Duke's gift to 12 neighborhoods

Editorial

Peter and Ginny Nicholas, Duke University graduates who went forth and did well, have been doing good, too. They have showered their alma mater with $130 million in gifts, including a $72-million donation announced last week that ranks as the largest in the university's history. The Nicholas' gifts helped Duke close out the astonishingly successful $2.36 billion "Campaign for Duke."

With such a huge donation grabbing the headlines, it would be easy to overlook a much more modest $500,000 grant to Duke from the Duke Endowment. But what the Nicholas' gift is to the university, the Endowment's gift ultimately is to Durham.

The grant goes into Duke's award-winning Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, which has worked with 12 neighborhoods close to the East Campus since 1996. The partnership focuses on affordable housing, programs for young people and nonprofits devoted to community improvement.

One of the partnership's goals is boosting student achievement in seven public schools that serve the 12 neighborhoods. But with the new Duke Endowment money, the partnership will move further into community services with a legal clinic for nonprofit organizations. Duke Law School students will staff the clinic.

The range of neighborhood and school programs operated under the partnership's aegis is impressive and, as the Duke Endowment grant shows, growing. Such outreach by Duke to Durham will be remembered as a hallmark of Nan Keohane's presidency and, we hope, that of incoming president Richard Brodhead as well.

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