Why give

Wherever your interest lies, your gift will fuel work at ASU that creates positive change in individual lives or communities.

Know also that your gift will go directly to the program you want to help. When you give to a particular program, the ASU Foundation channels your money to a fund established solely for that program.

The ASU Foundation has earned a four-star rating from Charity Navigator — the highest rating awarded by the charity assessment organization — so you can be confident that your gift will be used for its intended purpose.

Gifts of all sizes make a difference. About 92% of all gifts to ASU are $100 or less — but cumulatively, they have an outsize impact.

Supporters like you make higher education and lifelong learning more inclusive. You enable ASU to be a community that values everyone regardless of social or financial status. You help individuals succeed and strive for a better life.

• In fiscal year 2023, donors gave $39.3 million to scholarships for ASU students.
• Reflecting ASU’s commitment to higher education access, 33.5% of ASU undergraduates are first-generation college students.
• 46% of ASU’s incoming first-year students in fall 2022 came from historically underrepresented backgrounds.
• Donors helped ASU offer more than 4,500 hours of free tutoring.

Donor-supported initiatives that widen access to higher education or enable the success of our students:

• ASU’s WeGrad program supports thousands of learners and their families in navigating their way to or through college. WeGrad offers an online video curriculum available anytime and anywhere, offered in English and Spanish.
• The U.S. Department of Education named ASU a Hispanic-Serving Institution, recognizing its efforts to serve its community through programs for current students and outreach programs to strengthen the pipeline to college. Scholarship programs like the Latino Partnership Scholars provide resources and mentoring to help.

You play a vital role in fueling research and discovery that is of value to communities. ASU ranks as one of the top universities in North America for turning research into impact. With your support, the ASU community creates solutions to societal challenges — use-inspired, world-class research capable of having meaningful societal impact.

• Top 10 — ASU’s rank among U.S. universities for patents for five consecutive years.
• ASU is #1 in the U.S. for innovation, ahead of MIT and Stanford.

ASU offers many ways in which donors can support students and faculty research. For example:

• ASU supporters have funded laboratory space, like the family of the late Leo Beus, which helped create the Beus Compact X-ray Free Electron Laser Lab, where scientists are building the world’s first X-ray instrument that will see things conventional X-rays can’t. The CXFEL will let scientists peer inside molecules, helping them create more effective drugs, find new sources of renewable energy, advance quantum computing and even gain insights into archeological and artistic treasures without damaging them.
• Donors Cathy and Peter Swan, who retired from long careers in the aerospace industry, supported ASU’s Interplanetary Initiative by providing expertise and financial support for promising student-led space research. Three of those projects were selected for the New Shepard space vehicle built by Blue Origin, a private aerospace company founded by Amazon executive chair Jeff Bezos. They were the first-ever ASU student-designed and -built payloads launched into space and brought back to Earth.

Your gifts impact communities in Arizona and beyond.

You fuel community partnerships that bring clean water where it is needed, produce therapies for Alzheimer’s patients, conserve ocean species and their habitats, bring digital libraries to places around the globe without internet access, give health care workers in rural areas resources to provide high-quality care — and more.

ASU recently began partnering with industries to build Arizona’s new economy. Five Science and Technology Centers are attracting new industries to Arizona and preparing Arizonans for future jobs.

• ASU has 100+ industry partners.
• $2 billion+ of economic output was generated within Arizona from ASU-linked companies in fiscal year 2022.
• The New Economy Initiative is projected to create 40K new high-wage jobs by 2041.