28 Jul Donnelly College Receives $1,000,000 Challenge Grant from the J.E. and L.E. Mabee Foundation

Donnelly College recently received a $1,000,000 challenge grant from the J.E & L.E Mabee Foundation to support Phase III of their Capital Campaign.

In the third and final phase of the Transformations Campus Master Plan, Donnelly will create an attractive, student‐centered campus that will meet our students’ needs while providing a solid foundation for future growth. In Phase III, the College will replace the aging seven‐story former hospital tower that serves as our main academic and administrative building with a new three‐story, 72,000‐square‐foot facility designed specifically for the College. We will also remove an unoccupied residence hall and build a two‐story parking structure to replace lost parking. Once the new facility is fully operational, we will remove the current academic tower to create greenspace and a campus quad. The new quad will link the new facility to the Event Center and Marian Hall.

Completing the final phase of Campus Master Plan is urgent because the College is facing decades of deferred maintenance. Because Donnelly keeps tuition low and directs most of our resources to academic instruction and student services, we have not had much margin to invest in long‐term capital needs. In the tower alone, deferred maintenance totals more than $8 million. In fact, the rising cost of renovating the tower facility was a key factor in the Board’s 2017 decision to revise the original 2010 master plan (which called for renovating the tower) and instead adopt the more cost‐ effective plan of building a new facility in Phase III. The longer Donnelly waits to replace the tower, the greater the risk of systems failing.

Donnelly College was founded in 1949 by the Benedictine Sisters of Atchison, Kansas and the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas “to provide education and community services with personal concern for the needs and abilities of each student, especially those who might not otherwise be served.” Almost 70 years later, Donnelly remains committed to promoting college access and success for students who face the greatest barriers to college completion—low‐income students, first‐generation college students, racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and refugees and academically‐underprepared students. By enabling these students to fulfill their God‐given potential, Donnelly not only transforms the lives of individual students and their families, it also positively impacts workforce development and economic equity in the Kansas City region and beyond.