Venture Forward Hits the Home Stretch

The Venture Forward campaign is entering its final year, and it is already transforming the University in spectacular fashion.

Venture Forward is a mission-driven campaign. We’ve not set any internal or external dollar goals. Instead, we have focused intensely on gifts and initiatives that advance key priorities as defined in Princeton’s strategic framework.

Thanks to the generosity of our alumni and friends, Venture Forward has made those priorities real and visible throughout our campus: Two new residential colleges, with a third under construction, that extend the benefits of a Princeton education to more students than ever before. A dazzling art museum that will open next fall. A beautiful new fitness center buzzing with activity day and night. A new and welcoming health center. State-of-the-art buildings for engineering and the environmental sciences. And the list goes on.

Look deeper, and the impact of Venture Forward is everywhere. You can see it, for example, in the improvements to Princeton’s world-leading undergraduate financial aid program. With support provided by Annual Giving and generous gifts to establish new scholarships, nearly 72% of students in the Class of 2028 are receiving financial aid. The average undergraduate scholarship exceeds the tuition price by roughly $10,000.

Those numbers are best in class by a country mile. At our nearest peers, the percentage receiving aid is around 55% to 60% at best. Princeton’s alumni and the Venture Forward campaign are setting new standards for access and affordability.

New graduate fellowships, along with Annual Giving dollars, helped Princeton make historic increases to graduate stipends starting in 2022.

Venture Forward’s impact is apparent on the faculty and in academic programs, too. Gifts to more than 60 endowed professorships will honor top-flight scholars and attract new stars to Princeton. The High Meadows Environmental Institute, the Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute, the M.S. Chadha Center for Global India, the Effron Center for the Study of America, and myriad other new programs are enabling professors and students to push the frontiers of learning.

Service is essential to Princeton’s mission, and it, too, is a major theme of the Venture Forward campaign. The new LENS initiative, which includes support from Annual Giving, enables Princeton to off er every undergraduate the opportunity to have a paid service internship during their time at the University. The Novogratz Bridge Year Program sends students overseas to do intensive service projects before coming to Princeton, preparing them for their Princeton education and instilling a lifelong commitment to help others.

Venture Forward is about alumni engagement as well as giving. It creates new pathways for alumni to celebrate their bonds to the University and one another.

The campaign has encompassed the formation of three new affinity groups: Native Alumni of Princeton, Princeton Veterans Alumni Association, and the Association of Jewish Princeton Alumni. Affinity conferences, like the recent and inspiring “Every Voice” gathering, have honored the experiences and contributions of multiple groups. Regional events during the Venture Forward campaign have engaged thousands of alumni.

If judged by its enhancements to Princeton’s mission, or even on the simple basis of total dollars raised, Venture Forward is already the most successful fundraising campaign in the University’s history.

Yet there is more to do.

For example, we are seeking gifts that will enable our scientists and engineers to delve into the mysteries of quantum information science and harness its potential to benefit the world. We are raising funds to support humanists as they explore the connections between media and meaning today and in ages past, and we are launching creative projects to nurture design practices that span the arts and engineering.

We are reaching beyond campus boundaries with initiatives that extend Princeton’s teaching capacity to educate New Jersey community college students and incarcerated individuals.

And, of course, Princeton will continue to build the core of its academic and co-curricular enterprise with gifts to support professorships, financial aid, graduate fellowships, and service.

As Venture Forward accelerates toward its finish line, the campaign needs you. Every alum can participate through gifts of any size to Annual Giving and through volunteer engagement.

As I walk around Old Nassau’s beautiful campus and see what we have accomplished already, I am constantly reminded of how blessed Princeton is to have such faithful alumni and friends. Your engagement as volunteers, ambassadors, and donors enables the University to make audacious bets on talent and discovery.

To invoke a phrase that defines the spirit of Venture Forward, we are taking Princeton “from the present to the possible.” Your participation makes that possible, and I am very grateful.