While FUNdraising Good Times shares fundraising guidance and suggestions, we’re also part of Black history. We’ve been publishing our column for 20 years. This week we bring you a column “from the archives.”
Black History Month celebrations are incomplete without a salute to nationally recognized fundraiser Dr. Frederick Douglass Patterson, founder of the United Negro College Fund. Named for abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Dr. Patterson was committed not only to fundraising but to collective fundraising that has changed the lives of generations of African Americans.
Born in 1901, orphaned at age two, and raised by his sister, Patterson earned a teaching certificate from Prairie View Normal and Industrial Institute in Texas by age 14; a doctorate in veterinary science by age 22; and a Master of Science degree by age 27, both from Iowa State University. At 32, he earned a second doctorate from Cornell University. At 34, he began his tenure as the third president of Tuskegee Institute, a position he held for 25 years. As president, Dr. Patterson established the university’s School of Veterinary Science and continued the institute’s strong fundraising tradition begun by its founder, Dr. Booker T. Washington. He also authored the weekly column The Southern Viewpoint published in the Pittsburgh Courier.
On Saturday, January 30, 1943, Dr. Patterson published his thoughts on the need for collective fundraising to benefit private black colleges with the title “Would it not be wise for some Negro schools to make joint appeals to public for funds?” And so it began. In 1944, Dr. Patterson founded the United Negro College Fund and launched the first national campaign to raise funds for twenty-seven private, historically black colleges and universities from across the south serving 12,000 students with an income of $765,000.
Fast forward to today, and UNCF has raised more than $6 billion, almost $1.5 billion of which has been raised in the past decade alone, to enable more than 550,000 students and counting not just attend college, but thrive, graduate, and become leaders
Dr. Patterson could have focused his energies on raising funds for Tuskegee. Instead, he was unselfish in his commitment to access to higher education for African Americans. In addition to founding UNCF, Dr. Patterson founded the College Endowment Funding Plan for which he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan in 1987. The CEFP raised over $60 million for 36 participating schools. He also served as president of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, focused on African Americans and higher education.
He had a vision for both fundraising and social financing that leveraged private and public funding. From the very beginning he encouraged African Americans to give to HBCUs with his 1943 words “…such a campaign might well begin with Negro people of America.” It not only began, it continues.
We salute Dr. Patterson, a visionary African American fundraiser who created one of the most well-known and well-respected fundraising organizations in the country. One that has changed individuals, families, communities, and our country.
© 2026 Mel and Pearl Shaw, authors of “Prerequisites for Fundraising Success.” We provide fundraising counsel to higher education, nonprofits, and philanthropy. Video conferencing always available. Visit www.saadandshaw.com.
