Campus News
Inspiring Change: UC Santa Cruz launches $750M campaign
The campaign is a collective effort to raise funding to accelerate the campus’s groundbreaking discoveries, create real, lasting solutions to some of the world’s most consequential challenges, and amplify the next generation of leaders and scholars.
Chancellor Larive announced Inspiring Change on Saturday night. To date, more than 42,000 generous donors have contributed nearly half of the campaign’s $750 million goal during its quiet phase.
UC Santa Cruz today announced a $750 million comprehensive fundraising campaign, Inspiring Change: The Campaign for UC Santa Cruz—the largest in its history—that will expand access to life-changing educational opportunities for students and allow the university to continue to advance world-changing ideas and solutions that benefit all.
“Since our founding, UC Santa Cruz has pursued solutions that benefit society, whether it’s increasing our resilience in the face of climate change, advancing health solutions, or sharing the untold stories of communities, locally and globally,” Chancellor Cynthia Larive said. “Inspiring Change provides an opportunity for our friends and supporters to invest in our extraordinary students, the next generation of leaders and scholars, and in impactful research that makes a difference in people’s lives.”
To date, more than 42,000 generous donors have contributed nearly half of the campaign’s $750 million goal during its quiet phase. This support is already enabling UC Santa Cruz to provide students and faculty with new transformative opportunities and resources. The campaign will run through 2030.
“UC Santa Cruz is a powerful, positive force for California and for the world,” said UCSC alumnae Julie Packard and Bev Crair, who serve as campaign co-chairs. “Both of us know from our times as students on campus what a remarkable educational environment UC Santa Cruz is. It is a place that transformed our personal journeys and informed how we have viewed and tried to contribute to a better world. And our extraordinary researchers continue to pursue solutions to many of the biggest challenges of our time. We both love that the campus leaders, faculty, staff, and students view challenges and opportunities as profoundly interdisciplinary and interconnected.”
UC Santa Cruz was founded on values of environmental and social justice, distinguishing it from other universities. While the campus’s research and intellectual pursuits have exponentially accelerated over the years—recognized in part by its rapid ascent to membership in the Association of American Universities—those original values underlie our education and research pursuits whether they are in the arts or astrophysics.
The Santa Cruz/Watsonville metro area is a national leader in research output, underscoring UC Santa Cruz’s role in driving fundamental scientific discovery and real-world innovation—work that continues to power the region, state and nation’s economy. Additionally, UC Santa Cruz is the largest employer in the region, contributing $1.35 billion in value to the region’s economy and helped create more than $2 billion in economic activity according to a state-wide 2021 study.
The driving goal of the campaign is to significantly increase philanthropy so that UC Santa Cruz can continue to accelerate its positive impact on the region, California and globally through transformative education, high impact research, and service that benefits the public.
“There was no question that this is the right moment to pursue this ambitious campaign,” said Larive. “UC Santa Cruz is here to keep moving the world forward through education, understanding, discovery, and innovation—and this campaign will enable us to do even more. We must continue to keep our eyes on the horizon. With the help of many friends and donors, we can continue our upward trajectory.”
Inspiring Change supports the entire university and spotlights its work on advancing five interconnected themes:
- life-changing educational experiences
- bold solutions to climate impacts and environmental challenges
- regional and global community health and wellness
- research frontiers and groundbreaking innovations
- creativity, artistic expression and transformative dialogue
These themes reinforce historic strengths of UC Santa Cruz and reflect our aspirations to increase the university’s impact. In addition to supporting university-wide initiatives, the Campaign for UC Santa Cruz will generate new resources to support initiatives in all five academic divisions.
“Across the University of California, philanthropy fuels discovery, increases access, and advances excellence,” said UC President James B. Milliken. “UC Santa Cruz, with its distinctive spirit of inquiry and commitment to social good, exemplifies how donor support drives UC forward.”
Each year, philanthropy enables UC Santa Cruz to award more than $13 million in scholarships to nearly 7,000 undergraduate students, and Inspiring Change will allow UC Santa Cruz to further expand financial support for students, eliminating hurdles that can deter them from pursuing a UCSC education or earning their degree.
Hands-on learning has long defined a UC Santa Cruz education. The campus will expand the number and range of degree-defining experiences that profoundly inspire undergraduate students and fill them with the spirit of optimism that forever changes how they see their time at UC Santa Cruz and their future careers.
UC Santa Cruz has already received thousands of gifts that are supporting Inspiring Change by delivering educational access, transformative hands-on learning experiences, and supporting research opportunities into the climate and environment.
UC Santa Cruz established the Sabatte Family Scholarship, following a $22.2 million gift from the late Richard “Rick” Sabatte. The full-ride scholarships are used to cover the complete cost of attending UC Santa Cruz—tuition, housing, books, and living expenses—allowing scholars to focus entirely on their academic journey. Over the next three decades, this gift will ultimately boost the trajectories of more than a thousand high-achieving students, creating a lasting legacy that honors Sabatte’s vision of empowering the next generation to achieve their dreams while contributing meaningfully to their communities and our nation’s future.
The Film and Digital Media Department at UC Santa Cruz debuted a new Social Documentation Laboratory at the Westside Research Park, expanding the university’s capacity to support graduate students working at the intersection of media production, social justice, and critical scholarship.
With the establishment of the 2,400-acre oak-studded Strathearn Ranch Natural Reserve, UC Santa Cruz is providing invaluable ecological, educational, and research opportunities for UC students, faculty and other researchers.
“UC Santa Cruz thrives because of the collective power of our community—people who believe deeply in the university’s mission and in the transformative impact of education and research,” Mark Delos Reyes Davis, Vice Chancellor for University Advancement and President of the UC Santa Cruz Foundation, said. “Inspiring Change is about investing in that shared vision for the future—ensuring that every student has the opportunity to succeed, that our faculty continue to lead discovery and innovation, and that our campus remains a force for positive change in California and the world.”
Join UC Santa Cruz in creating lasting change at campaign.ucsc.edu.