The Oklahoma State University Foundation broke its own record and raised more than $100 million last fiscal year, which officials attribute to marketing, the economy and a major donation from alumnus Boone Pickens that raised the bar.

From July 1, 2005, to June 30, the foundation raised $104.7 million, up from $56 million the previous year, the foundation announced Friday. The gifts included $9 million from Walt and Peggy Helmerich for OSU-Tulsa's Advanced Technology Research Center and $14.8 million from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation to renovate and expand the architecture building in Stillwater.

The total does not include $165 million from Pickens for athletics.

Also last year, the foundation earned 21.7 percent -- or $42.4 million -- on its pooled investment fund, up from 14.3 percent the previous year, according to a press release.

The foundation's endowment stands at $235.6 million.

As of June 30, the University of Oklahoma Foundation's endowment was $561 million, that foundation reported.

OSU President David Schmidly said a number of factors contributed to the banner year, including good fundraisers and the foundation board of trustees, donors' generosity, alumni satisfaction with OSU's direction and a positive economy that allowed potential donors to give.

It also encouraged donors to see their donations leveraged through investments, he said.

Foundation President Kirk Jewell said the foundation, which receives all donations intended for OSU, changed its investment strategy about two years ago away from stocks and bonds and toward "alternative investments," such as real estate, timber, hedge funds and more.

The idea is that with such a diversity of investments, something is always on the upswing, he said.

Other changes have contributed to the fundraising success, he said. Al ready, more graduates are giving to the foundation's general fund, and the foundation is trying to further broaden the donor base by, for example, asking accounting graduates to donate to the accounting program, Jewell said. Nearly every college within the university has a "pocket of excellence" that donors are enthusiastic to support, Jewell said.

Additionally, tax laws were loosened last year to encourage donors to contribute to Hurricane Katrina relief and to help the charities whose regular donors perhaps shifted their money to relief efforts, Jewell said. That benefited OSU.

"There's a sense among the alumni that I talk to that OSU has a tremendous amount of momentum right now," he said.

Pickens' first major gift in recent years -- $20 million in early 2003 to help renovate the football stadium -- was "clearly the watershed event" in OSU fundraising, Jewell said. He said William S. Spears later endowed the business college in part because he wanted to support his alma mater in a similar fashion.

"That, to me, was the turning point when we started seeing larger gifts come more frequently," Jewell said. "Prior to that, a million-dollar gift was an enormous gift for us."