UCSD’s Geisel Library. Photo by Chris Stone
Over a decade-long philanthropic fundraising campaign, UC San Diego raised more than $3.05 billion, a full billion more than its goal, it was announced Thursday.
The funds raised during the Campaign for UC San Diego have gone, or are slated to go, toward many causes, including a significant campus transformation, increased access to scholarships and fellowships and an expansion of the university’s positive global impact and research, according to a statement from the university.
“The incredible support from our generous donors during the Campaign for UC San Diego has fueled a remarkable physical, intellectual and cultural transformation that has greatly enhanced the experiences of our students, our patients and our greater San Diego community, in addition to benefiting countless lives around the globe,” said Pradeep K. Khosla, UCSD chancellor.
“Belief in UC San Diego as a force for change gave us three billion new reasons to keep exploring, to keep discovering and to keep impacting the world around us.”
More than 163,000 supporters designated charitable gifts and grants to over 450 different areas across campus, including UCSD Health and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In the final year of the campaign, which ended on June 30, the campus raised a record $420 million.
Joan and Irwin Jacobs, Ernest Rady and T. Denny Sanford set the foundation for the campaign’s success with gifts, including $100 million from the Jacobs to establish the Jacobs Medical Center at UCSD Health. There was also a commitment of $100 million from Ernest and Evelyn Rady for the Rady School of Management and $200 million in total funds from Sanford to establish both the Sanford Stem Cell Clinical Center at UCSD Health and the T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion.
In addition, more than 100 alumni and community members stepped up to lead the effort as members of the campaign’s cabinet, generating $1 billion in donations, the school said. More than half of the cabinet was composed of alumni, including cabinet co-chairs Ken Kroner ’88, and Aryeh Bourkoff ’95, who each supported the campaign with multimillion-dollar gifts.
Alumni giving also went up significantly. More than 45,600 alumni donors gave $257 million in gifts — an increase of 1,300% over the last campaign, a UCSD statement read.
“We are so incredibly proud of how UC San Diego alumni have come together over the past decade to support their alma mater as a collective group,” said Kimberley Phillips Boehm, UCSD alumni president from 2020-22.
“This support is driving the university’s upward trajectory as it makes a difference for future generations of students, spurs innovative research, enhances medicine and transforms our campus.”