Announced publicly in October 2021, Venture Forward was a mission-driven campaign focused intensely on building community and alumni engagement, securing critical philanthropic support for the University’s strategic priorities, and sharing Princeton’s defining principles and their impact on the world. 

“Venture Forward has been exceptionally successful even by Princeton’s sky-high standards,” said President Christopher L. Eisgruber ’83. “Through their engagement and giving, Princeton alumni and friends have transformed the campus, expanded opportunity for a greater number of talented students, and made audacious bets on people who are pushing the boundaries of what we can know and discover.” 

Dedicated alumni volunteers helped lead Venture Forward, including a campaign steering committee led by co-chairs Katherine Brittain Bradley ’86, Blair Effron ’84 and James Yeh ’87. 

The fundraising goals of the campaign — Princeton’s fifth in its 279-year history — focused on a clear set of institutional priorities: strengthening the core Princeton student experience; increasing the student population and setting new standards for student access and affordability by expanding the University’s groundbreaking financial aid program; and enhancing the University’s capacities in data science, bioengineering, the environment, American Studies and other important areas of inquiry that characterize Princeton’s commitment to the liberal arts. 

More than 75,000 donors (undergraduate and graduate alumni, corporations and foundations, parents and friends) contributed gifts to Venture Forward. To enhance teaching, learning and research, these gifts endowed 69 new professorships, 350 new undergraduate scholarship funds and more than 60 new graduate fellowships. 

Annual Giving (AG) was the primary way that alumni and friends participated in giving to Princeton during the campaign. More than 60,000 alumni, representing 65% of undergraduate alumni, gave AG gifts, contributing a total of $689 million to the campaign — unrestricted financial support that is essential to the University’s stability, flexibility and nimbleness to pursue new opportunities. In 2021-22, the first year of Venture Forward, AG raised a single-year record of $81.8 million. 

“It is extraordinary to witness the transformative power of a community rallying around their values to boldly advance a shared mission,” said Kevin Heaney, vice president for Advancement. “Despite a global pandemic and waves of civic discord throughout the campaign, Princeton’s alumni and friends were undaunted. Through their service and philanthropy, they enabled Princeton to ask big questions and seek new paths of knowledge that can address some of the world’s most complex challenges.” 

Venture Forward also emphasized the engagement of the Princeton alumni community — now made up of more than 100,000 living alumni — to strengthen ties to the University and one another. With new communications initiatives, a multitude of opportunities to connect on campus and around the world, and a shared dedication to service to others, Princetonians from every decade helped bring Venture Forward to every corner of the globe. 

“The success of this campaign was possible because of the unparalleled engagement of the Princeton alumni community,” said Jen Caputo, deputy vice president for Alumni Engagement. “Venture Forward was unique in its focus on all types of engagement, with alumni serving tirelessly as volunteers, reconnecting at events on campus and around the world, sharing their Orange and Black spirit online and in person, and giving their time and treasure to make the Princeton experience possible for this and future generations.” 

The impact of Venture Forward giving is already visible on the Princeton campus. Two new residential colleges, New College West and Yeh College, opened and a third, Hobson College, is under construction, enabling the University to expand undergraduate enrollment by 10%. Venture Forward gifts also reinforced the University’s groundbreaking financial aid program, increasing access and affordability and making it possible for students from every background to experience a transformative Princeton education. The average aid package for an undergraduate in 2025-26 is more than $80,000, which exceeds the cost of tuition by more than $14,500, and 69% of students qualified for aid. Approximately 25% of the newest class are lower-income students eligible for federal Pell Grants and 17% are first-generation college students. 

A major Venture Forward gift established the Emma Bloomberg Center for Access and Opportunity, which unified Princeton’s campus support programming for first-generation and lower-income students and serves as a hub for research and innovation in the field of college access and success. 

Venture Forward provided resources to amplify Princeton’s cross-disciplinary work confronting urgent challenges to the health of our planet. Major gifts established the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI), a hub for innovative research, teaching and collaboration that transformed the Princeton Environmental Institute; and named Briger Hall, which provides state-of-the-art teaching, laboratory and research facilities for HMEI and the Departments of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Geosciences. 

Briger Hall is located on Ivy Lane near Princeton Stadium, positioned among a neighborhood that includes new buildings for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) dedicated to bioengineering and the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. The neighborhood also features the new Omenn-Darling Bioengineering Institute, for which a major gift has empowered Princeton scientists across disciplines to accelerate research with tremendous potential for improving health, medicine and quality of life. 

Across Washington Street, historic Guyot Hall will be reimagined through a major gift as Eric and Wendy Schmidt Hall, the future home of the Department of Computer Science, uniting its faculty under one roof and housing related academic units. The impact of these new spaces and centers is complemented by substantial research support and gifts to create 13 new endowed professorships in engineering. 

Realizing the strategic framework’s recommendation that the University “add to its scholarly strength in the study of key regions and cultures in the contemporary world,” several important new centers and programs were established through major gifts during the campaign. These include the Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China, the M.S. Chadha Center for Global India, the Effron Center for the Study of America and Africa World Initiative. 

The Venture Forward campaign also enhanced the University’s strengths in the arts and humanities, most prominently exemplified by the new Princeton University Art Museum. The new 146,000-square-foot facility, which opened to the public on Oct. 31, enables new ways of teaching and experiencing art and the humanities for the Princeton community and visitors from around the world. 

Venture Forward supported key Princeton initiatives that translate the University’s unofficial motto, “In the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity,” into meaningful, real-world action. The Novogratz Bridge Year Program, endowed by a major Venture Forward gift, makes it possible for admitted undergraduates to defer their enrollment for a year to spend nine months of immersive learning and service in international locations. The Learning and Education Through Service (LENS) program, launched during Venture Forward with seed funding from Annual Giving, guarantees undergraduate students the opportunity for a paid service or social impact internship during their Princeton years. 

Venture Forward also emphasized deepening and broadening alumni engagement. The campaign enhanced existing initiatives and launched new efforts to build alumni engagement through events, volunteer opportunities and communications. Twenty-five all-alumni gatherings brought the campaign’s messages directly to alumni in their regions, including New York, San Francisco, London, Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Hong Kong, Los Angeles, West Palm Beach, Naples, Philadelphia, Austin, Houston, Seattle, Tokyo and Nairobi. 

An astounding number of alumni took part in the Princeton community’s exceptional tradition of volunteerism. More than 47% of undergraduate alumni and approximately 4,800 graduate alumni served in Princeton volunteer roles during the campaign, bringing their time and talent to committees for the Alumni Schools Committee, the Alumni Council, the Annual Giving Committee, affinity groups and conferences, the Association of Princeton Graduate Alumni, and regional and class leadership, among others. 

Three new affinity groups were established during the campaign: Princeton Veterans Alumni Association (PVETS), Native Alumni of Princeton (NAP) and the Association of Jewish Princeton Alumni (AJPA). In addition, alumni returned to campus for three affinity conferences: “She Roars,” honoring Princeton alumnae (2018); “Thrive,” celebrating Black alumni (2019), and “Every Voice,” celebrating LGBTQ+ alumni (2024).  All alumni affinity groups and conferences are open to all Princeton alumni without regard to identity or other protected characteristics.

In 2021, the Alumni Council launched Orange & Black Day, a new annual tradition celebrating the University’s charter day on Oct. 22. Thousands of alumni, students and University units have shared their Princeton pride, posting photos and videos to social media and celebrating together at in-person gatherings around the world. 

The campaign’s engagement goals also focused on alumni education. “TigerSide Chats,” a new online series highlighting leading faculty and administrators in conversation with alumni leaders, launched in the final year of Venture Forward. More than 2,800 people attended a TigerSide Chat in its first year. 

New communications initiatives supported the Venture Forward campaign’s goal of telling the story of Princeton today, including launching a longitudinal alumni engagement survey, implementing a comprehensive digital communications strategy, producing the Venture Forward “audacious bets” video series and initiatives such as “A Year of Forward Thinking.” In the final months of the campaign, as the federal government recalibrated its working and research relationships with Princeton and other universities, more than 11,000 alumni joined the Stand Up for Princeton and Higher Education initiative in order to serve as ambassadors for higher education. 

In December 2025, President Eisgruber began a series of Forward and Beyond gatherings around the country to celebrate the successes of Venture Forward and thank alumni for making them possible. “I look forward to venturing beyond with you in the coming years to support and attract genuine excellence in teaching and research, to stand up for our abiding values, and to pursue new avenues of inquiry that, as we often said during the campaign, ‘take us from the present to the possible,’” Eisgruber said.