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The Carolina Fund

The Carolina Fund ensures we have the resources to provide flexible funding to meet critical campus needs and seize emerging opportunities that will enrich student experience and faculty research and scholarship.

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Meeting the Need

The Carolina Fund gives us the ability to use your gift to make the biggest impact possible and weather the aid and flow of state funding, tuition income, and federal grants. Gifts to The Carolina Fund can be put to use right away and provide unrestricted dollars to give us maximum flexibility to make strategic decisions.

Making an Impact

In 2023-24, The Carolina Fund provided funding to many areas across campus, including:

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Alumni Distinguished Professorships

The professorships supplement the salaries of professors whose outstanding teaching and research activities boost the stature of UNC-Chapel Hill.

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The Carolina Fund Scholarships

Carolina Fund Scholarships help ensure that qualified students have the opportunity to study at Carolina regardless of their ability to pay.

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$1.3+ Million Raised

for The Carolina Fund in fiscal year 2023-24.

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4,000+ Donors

contributed to support The Carolina Fund in fiscal year 2023-24.

Alumni Distinguished Professorships

In 2023-24, gifts to The Carolina Fund supported the current cohort of five Alumni Distinguished Professors. Established in 1961, these are the oldest professorships at Carolina, funded entirely by private donations from alumni.  

The professorships supplement the salaries of professors whose outstanding teaching and research activities boost the stature of UNC-Chapel Hill.

Fouad Abd-El-Khalick

Fouad Abd-El-Khalick

Education

Abd-El-Khalick served as dean of the School of Education from 2016 to 2024. He is a leading researcher on the teaching and learning about nature of science in pre-college grades and teacher-education settings. As dean, he recruited exceptional faculty and staff members and led efforts that have boosted research funding, grown enrollment, increased credit hours taught, and expanded student and faculty diversity.

Joseph G. Ibrahim

Joseph G. Ibrahim

Biostatistics

Appointed professor in the Department of Biostatistics in 2002, Ibrahim’s areas of research include Bayesian inference, missing data problems, medical imaging analysis and genomics. He is principal investigator of two National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants for developing statistical methodology related to cancer and genomics research. Ibrahim is also the director of the Biostatistics Core at UNC’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Rick Luettich

Richard A. Luettich

Coastal Resilience

Joining marine sciences at Carolina in 1987, Luettich is a coastal physical oceanographer whose research deals with modeling and measurement of circulation and transport in coastal waters. He is a co-developer of the ADCIRC coastal circulation and storm surge model — widely used for coastal flooding studies by academia, the private sector and multiple federal agencies. Luettich is the principal investigator of the Department of Homeland Security’s Coastal Resilience Center of Excellence

Barbara Rimer

Barbara K. Rimer

Global Public Health

The former dean of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health is also the author of more than 270 peer-reviewed articles. Rimer is the first woman and behavioral scientist to chair the National Cancer Institute’s National Cancer Advisory Board. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2008 and was appointed by President Obama to serve on the President’s Cancer Panel, which she chaired from 2011 to 2019. In 2013, she was awarded the American Cancer Society’s Medal of Honor for her cancer control research.

Helen Tibbo

Helen Tibbo 

Information and Library Science

Tibbo teaches in the areas of archives and records management; digital preservation and access, appraisal, trustworthy repositories, and data curation. She is director of the Professional Science Master’s Degree in Digital Curation at the UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS), where she developed the archives and records management concentration. She was principal investigator on several projects that have helped define digital curation best practices.

Scholarships

 Since the 1980s, The Carolina Fund has provided support to the Office of Scholarships and Student Aid through The Carolina Fund Scholarships, ensuring that qualified students have the opportunity to study at Carolina regardless of their ability to pay.  This year The Carolina Fund supported 50 scholarship students, and in the last seven years, more than 130 scholars have received The Carolina Fund Scholarships.

Empowering Humanity Through Technology

Osman Mustafic ’24 gained many insights during his four years at Carolina. While studying information science, his journey was filled with ups and downs, discoveries, growth and unforgettable experiences that continue to have a lasting impact on the way he navigates the world. 

Read Osman's Story

Thank you for your generosity and support

Your gift to The Carolina Fund makes an impact on every aspect of Carolina, from the student experience to teaching excellence. Please know how grateful we are for your commitment to our university.  All gifts made a difference.

Donor Resources


Need help making a gift? Reach out to our Gift Services team by calling 919-537-3818, via email at giving@unc.edu, or by clicking the Contact Us button below. If you would like to view your giving history, make a repeat gift or pledge payment, or print a tax receipt, please click on the My UNC Giving button below to access our online resource for donors to Carolina.