General support
Shangraw Innovation Fund
Shangraw Innovation Fund
Learn more about your impact
Arizona State University is relentless in its efforts to cultivate a spirit of innovation. The university invites everyone — every student, faculty and staff member and community partner — to imagine a better world and then figure out how to make that dream a reality.
This can-do spirit has prompted U.S. News & World Report to name ASU the most innovative university in the country, ahead of MIT and Stanford, for five years in a row.
Your generosity ensures that ASU can continue to provide students, faculty and staff the resources they need to pursue innovation: to conceive ideas, collaborate with like-minded colleagues, prototype models and scale solutions.
The Shangraw Innovation Fund will enable the leadership of ASU Enterprise Partners to fund promising projects across the university and equip them to carry out this mission. Named in honor of R. F. "Rick" Shangraw Jr., who, as founding CEO of ASU Enterprise Partners, created new and successful ways to generate financial support to ASU people and programs, the fund will support innovation in a number of ways. It could be innovation in entrepreneurship, the arts, sustainability, socially embeddedness or wherever someone has the creative spark of an idea.
Impact of Donor Support
- Donors bring the world’s brightest minds to Arizona by supporting endowed chairs and professorships.
- Leaders rise to the top. The Tip of the Fork program enables Sun Devil student-athletes to develop leadership skills through volunteering in their community.
- Entrepreneurship thrives at ASU. Two examples: The Prepped program supporting minority entrepreneurs has fueled 100 small businesses.
- And the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative has supported 1,000+ students and 297 unique ventures over 15 years.
Many of these students have gone home where they are successful entrepreneurs, corporate executives, venture capitalists, impact investors and senior government officials. The come home with a powerful American business education taught in a culturally sensitive environment, and respectful of the nuances of our cultural differences."