Celebrate our 75th Anniversary

A short history of SUNY's RF

The Research Foundation (RF) for the State University of New York (SUNY) was chartered on February 16, 1951, and has provided essential research administration services to the SUNY research enterprise for the last 75 years.

By 1945, New York was the only state without a university system. On March 12, 1948, the New York Legislature established SUNY, creating New York's first public higher education system. This organized 29 institutions into one statewide university system. The new SUNY system was a network of colleges that reached every region of the state and brought affordable opportunities for public higher education within commuting distance of every New York resident.

With the creation of the National Science Foundation in 1950 and its emerging role as a major distributor of federal research funds, SUNY needed an appropriate administrative and functional structure for its research activities. Following a national trend, it investigated establishing a specialized corporate entity to accept and administer incoming research funds. This was especially necessary because SUNY was different than most other state university systems. Instead of being generally independent from state government, SUNY was, by statute, an integral part of the state government of New York. As a result, all state university funds were deposited in the Treasury of the State of New York through the State Comptroller's office. This created a situation where all SUNY research requests, no matter how small, had to pass through the state financial processes before reaching SUNY for distribution to the various campuses.

On February 16, 1951, the New York State Board of Regents, on behalf of the State Education Department, granted a charter to nine state university officers to form the first Board of Directors of SUNY's RF. According to its Charter, the purpose of the RF was:

• To assist in developing and increasing the facilities of SUNY to provide more extensive educational opportunities for its students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and to the people of the State of New York, by making and encouraging gifts, grants, contributions, and donations of real and personal property to or for the benefit of SUNY;

• To receive, hold, and administer gifts or grants, and to act without profit as trustee of educational or charitable trust, of benefits to and in keeping with the educational purposes and objects of SUNY; and

• To finance the conduct of studies and research in all fields of the arts and sciences, of benefit to and in keeping with the educational purposes and objects of SUNY. 

On June 29, 1951, the original charter was amended to reflect an agreement between the RF and the State Comptroller's Office. This agreement stated that the RF would receive and administer any additional gifts or grants intended for SUNY. Later that year, the RF applied for tax-exempt status as a nonprofit organization and received notification of approval under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code on November 7, 1951.

As SUNY developed and its faculty created new and innovative externally funded programs, additional funds and administrative responsibilities fell to the RF. The small staff in its central office worked closely with managers at each campus to deliver the flexibility in research funding that SUNY research required. The system for sponsored funds administration that the RF developed to accommodate SUNY's needs methodically blended individual programs into a sophisticated business management system, providing sound fiscal administration of the complicated requirements of grants and contract management in an academic environment.

This was formalized in 1977 in an agreement between SUNY and the RF. The 1977 Agreement clarified the relationships, duties, and responsibilities of both the RF and SUNY for sponsored program activities. The agreement, which became effective June 1, 1977, incorporated the Resolution, adopted by the board of trustees of SUNY on March 8, 1962, and amended May 14, 1964, which previously had been the enabling authority for the RF to act as fiscal administrator of SUNY research, training, and other sponsored funds.

Today, the RF continues to help make SUNY the best place for faculty, students, and staff to research, innovate, and solve the world’s most pressing problems. Over the last 75 years, SUNY and the RF have grown together. Just as SUNY is the largest university system in the United States, in size and scope, SUNY's RF is the largest university research foundation, with an average of ~10K employees spread across 30 campuses. The RF's management of SUNY's research dollars enables it to provide shared services across the enterprise, creating significant savings for individual campuses. As an independent non-profit, the RF's legal independence is a strength for SUNY. It enables the RF to provide agile, flexible shared services across the research administration enterprise in the areas of human resources, finance, procurement, legal, insurance, audit, compliance, information technology, intellectual property, and technology transfer.