A Message from
President Richard C. Levin

I invite you to participate in Yale Tomorrow, a five-year, $3 billion campaign to build the future of our University. I seek your support to ensure that the accomplishment of recent years is not remembered merely as a bright moment in Yale’s long history, but rather as the foundation for a Yale of permanently greater breadth and strength, a Yale with the capacity to contribute—by means of its scholarship and its graduates—not only to the nation but also to the world.

The price of agility and excellence

Even our most loyal supporters might wonder, after examining the spectacular performance of our Investments Office these past two decades, whether Yale needs to augment still further its already abundant financial resources. It is important to recognize that most of our existing endowment funds were given by donors of the past and present to be used for specifically designated purposes. Thus, most of our endowment provides a strong foundation for our current activities, while the relatively small fraction of the endowment that is unrestricted permits only limited scope for innovation.

But the work of building and sustaining a great institution is never done. To expand Yale beyond its current scale and scope, to build the Yale of tomorrow, we will need new financial resources. I hope that this statement will give you a sense of Yale’s current vitality and its ambition to improve itself.

Reinforcing our leadership

This campaign will seek to enhance those Yale programs that are already among the nation’s best. We will reinvigorate the Yale College curriculum, support graduate education, strengthen our libraries and museums, invest in the humanities and social sciences, deepen the Law School’s involvement with international affairs and the legal profession, and augment the teaching and financial aid resources of our distinguished Schools of Art, Architecture, Drama, Music, Divinity, Nursing, and Forestry & Environmental Studies.

We will also seek to strengthen those programs that are vital to maintaining the University’s overall standing in the twenty-first century. To remain among the world’s great universities, we must invest in science and technology on an unprecedented scale. To keep our School of Medicine at the forefront, we need to translate advances in the biomedical sciences into improved clinical care. And to participate fully in the education of twenty-first century leaders, we need the School of Management to take its place among the nation’s top business schools.

Extending our reach

Above all, we need to complete the transformation of Yale from a local to a regional to a national to an international university. To prepare our students for leadership in an interdependent world, we need to augment the faculty resources devoted to international studies, and we need to make it possible for every undergraduate to have an overseas experience during his or her four years at Yale.

In the statement that follows, I highlight some of the most important objectives of the campaign under four headings:

  • The College
  • The Arts
  • The Sciences
  • and The World.

In this format it is possible to mention only a fraction of the many opportunities available to prospective donors. This is a comprehensive, University-wide campaign, embracing all of the University’s schools and programs. A complete listing of gift opportunities is available online at http://www.givingcatalog.yale.edu/