The Renaissance Board

This group of supporters is reserved for those who will be considered “the re-founders” of CTI. This select group will be the principal legacy donors to the endowment, and will be listed alongside our founders (which include Henry Luce III of Time Magazine, David Lilienthal, and John Templeton). This group comprises those who have given over $3 million legacies to enhance the endowment. The names of the Renaissance Board members will be listed on a new “re-foundation” board next to the original foundation board of names in the “Founders’ Room”. They will be honored with a portrait to join the portraits of the original founders and with naming rights over what they endow.

There will be an annual meeting of the Renaissance Board for donors and their partners. Membership is heritable by a child and partner to represent the original donor. This meeting involves a 24 hour (lunchtime to lunchtime) event with talks from the Director, a world-leading theologian, a world-leading academic from another field, a world-leading figure from culture, and a world-leading figure from broader society.

The Renaissance Board status will be given for those who:

  • Make a donation to pay for the naming of the new building ($25-50 million)

    • The previous building was funded by and named for Henry Luce III, founder of Time Magazine. But the Luce family no longer names buildings or supports building works. The significance of the Luce naming, however, should indicate the quality and significance of the activity of naming our new building.

    • The location of the building makes the naming legacy extraordinary and almost certainly unique within Princeton and other Ivy League / Oxbridge cities: across the road from the house of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence (Morven, the home of Richard Stockton); across the road from New Jersey’s former Governor’s Mansion, the “White House” of New Jersey; on land where General George Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau camped their troops en route to the decisive American victory in Yorktown; across from the Princeton Battle Monument; across from the Einstein Memorial; on Stockton Street; and on the very front of the main road between Princeton University and Princeton Seminary. In terms of a legacy naming of a building, there are no comparably high-profile sites or buildings in any leading, global university town contexts. It is a comparable site to the location of buildings elsewhere in these institutions that would have in most instances been claimed and named up to the nineteenth century and not often beyond.

 

  • Endow and name the Directorship ($10 million)

    • This would free the Director to focus on intellectual leadership and the revival, renewal, and renaissance of Theology in the academy, church, and world.

    • This post is one of the most significant posts in the theological world, and can be secured for the future. It is worth noting that comparable endowments in the 15th to 17th centuries at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Edinburgh continue to secure the presence of Theology in these institutions today.

  • Make a donation to pay for a named fellowship ($3 million)

    • $3 million would return $150,000 p.a. at a 5% return rate. This could pay for all costs for a fellow (housing for a semester, travel, on-costs in CTI program), and pay for an adjunct to cover teaching so that a fellow might be able to be released from university/seminary commitment even if they are not due sabbatical, ensuring the best possible candidates are able to come for specific topics of inquiry.

    • The fellowships would cover one research cycle per year.

    • With seminaries struggling and closing, and with resources being stretched in these contexts, placing advanced theological research at the center of the gift is a way of securing in perpetuity the continuation of intellectual engagement with theology in different areas of the world or traditions.

 

  • Make a donation to pay for a named senior theological renaissance fellowship ($5 million)

    • $5 million would return $250,000 p.a. at a 5% return rate. This could pay for all costs for a fellow (housing for a semester, healthcare, travel, on-costs in CTI programming), and pay a stipend of $120,000, so that a fellow might be able to be released from university/seminary commitment even if they are not due sabbatical, ensuring the best possible candidates are able to come for specific topics of inquiry.

    • The senior fellowships would run for between one and two years.

    • There would be a maximum of 2 of these for naming opportunity.

    • With seminaries struggling and closing, and with resources being stretched in these contexts, offering a full advanced research fellowship in Theology is a very rare gift which could be transformative of tired and burned-out professors who need time to be restored and renewed in their research, free from teaching and administrative burdens. A good focus for this group might be former Deans of Theology Schools / Heads of Religion or Theology Departments who have made sacrifices for the flourishing of their discipline.

  • Pay for particular major inquiry topic(s) ($3-4 million)

 

  • Make donations totaling $3 million over the period of 10 years

 

  • Make a bequest of a legacy of $3 million in their wills

 

If you are interested in joining the Renaissance Board and would like to inquire about possibilities associated with it, please contact the Director directly: tom.greggs@ctinquiry.org .