Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. When you give to UB, you can designate your gift for a specific school, scholarship or program, or provide it as unrestricted funds. You decide how to make a difference.

Yes! Every gift, no matter the dollar amount, is important. Every year, gifts of $100 or less add up to more than $500,000 in support to UB.

Yes. Your gift is 100% tax deductible.

Gifts to the UB Fund provide immediate support for students. Gifts to the UB Fund are counted toward the Boldly Buffalo campaign goal.

Rest assured that all information about UB donors is handled with respect and confidentiality to the extent provided by the law.

On the giving form, please select the option for “Employer Matching Funds.” If you are an employer interested in matching your employees’ gifts, please contact:

To learn more about opportunities to get involved—including offering matching gifts as an employer—please contact:

Yes. Many people choose to invest by including a gift to UB in their will or estate plan, or by naming the university as a beneficiary of a retirement account. To learn more about how a legacy gift can make an impact, contact Wendy Irving.

There are many ways to make a gift to UB, which include using stock and other appreciated assets, retirement accounts, and legacy gifts through your will or estate plan. To learn more about these options, contact Wendy Irving.

On April 29, 2021, UB extended its goal for the Boldly Buffalo campaign to $1 billion. 

We began the Boldly Buffalo campaign in 2014 and publicly launched it in April 2018. Since the public launch, the campaign has raised more than $200 million. Our alumni and friends have shown us how excited they are about UB’s future, and that they are committed to UB’s success and the success of our students. The desire of our alumni and friends to change the world through their donations to UB makes it impossible to stop the Boldly Buffalo campaign now. More than we could ever have predicted when we launched this campaign, the university relies on investments from supporters to ensure that we are able to continue our important work serving our students, our faculty and our world.

Visit this page to view campaign priorities.

The best public universities have the strongest private support. With additional scholarship dollars, more endowed faculty positions and innovative programs that bring UB’s research and innovation to the world, donors will help UB join the ranks of the Top 25.

Nationwide, state spending on higher education has been declining. UB continues to be more reliant on tuition revenue as the primary source of funding. In fact, revenue from tuition is twice as much as the amount provided by the State of New York. While the state offers TAP grants to low income students, and Excelsior Scholarships for middle class families, these programs do not cover the full cost of college attendance for students. Donor dollars can help make up the difference. Gifts to the Boldly Buffalo campaign are used to directly support students with scholarships, funding to cover emergencies (a high need this past year), or money to cover experiential learning opportunities. Donors also fund endowed faculty positions, which the state does not do, and pay for new facilities and upgrades to our campuses that the state cannot fully fund. In essence, philanthropy provides enhancements that would not be possible with New York State funding alone.

Certainly, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented challenges for all sectors of our life, economy, and many not-for-profits that rely on the generosity of supporters to fund their operations.   

But the pandemic has also illustrated the urgent need for health care, education and research in our society – three areas in which UB is contributing meaningfully. UB is playing a key role in answering the questions and challenges presented by the pandemic, and many other global challenges, while staying focused on our core mission of providing an outstanding education to our students. Here, we are empowering our faculty to do the research that is helping to bring the pandemic to an end and making our communities and families safe. We are examining the potential long-term effects of the pandemic and providing support and solutions for our students and our communities. We are also focused on educating a new generation of leaders, students who will graduate from UB and l lead us through future global challenges and crises.

In short, health care and education are areas where donors still continue to invest because they are focused on having their gifts achieve broader societal impacts – and our donors see that they can do that here at UB.

Thanks to university leadership working hard to manage the current fiscal situation—exploring ways to maximize every resource, including major grants, and dollars invested in the university by donors—UB is in a good position to weather the financial challenges brought forth by the pandemic, though challenges remain.

With that said, dollars raised by the Boldly Buffalo campaign are not used to fund day-to-day operations of our three campuses. They are earmarked to directly support students in need, or are designated for specific purposes; some as endowed funds. University endowments are a compilation of thousands of individual funds gifted to the university by donors for specific purposes. Universities like UB receive and manage endowed funds and are legally bound to spend the money in those endowments the way donors determined when they gave that money. Some donors choose to support current needs at UB, meaning their gifts can be spent immediately, but must be spent as they have directed and often for a specific purpose (for example, supporting a student who is studying engineering).

Dollars raised by the Boldly Buffalo campaign are not used to fund day-to-day operations of our three campuses. They are earmarked to directly support students in need, or are designated for specific purposes; some as endowed funds. University endowments are a compilation of thousands of individual funds gifted to the university by donors for specific purposes. Universities like UB receive and manage endowed funds and are legally bound to spend the money in those endowments the way donors determined when they gave that money. Some donors choose to support current needs at UB, meaning their gifts can be spent immediately, but must be spent as they have directed and often for a specific purpose (for example, supporting a student who is studying engineering).

Contributions to the University at Buffalo are processed and managed by the UB Foundation (UBF) Inc. UBF also manages the university’s endowment. For more information, visit ub-foundation.org.