Venture Forward and Annual Giving support ‘audacious bets on people and ideas that will make a positive difference in the world’

In the third year since Princeton University launched the Venture Forward campaign, two new reports provide an in-depth look at the campaign’s progress, on the campus and beyond. The 2022-23 Venture Forward impact report, “Making Audacious Bets,” and the Annual Giving impact report, “Forward Together,” are both available online.

Venture Forward is a mission-driven campaign that is focused on the University’s strengths in the liberal arts, pushing the boundaries of knowledge across disciplines, and collaborating to champion access and inclusion, the humanities, science, art, public policy and technology.

“That is the essence of this campaign: helping Princeton make audacious bets on the people and ideas that will make a positive difference in the world,” President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83 says in the “Making Audacious Bets” impact report. “This is not a short-term value proposition but rather an investment in talent for the long term.”

Members of the University community gathered last May to formally celebrate Yeh College and New College West, which are part of the University’s commitment to make a Princeton education accessible to more high-achieving students from all backgrounds. The new residential colleges are among the "Audacious Bets" featured in the 2022-23 Venture Forward impact report.

 

Photo by Steven Freeman

Alumni engagement and Annual Giving are spotlighted in the initial pages of the “Making Audacious Bets” report as the ways most alumni, parents and friends have thus far participated in the Venture Forward campaign.

The report captures how, through the campaign and collaboration between the University and alumni volunteers, new initiatives have been created for members of the Princeton alumni community to deepen their bonds with each other and the University — and their service to humanity. Orange & Black Day, all-alumni Venture Forward gatherings with President Eisgruber on three continents, and events supporting the men’s and women’s basketball teams are highlighted among other engagement efforts and statistics.

Annual Giving, which is the focus of the “Forward Together” report, reflects the collective impact of undergraduate alumni, graduate alumni, parents and friends in a tradition of giving back that began in 1940. The report illustrates how gifts of every size add up to provide critical unrestricted funds that allow the University to seize opportunities, face new challenges and support Princeton’s pioneering financial aid program. The “Forward Together” report notes that more than 37,000 Princetonians contributed to the 2022-23 Annual Giving campaign, providing funding that allowed Princeton to:

• Recruit world-class faculty and support investments in equipment, facilities, research funding and personnel.
• Make it possible for talented students from all backgrounds to live and learn at the University without the need to incur debt. Annual Giving helps support the University’s groundbreaking no-loan financial aid program for undergraduates while also contributing to boosting graduate student fellowship and stipend rates in 2022 and 2023.
• Expand the Learning and Education through Service (LENS) program, which provides the opportunity for a funded service or social impact summer internship to every Princeton undergraduate student before graduation.
• Enable every undergraduate student to engage in research that is an essential element of the Princeton experience, underwriting the costs associated with senior thesis projects and field research.

The “Making Audacious Bets” report also provides in-depth storytelling and QR codes linking to videos about major gifts in the Venture Forward campaign that have allowed Princeton to:

• Establish the Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute, which will promote new directions in research, education and innovation at the intersection of engineering and the life sciences.
• Dedicate two new residential colleges — Yeh College and New College West — housing approximately 1,000 undergraduates and two dozen graduate students in eight new residence halls. The new colleges are part of the University’s commitment to make a Princeton education accessible to more high-achieving students from all backgrounds. 
• Dedicate the Emma Bloomberg Center for Access and Opportunity, celebrating the center’s work supporting the success of first-generation, lower-income, military veteran and transfer students
• Strengthen and expand financial aid so that every student can graduate debt-free.
• Translate “In the service of humanity” into real-world action through innovative programs that share Princeton with the world.
• Establish new named professorships, recognizing best-in-class faculty who are pursuing groundbreaking inquiry and inspiring the next generation of scholars.
• Build cutting-edge classroom, research and community facilities that will modernize the campus, while helping Princeton reach its carbon-neutral goals. 
• Build a reimagined world-class art museum in the heart of campus will become a hub for interdisciplinary study and community.