The saying goes, “In God we trust, all others pay cash.”

The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is on its way toward raising $25 million by the year 2000.

As a part of the university-wide “Campaign Destiny,” an attempt to raise $300 million in five years, the College of LAS will attempt to raise $25 million from private funds, said Kay Kirkman, the executive director of development for the College of LAS.

In the past year, the college has raised $6.8 million, Kirkman said. But the college must raise an additional $18 million in four years.

“I think we’re going to top that number. We decided on that number as an achievable amount, but I think we’re going to go over that number,” said Elizabeth Hoffman, dean of the College of LAS.

“LAS students can be very proud of their alumni during this Campaign Destiny. Many of these alumni graduated from ISU during a time when the College of LAS didn’t even exist when they were here,” Hoffman said.

The official kick-off for “Campaign Destiny” was Sept. 20, but Kirkman said the university began counting money on July 1, 1995.

Kirkman said nearly $14 million will be used for endowed chairs and undergraduate or graduate endowed scholars.

“Half of the money for National Merit Scholars is from this campaign, so this campaign benefits the scholars tremendously,” Hoffman said.

The College of LAS will raise the third largest dollar amount among the university’s colleges. Only the College of Agriculture and the College of Engineering plan to raise more.

Kirkman said $1.5 million of LAS’s money will be used for the renovation of Gilman Hall.

Hoffman said half of the money for Gilman Hall is already raised and another $1 million will go toward Snedecor Hall. The Music Hall’s Recital Hall will receive $300,000 worth of new sound equipment and other renovations.

“The chemistry and statistics departments were ranked as the top two departments in our college by the National Research Council,” she said.

“And as a university of science and technology and with a destiny to be the best, we decided to give those two departments the most money,” she said.

Hoffman said they decided how much campaign money would be divided by interacting with the college’s departments.

“We asked each department chair to talk to their faculty and prepare a list of improvements that would make a difference in their departments and why,” Hoffman said.

“We then made a list of potential donors, and we needed to cultivate the list of donors and see who would make a major gift in the window of the five-year capital campaign,” she said.

Hoffman said they considered the list of priorities along with the list of donors and decided whether those priorities could be filled.

“We had to make a probability estimate, and we went back and forth with the ISU Foundation,” she said.

Hoffman said some donors had an interest in certain departments, and they wanted to donate their money to that department.

She said they went through a “silent phase” last year when they contacted the donors to see if they were able to donate during this campaign.

“Some people were not ready to donate now, but will be able to donate during the next capital campaign. But then we had some donors that could donate during this campaign that we didn’t expect,” Hoffman said.

Kirkman said, “As donors come along they may have an interest in a certain department, and then we will have an additional kind of money — something that we may have not targeted for.”

Hoffman said fund raising is new to the college of LAS.

“Six or seven years ago, the College of LAS was raising about $1 million a year. Last year, we raised almost $47 million,” she said.

“Years ago, a dean in liberal arts and sciences was not expected to fund raise. But during the last capital campaign at ISU, a transformation took place. But now it’s expected,” Hoffman said.

” We have 40,000 living alumni,” she said, “and when it comes to fund raising in the College of LAS, people have seen a tremendous wealth of enthusiasm.”