UVA fundraising continues to set new records

Members of the University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors got an update last week on fundraising for the public research institution. 

“Fiscal Year 2024 was a very, very strong year across grounds as we look at the philanthropic impact that we’ve seen,” said Mark Luellen, UVA’s vice president for advancement. “We’ve documented $620 million in total commitments last year which is the second highest in the history of the University.” 

Luellen told members of the BOV’s Advancement Committee on September 12 that FY24 was the seventh year in a row that total giving was above $500 million. 

Cindy Frederick, the senior associate vice president in the Office of Engagement, described more of what made FY24 a banner year for UVA fundraising.

“This past year as Mark said, we had record numbers and the most donors ever,” Frederick said, “Eighty-one thousand alumni, parents, and friends made a gift, setting this record, and 60 percent were alumni.” 

Luellen said he believes the current fiscal year is also tracking to be another year in which donors surpass that amount.  

“When I look at the total number of gift conversations that are going on at all of the foundations at the University right now, I think the pipeline is probably the strongest I’ve seen it in the past ten years,” Luellen said.  

Toward the end of the meeting, President Jim Ryan announced a major donation to support scholarships for one of UVA’s newest schools.

“I’m thrilled to announce a $10 million gift from Scott and Beth Stephenson to create the Stephenson’s Scholars program at the School of Data Science,” Ryan said, “Their commitment will be matched with an additional $10 million from the University’s bicentennial scholarship fund for a total of $20 million.”  

Ryan said the goal of the scholarship is to attract people from a diverse number of backgrounds to pursue a career in data science. 

Scott Stephenson is a 1979 graduate of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. He said his first job was designing parts for missiles and his experience at UVA helped him consider some of the ethical considerations that led him on a different pathway.

“If I’d gone to MIT or Cal-Tech or a very technical university, maybe I would have something in the educational experience that would help but I know for certain that I was given a broader education here and it was so helpful to me as a 22-year old to work through some of these questions that went well beyond the technical,” Stephenson said.

For more information on this donation, take a look at the announcement on UVA Today. 

Stephenson said the field of data science is understood as one that has the power to reshape the way research is conducted. For centuries, scientists seeking to prove a theory would have to identify what they needed to measure and set up experiments to observe. 

“The new thing that’s in the world actually is that increasingly we can instrument the world and observe the world so that the world just actually kind of speaks to us,” Stephenson said. “The volume of data and the amount of data which is being generated and its being generated not for any particular reason but just because data moves around in a way that it didn’t. The volume of that, the frequency of that, the granularity of all that data, there is an additional way to pursue knowledge and insight and that is to let the data tell you what the data mean.”  

For more information on the School of Data Science at the University of Virginia, visit their website.

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