Kansas City, Mo. ? Faced with declines in state funding, public colleges in Missouri and Kansas are hitting up alumni, foundations and corporations for ever-larger donations in the same fashion private schools have raised money for decades.

The University of Missouri-Columbia announced a $600 million fund-raising campaign Friday — its biggest to date and the first since it raised $150 million between 1990 and 1993.

Kansas University, meanwhile, is trying to raise $500 million in its KU First campaign, which began privately in 1998 and was announced publicly in 2001.

Combined, public colleges in the two states are in the midst of campaigns totaling almost $1.5 billion.

Missouri officials say they need more than a half-billion dollars to support projects ranging from artist-in-residence programs to diversity fellowships and improvements of athletic fields.

In four years of quiet fund-raising activities, the university already has raised $335 million toward the $600 million goal.

“We must have private financial assistance to break beyond the ‘good’ mold to become a truly great university, nationally renowned for multiple programs, stellar faculty and the brightest students,” Missouri Chancellor Richard Wallace said Friday.

One gift — a $25 million donation in 2001 from Wal-Mart heirs Bill and Nancy Laurie — is helping build a new basketball arena.

In Kansas, more than $400 million has been raised for 15 construction projects on three KU campuses and more than 230 new scholarships and 30 new professorships, among other projects.

Last February, Kansas State University’s Telefund campaign — an annual fund drive that began in 1980 — raised a record $1.4 million. A Kansas State scholarship campaign between 1996 and June 2000 raised $63 million, which was $13 million more than the original goal.

Another fund-raising campaign at Kansas State raised $163 million for the Manhattan campus between 1990 and 1993, well more than the $100 million the school expected to collect.

Elsewhere, officials at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield said they wanted to raise $50 million in donations by the university’s centennial celebration in 2005. It’s the university’s first comprehensive fund-raising campaign, said Greg Onstot, vice president for university advancement.

Southwest already has raised $27.2 million, including 284 gifts of $10,000 or more, he said.

At Northwest Missouri State in Maryville, officials were shooting for $21 million by 2007, but already have raised $31 million and are considering a new goal of $50 million.

Its largest single gift — $10 million from an anonymous donor — is to be used to match money other donors give for scholarships. The donor also wants to support scholarships for students who are the first in their family to graduate from college.

Nearly half of all Northwest students have parents who did not graduate from college, said Lance Burchett, the school’s vice president for advancement.

“As the economy’s declined and Northwest and our peers received tremendous cuts in our state funding, we expanded the campaign in order to focus on maintaining and enhancing areas of academic excellence,” Burchett said.

Such large fund-raising campaigns probably are here to stay at public universities, he said.

“With no increase in state funding in sight, and the desire to keep tuition as low as possible, private support through fund-raising campaigns is the only answer,” he said.