Generous Support Transforms Northwestern

Seven years have made a difference that will last forever.

In the spring of 2014, Northwestern publicly launched We Will. The Campaign for Northwestern. When we wrapped up the “We Will” Campaign this past summer, more than 174,000 individual donors had committed more than $6 billion, helping strengthen Northwestern’s position as one of the world’s finest universities for teaching, research and public service — a position that it can now hold on to in perpetuity. 

I want to thank all our alumni, parents and friends, because your extraordinary, ongoing expression of love for Northwestern was the fuel for our progress. It funded immediate investments in our campuses that have helped our scholars do their best work, and it added long-term support for our people and programs.

We had initially set out to find 141,000 donors who could help us raise $3.75 billion by 2020. That was by far the most ambitious fundraising goal in Northwestern history. But the Northwestern community blew the roof off those targets, as nearly 150,000 donors helped us reach the dollar goal two years ahead of schedule.

We realized that we had the chance to extend that momentum and build on the intense desire of Wildcats around the world to see Northwestern move closer to reaching its full potential. So we extended the Campaign, setting new goals of 170,000 donors and $5 billion. In the end, even a global pandemic couldn’t slow down Northwestern, and we closed the books on one of the most successful fundraising campaigns in the history of higher education, with every academic unit surpassing its goal, thanks to the brilliant leadership of our deans.

The Campaign was built on the foundation of an academic blueprint developed by our faculty and campus leaders: Northwestern Will, the University-wide strategic plan established a decade ago. Northwestern Will focused us on four pillars:

• Supporting research that tangibly improves society and the lives of people within it.
• Integrating students’ learning experiences with the world beyond the classroom.
• Fostering diversity that can meaningfully connect people from many backgrounds and enrich our academic work.
• Engaging in strategic local, national and international partnerships in order to serve the global good.

The generosity of Northwestern’s supporters, particularly our alumni, is evident in every aspect of campus life.

First of all, a truly premier university needs to be able to attract and retain the world’s best faculty. The “We Will” Campaign dramatically boosted our efforts here by establishing more than 85 new endowed professorships.

Twenty-five of these professorships were supported in part by alumni Patrick G. ’59, ’09 H and Shirley W. Ryan ’61, ’19 H through the Ryan Family Chair Challenge, which matched gifts made by other Northwestern supporters to establish new endowed professorships, or chairs, across a wide range of disciplines. 

The Campaign also turbocharged our ability to support a diverse and immensely talented student body and help students thrive on campus.

We were able to establish more than 525 new endowed scholarships and fellowships that will benefit thousands of undergraduate and graduate students each year, in perpetuity. We raised more than $522 million for scholarships and fellowships, including more than $230 million for undergraduate scholarships. We created 19 endowed scholarships through the Buffett Matching Challenge for International Student Scholarships.

The “We Will” Campaign also made possible new and renovated facilities that have elevated our research enterprise and expanded our capacity for discovery and innovation. These include the Simpson Querrey Biomedical Research Center, the Willens Center for Nano Oncology, the Querrey Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics, the Simpson Querrey Institute, and the Ubben Program for Climate and Carbon Science at the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern.