hopkins Institutions have announced a $2 billion goal for a new fund-raising campaign to build and upgrade facilities on all Hopkins campuses, to strengthen endowment for student aid and faculty support, and to advance research, academic and clinical initiatives.

More than $728 million already has been committed to the effort, which will be called The Johns Hopkins Campaign: Knowledge for the World and will benefit both the university and The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System. Though the campaign is being launched publicly now, it has been accepting advance gifts since July 1, 2000. It will end in 2007.

"The generosity of people who believe in our mission has helped to make Johns Hopkins a world leader in research, education, patient care and public service," President William R. Brody said. "Because the need for what Johns Hopkins contributes has never been greater, we are seeking significant new philanthropic investment to advance our efforts."

Michael R. Bloomberg, outgoing chairman of the university board of trustees, said, "We have an obligation to build on the momentum Johns Hopkins has established, to address pressing issues and newly emerging needs and opportunities." Bloomberg and Raymond A. "Chip" Mason, chairman of Legg Mason Inc. in Baltimore, spoke to donors and friends of Johns Hopkins at a dinner Saturday evening in the Ralph S. O'Connor Recreation Center on the Homewood campus. Mason succeeded Bloomberg as chairman of the board on Sunday.

The Johns Hopkins Campaign will benefit all the university's academic divisions and several centers and institutes, said Robert R. Lindgren, vice president for development and alumni relations. Half of the $2 billion total goal is sought for priorities at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Edward D. Miller, Baker Dean of the Medical Faculty and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine, said, "The practice of medicine is far more complex than it was a century ago when the original Johns Hopkins Hospital was built. We need spaces that more closely integrate treatment, research and teaching and that are flexible and visionary enough to adapt to clinical, technological and research advances that we cannot yet begin to imagine."

Speaking for The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System, President Ronald R. Peterson said, "New buildings are a critical need on the medical campus in East Baltimore. New research facilities, a new children's and maternal building, and a cardiovascular and critical care building are on the drawing board."

Improvement and expansion of facilities also are priorities of the Peabody Institute, which is in the midst of a campuswide renovation, and the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, which plans to renovate Gilman Hall, the first major academic building on the Homewood campus, completed in 1915.

"We also must continue to build our endowment for scholarships and professorships, research and programs," Robert Lindgren said. "While private gifts in recent years have greatly strengthened Johns Hopkins' endowment, the annual income from endowment still provides a far smaller percentage of our operating costs than at many peer institutions."

Three Johns Hopkins trustees will lead the fund-raising effort. They are George L. Bunting Jr., president of Bunting Management Group and former chairman of Noxell Corp.; Gail J. McGovern, who recently stepped down as president of Fidelity Personal Investments in Boston to become a faculty member at the Harvard Business School; and J. Barclay Knapp, president and CEO of NTL Inc., a telecommunications company based in London. McGovern graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1974, Knapp in 1979.

Honorary co-chairmen of the Johns Hopkins Campaign include four more alumni: Bloomberg, who is mayor of New York City; New York investment banker and university trustee Morris W. Offit; Norfolk, Va., cardiac surgeon Lenox Baker Jr., also a Johns Hopkins trustee; and retired printing company executive and Johns Hopkins trustee emeritus R. Champlin Sheridan of Baltimore.

Johns Hopkins Medicine (consisting of the School of Medicine and The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System) has set a goal of $1 billion; the Bloomberg School of Public Health seeks $500 million; goals for the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and for the Whiting School of Engineering are, respectively, $250 million and $150 million.

The balance of the funds sought will benefit the School of Nursing, Peabody Institute, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, School of Professional Studies in Business and Education, Sheridan Libraries, Berman Bioethics Institute, Institute for Policy Studies, Center for Talented Youth and Johns Hopkins University Press.

The name chosen for the fund-raising effort has its roots in the origins of Johns Hopkins. In February 1876, the university's first president, Daniel Coit Gilman, formally took office and laid out plans for a radically different educational institution. Gilman wanted his university to do more than just teach, more than just pass along old knowledge to the next generation. He added a new mission: discovery, the creation of knowledge, and the use of that knowledge for the good of humanity. "What are we aiming at?" he asked in his inaugural speech. "The advancement of individual scholars, who by their excellence will advance the sciences they pursue, and the society where they dwell."

That remains the institution's mission, and today's Johns Hopkins--the first American research university--has adopted a simple but powerful restatement of Gilman's words into "Knowledge for the World."

In announcing the current effort, President Brody said the reason for a new campaign at this time is that "we seek to build on the momentum of our last campaign to address both the unprecedented opportunities and unprecedented challenges before us."

Among the opportunities, he said, are explosive growth in fields such as genetics, cell engineering, neuroscience and information technology, all of which open fantastic possibilities for improving human health and standards of living. Among the challenges are bioterrorism, information security and other threats to national security; threats to political and economic stability; environmental and climatic change; and threats to human rights. Johns Hopkins also is challenged by critically outdated facilities for education, research and patient care.

"We pledge a 'return on investment' that will make Hopkins' philanthropic partners proud to be part of one of the world's great enterprises," Brody said.

Trustees of the university and the health system authorized the institutions to accept gifts for the campaign beginning July 1, 2000. Since then, lead donors have demonstrated their support with advance pledges totaling more than $728 million, about 36 percent of the total goal.

The largest advance gift, and the largest gift in Johns Hopkins history, was $150 million pledged last year by Jones Apparel Group founder Sidney Kimmel for cancer research and patient care at what is now the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Other lead gifts during the advance phase of the campaign included:

An anonymous $100 million to the Bloomberg School of Public Health to establish the Johns Hopkins Malaria Institute and fund a 10-year effort to develop a new malaria vaccine and drugs. This gift is tied for second-largest in Johns Hopkins history.

Anonymous gifts to the School of Medicine of $58.5 million to establish the Institute for Cell Engineering, the fourth-largest single gift in Johns Hopkins history; and $15 million (the second installment in a gift of $30 million) to create the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences.

Two grants in 2000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation totaling $44.9 million to the Bloomberg School of Public Health; $21.4 million to support research on measles vaccine and $23.5 million to support research on vitamins and micronutrients.

An anonymous $10 million in 2000 for creation of the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute, based in the Whiting School of Engineering.

An anonymous $10 million in 2000 for renovations and additions at the Peabody Institute.

$9.9 million from the Pew Charitable Trusts to the Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute in 2002 to establish the Genetics and Public Policy Center.

$3.9 million from the Pew Charitable Trusts to the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies to extend a fellowship program in international affairs for U.S. journalists.

$2 million to the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences from alumnus Felix Posen, a retired business executive from London, to endow a professorship in modern Jewish history.

$1.2 million from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation to support community health initiatives at the School of Nursing.

An anonymous $1.8 million to the Sheridan Libraries to endow a fund for acquisitions in the humanities.

$1.6 million from the Goldman Sachs Foundation to the Center for Talented Youth to expand its support for high-achieving youngsters from underrepresented backgrounds to enroll in the center's programs for the academically gifted.

$1.4 million to the Institute for Policy Studies from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to support development of a management information system focused on the foundation's programs promoting responsible fatherhood.

The previous fund-raising campaign, the Johns Hopkins Initiative, was launched publicly in October 1994 with a goal of $900 million. It ended June 30, 2000, with an actual total of $1.52 billion in commitments--a Johns Hopkins record--from more than 100,000 alumni, friends, corporations, foundations and organizations.

For a complete list of the largest individual gifts ever made to the Johns Hopkins Institutions, go to www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/fundraising/gifts/.