Knapp Foundation challenges School of Government

As the mortar dried on the School of Government's new brick entrance, the Knapp Foundation of St. Michaels, Md. issued a $1 million challenge to help raise remaining funds for the renovation and expansion of the Joseph Palmer Knapp Building. The foundation will contribute the money if it is matched dollar for dollar by other new donations in the two years leading up to June 2003.

The challenge grant echoes a similar measure of 50 years ago, when the foundation put up $500,000 for the original construction of the building. The N.C. General Assembly matched that donation, and the Institute of Government named its new home in honor of the foundation's founder.

"Mr. Knapp believed it was important to educate people who work in government," said Ruth Capranica, vice president of the foundation and great-granddaughter of Joseph Palmer Knapp. "We want to see that perpetuated and the school's facilities updated to make better use of modern technology."

The new grant will represent the largest private contribution in the school's history. The Knapp name will remain on the building and be added to the school's library. The new two-story library will double the present floor space, add study rooms and expand computer and telecommunications capabilities. A rare book room will house copies of legislative bills dating back to 1949.

Representatives of the foundation toured the construction site, including the library skeleton, last spring. "It was nice to see them able to incorporate the old structure," Capranica said. "The architect did a wonderful job."

The Knapp challenge will assist the school in raising funds to complete the $24 million renovation and expansion of its building. The N.C. General Assembly and University have allocated nearly $20 million for construction. The additional $4 million sought from public and private sources will go toward completing, furnishing and equipping the building.

At the time of the Knapp challenge, $700,000 had been raised in cash and pledges. This included about $400,000 from county and municipal governments, whose goal is to raise $900,000 to establish the North Carolina Local Government Wing of the school. In addition, hundreds of individuals, businesses, and professional organizations have contributed to the campaign. Among them are the Association of County Commissioners, the League of Municipalities, the Association of Registers of Deeds, the Association of County Clerks to the Boards of County Commissioners, the Tax Collectors Association, the Association of Assessing Officers and the Local Government Employees Federal Credit Union.

Construction on the project began in 1998. The expansion phase is scheduled to be completed in 2002, when the renovation of the existing building will begin.

When completed, the school's square footage will nearly double, from 65,000 to 126,000. This will enable faculty and staff to grow over time from the current 100 to 140. More important will be new and improved teaching facilities. In 2000-2001, more than 13,000 public officials attended school courses. In the expanded facilities, 21 classrooms will accommodate more than twice as many people for conferences and seminars. Classrooms and other spaces will include capabilities for videoconferences, multimedia presentations, and Internet connections. Additional computer centers will serve graduate students and local government clients. Dining and parking facilities also are being expanded.

Joseph Palmer Knapp's association with the Institute of Government developed through a mixture of serendipity, intellectual curiosity and benevolence. He was a native New Yorker who had amassed wealth through a series of publishing ventures, including Collier's magazine and This Week, the first nationwide Sunday newspaper supplement.

Also an avid sportsman, he traveled to Currituck County in 1916 in search of good hunting. There he established a hunting lodge that became a second home where he often entertained business associates over the next 30 years. During that time, he took local interests as his own, lending his money and leadership to a number of environmental projects, helping farm families develop new sources of income and modernizing local schools. He grew interested in the operations of local government and, when he heard of the early work the Institute of Government, he wrote to the founder, Albert Coates, to learn more.

Years later, Coates wrote of Knapp:
"He saw that money wasted in honest inefficiency was as great a burden to taxpayers as money lost in conscious fraud; saw the need for systematic training of public officials for the public services before going into office and thereafter in continued training on the job. If lawyers needed schooling for advising human beings, and ministers needed schooling for guiding the human spirit, and doctors needed schooling for working with the human body, why not schooling for officials working with the body politic?"

Knapp died before he and Coates could meet, but in 1952, his widow, Margaret Rutledge Knapp, renewed the family interest at a time the Institute of Government was struggling to fulfill its mission in cramped quarters on Franklin Street. The Knapp Foundation issued its $500,000 challenge grant, and in 1956 the Institute moved into the Joseph Palmer Knapp Building at the corner of South Road and Country Club Road.

The Knapp family never lost touch with Chapel Hill. In recent years, it donated money for laboratories in UNC's Lineberger Cancer Center and for the cancer center's Joseph Palmer Knapp Library.

Plans for the school's continued growth also struck a chord. "We decided as a board we wanted to be involved," Capranica said. "We wanted to see the continuation of what was established by Mr. Coates. Mr. and Mrs. Knapp believed in it in the 1950s, and the descendants still do."

-Garnet Bass '74