Andrew Young helps raise $70K for financially strapped HBCU
‘Saving the ITC’ campaign hopes to raise $2.5 million total
- Public Domain
- Interdenominational Theological Center
When the Interdenominational Theological Center announced its “Saving the ITC” campaign with the hope of raising $2.5 million earlier this year, it sounded like another of Atlanta’s historically black institutions might soon bite the dust.
But four of the ITC’s six constituent seminaries have collectively pledged $1 million to bail the 56-year-old institution out of a budget deficit that threatened financial instability and accreditation woes. An additional $70,000 was raised on June 25, at a luncheon hosted by Andrew Young. Other prominent attendees included Civil Rights vets Rev. C.T. Vivian and Dr. Joseph Lowery. Though the $1.3 million total raised through member institutions, church congregations, and alumnae is still short of the campaign’s overall goal, it’s a strong start to recovery.
A few years ago, ITC spent $400,000 sprucing up the student center of the financially burdened Morris Brown to temporarily move classes to the adjacent campus while ITC underwent renovations. But that was before Morris Brown’s creditors came a calling to the tune of $13 million in 2012, according to the AJC.
The center has long-established ties to Morris Brown by way of its constituent seminary, Turner Theological, which is also connected to the African Methodist Episcopal. The other five seminaries represent five additional Christian denominations (Gammon Theological Seminary, United Methodist; Morehouse School of Religion, Baptist; C.H. Mason Theological Seminary, Church of God in Christ; and Phillips School of theology, Christian Methodist Episcopal) while ITC’s annual student enrollment of about 350 draws students from around the U.S., Africa, the Caribbean, and parts of Asia.