The Promise of the New
Within two years of the collapse of the Old University, Chicago Baptists had secured critical denominational support for the creation of a new institution of higher learning in the city. In May 1888, the American Baptist Education Society was formed in Washington, D.C., and Frederick T. Gates, minister of the Central Baptist Church of Minneapolis, was named its corresponding secretary. After surveying the state of Baptist education, Gates quickly became convinced that a new university was needed "in the city of Chicago, and not in a suburb outside the city, but within the city itself and as near its center as conveniently possible."

In May 1889, the Education Society endorsed the Chicago plan and Gates was able to announce momentous news: John D. Rockefeller would give $600,000 toward the endowment of an institution in Chicago if additional pledges of $400,000 could be obtained from other donors before June 1, 1890. The Education Society was swept with enthusiasm, and Gates returned to Chicago with Goodspeed to begin the crucial one-year fundraising campaign.

Gates and Goodspeed recognized that the initial appeal had to be made to Baptists in Chicago and the Middle West. Within sixty days, $200,000 had been raised from within the city, and after nine months of persistent solicitations another $100,000 in pledges had come in from Baptist churches in the region. The remaining $100,000, however, was secured from the non-Baptist business leaders of Chicago whose wealth represented the commercial strength of the city: grain trading, meat packing, dry goods, hardware, shipping, railroads, street cars, real estate, publishing, and banking. A fourth of the non-Baptist total came from alumni of the Old University, and another fourth from the members of the city's premier Jewish social organization, the Standard Club.