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UC San Diego Names Steve Gamer Vice Chancellor – Advancement

Gamer comes to the campus after 11 years as a fundraising trailblazer at UCLA

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  • Judy Piercey

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By:

  • Judy Piercey

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Steve Gamer has been appointed vice chancellor - advancement at UC San Diego

The University of California, San Diego today announced the appointment of Steve Gamer as vice chancellor - advancement with responsibility for leading campus fundraising efforts and alumni relations; he will also serve as president of the UC San Diego Foundation. An associate vice chancellor for development at the University of California, Los Angeles, Gamer will begin his service at UC San Diego in January 2014.

Gamer, who has been at UCLA for 11 years, has more than 20 years of experience identifying, cultivating and soliciting individual donors, corporations and foundations with a tailored approach to philanthropic giving. His senior leadership career includes the planning and execution of major fundraising campaigns, including the upcoming UCLA Centennial Campaign ($4.2 billion) and the successful Campaign UCLA which raised more than $3 billion.

“We are pleased to welcome Steve Gamer as the newest member of our campus leadership team,” said UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. “Thanks to his remarkable accomplishments at UCLA, Steve will bring experience and insight into the importance of private support for public universities. Faced with continued state and federal budget cuts, UC San Diego and our sister campuses are becoming increasingly reliant on philanthropy to achieve our mission.”

Gamer added, “I am excited to join UC San Diego to partner with the academic leadership, alumni, friends and staff as we work together to enhance philanthropy at this amazing campus. I look forward to helping UC San Diego—one of the top 15 research universities in the world—secure the funding needed to continue its excellence in all areas, from the sciences to engineering, international relations to the humanities.”

Gamer joined the UCLA development program in 2002 and served as the director of development and external affairs for the International Institute until 2006. In that capacity, he established a full-fledged advancement program for the newly formed Institute. Subsequently, Gamer became the executive director for individual giving, overseeing the campus’s annual, major and planned giving efforts. From 2009-11, he served as executive director for campuswide initiatives, responsible for managing a broad array of fundraising programs including the Broad Stem Cell Institute, California NanoSystems Institute, the Library, UCLA Extension and the International Institute. In 2009, he was also appointed the executive director of The UCLA Foundation. Over the course of his UCLA career he has been responsible for closing a number of significant gifts with a donor-centric focus on philanthropic growth across the campus.

In 2011, Gamer stepped up to lead UCLA’s development program. Under his leadership, the campus expanded its fundraising capacity in multiple areas while growing the organization to include special focus on donor relations and stewardship, scholarship fundraising, online giving and championing the conversion of a database gift accounting system to a constituent relationship management system. The collective result of these and many other leadership efforts, large and small, resulted in a record-setting fundraising year of $512 million in gifts and pledges in fiscal year 2012-13. 

As a leading research university and academic powerhouse, UC San Diego is an agent of change, spurring innovation and economic growth that addresses local, national and global challenges. For fiscal year 2012-13, a total of 30,289 donors helped to continue this legacy of achievement, raising $150.3 million in private support—a 15 percent increase compared to the previous year. Gamer will play a leading role in the campus’s current development efforts and its upcoming capital campaign, which is expected to be launched in 2014.

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