WashU has launched an ambitious fundraising and engagement campaign to provide transformative solutions to society’s greatest challenges and to create new opportunities for students.
With You: The WashU Campaign invites alumni, parents and friends to partner with Washington University in St. Louis to create a more promising future for all. Philanthropic investment will strengthen the university’s ability to improve human health, expand educational access, support flourishing communities and develop leaders and citizens of integrity.
“WashU is a leading example of what a 21st-century research university can do to make the world a better place. We have a responsibility to build on this proud legacy and ask the community to join us on our quest,” Chancellor Andrew D. Martin said. “With You: The WashU Campaign is about dreaming boldly, thinking expansively and imagining what we can accomplish together as one talented, focused and driven community. WashU’s vibrant community will define the next chapter of our story.”
Martin unveiled With You May 1 at WashU’s Athletic Complex to a group of alumni, parents, donors, faculty and students. He announced the university hopes to raise a minimum of $5 billion by the close of the campaign on Dec. 31, 2030. More than $2.9 billion already has been raised during the campaign’s quiet phase, which began in 2019.
By providing resources for the university’s new School of Public Health, WashU Medicine, research and scholarships, With You will advance positive change in four areas of impact:
Healthier lives: WashU is a global force in biomedical research and patient care. With You will support WashU scientists and physicians in their search for groundbreaking cures and treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, mental disorders and other illnesses.
Greater access: In the past decade, WashU has made huge strides in its effort to be more accessible to students of all income levels. With You will build on that success, further expanding scholarships and financial aid for talented undergraduate, graduate and professional students and continuing education students.
Ways to support WashU
Give: Make a gift through the With You campaign.
Share: Record a message for our campaign website that answers the question: If you could change one thing in the world, what would it be?
Advocate: Join a group of faculty, students, alumni and friends who are reaching out to government officials.
Volunteer: Contribute your time, enthusiasm and knowledge to the WashU community.
Flourishing communities: Drawing on WashU’s strengths in public health, environmental science and other disciplines, With You will help revolutionize how we grow food and nourish families; improve air and water quality; eliminate health-care disparities; and protect fragile ecosystems.
Future-ready leaders: Through innovative programs such as “Dialogue Across Difference,” the George and Carol Bauer Leaders Academy, the newly unified Center for Career Engagement and the Taylor Family Center for Student Success, With You will advance WashU’s mission to cultivate purpose-driven leaders of principle, character and conviction.
The campaign also will support strategic priorities in schools and other university programs.
Board of Trustees Chair Andrew Bursky, AB ’78, BS ’78, MS ’78, said the anticipated reduction of federal research funds adds urgency to the campaign. Hundreds of WashU labs engaged in revolutionary research into Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, agriculture, climate and other areas are funded in large part by the federal government. In total, WashU received $856 million in federal grants in 2024 from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Defense and other agencies.
“This is a period of great uncertainty, one that threatens to disrupt the important work of our university,” said Bursky, who serves as a co-chair of the With You campaign. “Now, more than ever, we need our community to rally behind our researchers.”
With You is rooted in Martin’s vision for WashU as first articulated in his 2019 inaugural address, appropriately titled “Momentum.” WashU, he vowed, would grow as a place of distinction in education, research and patient care, conducting more transformative research, creating new pathways for talented students of all backgrounds and strengthening ties to the region it calls home. Through “Here and Next,” the university’s 10-year strategic plan, and the support of many donors in the With You quiet phase, WashU has achieved great progress in many of those priorities. Initiatives include:
- The School of Public Health: WashU’s first new school in 100 years, the School of Public Health will drive equitable, evidence-based public health initiatives — in St. Louis and globally — and provide an exceptional training ground for new generations of researchers and practitioners. The school is led by Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, one of the world’s most influential public health leaders.
- Jeffrey T. Fort Neuroscience Research Building: Among the world’s largest neuroscience research buildings, the state-of-the-art facility on the campus of WashU Medicine serves 120 research teams studying brain tumor biology, psychiatric illness, pain and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases.
- Food and Agriculture Research Mission (FARM): An ambitious initiative to transform food systems, FARM aims to address hunger, malnutrition and environmental degradation by developing practical, scalable solutions in agricultural production and food distribution.
- No-loan financial aid: Another big leap forward in WashU’s effort to be more accessible to students of all backgrounds, the no-loan financial aid policy replaces federal loans with grants and scholarships. The policy follows two other major financial aid initiatives — the shift to need-blind admissions and the WashU Pledge, which provides a free undergraduate education to students in Missouri and southern Illinois with annual family incomes of $75,000 or less.
“When our faculty, staff, students and alumni first came together nearly five years ago to develop ‘Here & Next,’ we made a decision to prioritize work that is mission-critical and makes a meaningful, enduring impact,” Provost Beverly Wendland said. “The With You campaign will enable us to fulfill those goals. What we do here matters, and it must proceed.”
WashU’s last comprehensive campaign, Leading Together, concluded in 2018 and raised $3.378 billion in gifts and commitments to support WashU students and faculty and bolster scholarship and research. In 2022, WashU launched Make Way: Our Student Initiative to raise funds for scholarships, fellowships and programs that enhance the student experience. That effort has now merged with With You: The WashU Campaign.
In addition to Bursky, Trustees Alicia McDonnell, JD ’95, and Cash Nickerson, JD ’85, MBA ’93, will serve as With You co-chairs. In that role, they will champion the campaign with the public and counsel university leadership.
The two honorary co-chairs are John McDonnell, MBA ’14, ScD ’06, and Robert Virgil, MBA ’60, DBA ’67, both emeritus trustees. McDonnell co-chaired the leadership phase of Leading Together. Virgil, dean emeritus of Olin Business School, helped lead the scholarship fundraising effort for Leading Together.
Pamella Henson, executive vice chancellor for university advancement, said every member of the WashU community has a role to play in the campaign.
“The name of this campaign — With You — reflects the essential importance of our alumni, students, parents and friends in our mission,” Henson said. “Whether it is a large gift for a special project or an unrestricted gift for the Annual Fund, every dollar helps WashU — our faculty, our students and our staff — make a difference.”
