Coming together to share their vision with Berkeley, philanthropically-minded Bears and affiliates made important contributions to student housing and other critical new facilities. They helped advance a wide array of research endeavors, from work on climate change and green technologies to the microbiome. The impressive $1.311 billion fundraising total is Berkeley’s highest ever in a fiscal year. Clearly, donors continue to play a key role at Berkeley even after the close of our university’s historic Light the Way campaign on December 31, 2023.
The gifts pledged or made during this period reflect the extraordinary range of possibilities that are at play at our university. Members of our community invest in Berkeley because they recognize the positive impact their philanthropy has on the campus and far beyond. By giving to programs and research areas that align with their values, alumni, parents, and friends leverage Berkeley’s power as a conduit to enact a shared vision of a better world. While some gifts are directed to be deployed at the discretion of campus leaders, donors’ wishes guide how the funds are used — funds may not be repurposed by the university without donor approval.
The Berkeley community provided resources that will be used to advance groundbreaking research, house and sustain the next generation of scholars and leaders, and ensure that our university continues to serve as a beacon of hope and ingenuity. Several large gifts that came to fruition in this period support new construction and named facilities that are refreshing the look and feel of the campus. These and other significant programmatic investments during fiscal year 2023–24 will enhance the student experience and invigorate research that has direct implications for human health and the planet we share.
Helen Diller Anchor House, Berkeley’s new home for transfer students, welcomes its first cohort of residents this fall. Anchor House provides programmatic support as well as housing, enabling transfer students to enjoy the full benefit of their Berkeley experience. Income generated from the property will fund undergraduate scholarships.
On the campus’s west side, the Bakar ClimatEnginuity Hub, a new incubator for research and entrepreneurial activity around renewable energy and clean technology, is scheduled to open during the 2027–28 academic year. The Bakar ClimatEnginuity Hub will include laboratory and flexible spaces that will support research in critical areas such as renewable energy, carbon capture, and environmentally-informed approaches to building construction and agriculture. The Bakar ClimatEnginuity Hub is part of an evolving effort to reshape the west side of campus into the Berkeley Innovation Zone, the university’s center for innovation and entrepreneurship in life sciences, materials science, and climate technologies.
Berkeley students will also feel the impact of philanthropy through access to scholarships and programmatic support. The Graduate School of Journalism received a $10 million pledge that will double the financial aid available to students and fund strategic initiatives. The largest gift in the school’s history, this commitment kicks off a five-year campaign for Berkeley Journalism and encourages other donors to support the school with a matching challenge. A bequest commitment to the Department of Music will provide a similarly flexible source of support for its undergraduate and graduate students, and a realized bequest built on a family’s legacy, started in 1990, provides a new source of scholarships to undergraduates. A gift to the Center for African Studies serves Berkeley’s commitment to making a global impact, providing new resources for its Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program, which draws talented master’s degree students from sub-Saharan Africa who are dedicated to making positive change across the African continent.
Several donors invested $10 million or more in areas that touch on the health and vitality of the human body and the built environment. New funding will support the Innovative Genomics Institute’s Audacious Project, a collaboration among UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco, and UC Davis that uses the power of CRISPR research to explore the therapeutic and environmental impact of microbial communities, or microbiomes. Researchers at all three universities are deepening our understanding of the ways that microbes such as bacteria, fungi, and viruses can be developed and manipulated to serve the needs of medical and environmental science. A gift to the Molecular Therapeutics Initiative will help to fast-track research aimed at developing novel treatments for neurologic and metabolic diseases. The Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, which advances interdisciplinary work in design and technology, received a significant gift that provides its leaders with the flexibility to allocate resources to the institute’s areas of greatest need.
In addition to major gifts made by long-time Berkeley friends, Cal donors also provided smaller gifts, which were also critical for our university. The Charter Hill Society, which includes donors who make gifts of at least $1,000 annually, recently concluded a four-year long matching opportunity. More than 400 donors made their first gifts at this level during the match; this group of new Charter Hill members collectively provided nearly $800,000 in gifts to a range of departments and programs. Big Give, Berkeley’s 24-hour fundraising effort, celebrated its 10th anniversary in March. Over the decade of its existence, Big Give has yielded more than $115 million in gifts. Because Big Give encourages members of the extended Berkeley community to connect directly to the campus programs that mean the most to them, it has been very successful at drawing first-time donors. So far, 25,000 new donors have begun their philanthropic engagement through Big Give.
Every gift to Berkeley has a story behind it, one that reveals the far-reaching impact of our diverse, powerful, and ever-evolving community. Our incomparable university continues to find new ways to respond to the challenges of a changing world because we are part of an extraordinary network of changemakers. Thanks to the thoughtful support of our alumni and friends, UC Berkeley will continue to shine, providing fresh opportunities for people from all backgrounds to work together to turn hopeful visions into fruitful realities.
