Murdock Trust Award for NCNM Research Institute Nets $410,992

Medical College Wraps Up Murdock Campaign a Year Early

PORTLAND, Ore.(July 23, 2012) —National College of Natural Medicine received notice from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust last week that the college will be awarded $155,000, the result of satisfying a conditional 1:1 matching contribution as specified by the Murdock Trust in December 2012. The gift is part of an overall $220,000 Murdock donation, the largest grant that NCNM has received from a private charitable foundation in its 57-year history.

NCNM’s successful Murdock Challenge Campaign was completed fully 12 months before the Murdock deadline of June 2014. The campaign raised an additional $190,992 in donations from the college’s friends and supporters. The Murdock gift, together with NCNM’s matching funds—a total amount of $410,992—will be used to pay off the remaining debt accrued in renovating the NCNM Helfgott Research Institute and Community Education Center. The building, which houses the School of Research and Graduate Studies, and Charlee’s Kitchen, a training and research kitchen, opened in September 2013.

NCNM President, David J. Schleich expressed gratitude to the Murdock Trust for its strong vote of confidence in the college’s mission and goals. “Since 1956, the National College of Natural Medicine has steadily prepared its students for careers as licensed healing professionals. In addition to helping improve the health of untold numbers of patients throughout North America, our graduates are making global contributions in the fields of medicine, science, research and education,” he said.

“As a private, nonprofit institution, NCNM is not privy to state funding to improve our campus or to expand educational opportunities for our students,” Schleich said. “Funding such as this allows us to continue to widen the opportunities and open doors for the talented physicians, practitioners and researchers to join the rapid front of change before us,”

Schleich noted that NCNM has been the recipient of a number of other sizeable donations for the research and community center. The college also received a grant of $198,000 from the Meyer Memorial Trust; approximately $700,000 from Bob and Charlee Moore, co-founders of Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods and noted nutrition advocates and philanthropists; and $200,000 from the estates of Violet Beebe of Coeur d’Alene; and Marjorie A. Gage of Portland. Beebe and Gage were grateful patients of NCNM natural medicine practitioners.

Schleich said, “We are enormously grateful to the Murdock Trust and all of our benefactors who see the future and generously support our school, students and programs.”

The M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust was created by the will of the late Melvin J. Murdock, co-founder of Tektronix, Inc., an innovative entrepreneurial leader known throughout the Pacific Northwest. The Trust’s mission is to enrich the quality of life in the Pacific Northwest by providing grants and enrichment programs to organizations seeking to strengthen the region’s educational, spiritual, and cultural base in creative and sustainable ways. In addition to a special interest in education and scientific research, the Trust partners with a wide variety of organizations that serve the arts, public affairs, health and medicine, human services, leadership development, and persons with disabilities.

ABOUT NCNM

Founded in Portland in 1956, NCNM is the oldest accredited naturopathic medical school in North America and an educational leader in classical Chinese medicine and CAM research. NCNM offers four-year graduate medical degree programs in naturopathic and classical Chinese medicine, and a Master of Science in Integrative Medicine Research degree. Its community clinics provide low-cost medical care throughout the Portland metropolitan area. In addition to the campus-based NCNM Clinic, NCNM practitioners care for approximately 37,000 patient visits per year. Until July 2006, NCNM was known as the National College of Naturopathic Medicine. The name change reflects the diversity of the college’s programmatic degree offerings.

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