Endowment
An endowment gift connects you to UCLA Athletics in significant and powerful ways. Your donations help award student-athlete scholarships, sustained elite performance, and operational costs each year.
How
Endowments Work
With the leadership and financial expertise of the UCLA Foundation driving us, we invest your gift. The principle remains untouched. Each year, we use the distribution - like dividends on a mutual fund account - to support student-athletes and programs. Investment returns above the distribution rate help the value of the endowment increase over time.
Example
$1,000,000
Endowment
Gift
4.5%
Distribution rate
$45,000
projected funds in early years
As the principle grows, the distribution increases
Types of Endowments
Scholarship Endowments
Scholarship endowments fund academic support including tuition, room, and board.
Program Endowments
A program endowment supports a specific sport, enabling UCLA athletics to create sustainability within sport operations. Your support for program endowment fuels ELITE student-athlete and coach experiences today while securing the future for generations to come.
Head Coach Endowments
Head coach endowments supply UCLA Athletics with a perpetual source of income that helps to provide the resources needed to attract and retain the nation's top student-athletes, coaches and staff.
Women of Westwood
Women of Westwood is a group endowment established by a donor committed to advancing women's athletics at UCLA and inspiring others to support women's sports programs. The allocation of funds is determined by the Senior Woman Administrator (SWA) and the Athletic Director (AD). Currently, the endowment is being used to fund postgraduate scholarships for female student-athletes.
Excellence Funds
An excellence fund is a pool of endowed funds for a specific sport. As these excellence funds grow, they create the margin of excellence required to fulfill our mission to develop champions through academic excellence, competitive greatness and social responsibility
Four Deep Scholarship Endowment and Program Endowment
Opportunities
“”
Student-athletes deserve a lot of credit. It takes exceptional discipline to balance daily practices, games away from home, keeping up studies, and graduating. I believe it's very important to help these young people, to steer them in the right direction.
— Bob Wilson
Endowment initiatives seek to build upon the strong foundation of perpetual resources provided by the original investors of the Four Deep Scholarship Endowment Campaign. Chaired by UCLA graduate Bob Wilson, the Four Deep initiative was created in 1988, and originally sought to endow four scholarships at each position for UCLA Football. Due to the success of the Four Deep initiative it was subsequently expanded to include all UCLA scholarship athletes. It is for this reason and the need to fully fund in true dollars all NCAA maximum allowable scholarships that additional participation is sought, thus providing an endowed, sustainable scholarship program.
By creating a Four Deep Scholarship Endowment or a Program Endowment you will forever link your name to a championship tradition, while making a direct impact on future generations of UCLA student-athletes. The foundation is strong. Ensure the future by becoming a part of the movement.
endowment growth last year through new contributions
UCLA: $3,015,412
rising annual scholarship cost for ucla student-athletes:
2003:
$5.7M
2007:
$8.2M
2011:
$10.5M
2015:
$12.4M
2021:
$17.5M
2025:
$20.7M