The University of Washington has announced the successful completion of its 10-year Be Boundless campaign, and I want to take a moment to recognize the critical role that UW Medicine and each of you have played in this historic achievement through Accelerate: The Campaign for UW Medicine.
Over the 10 years of the Accelerate Campaign, more than 84,000 individuals and organizations donated a total of $2.5 billion to support a variety of education, research and patient care priorities at UW Medicine. Because of this campaign, among other things, we have been able to:
- Advance innovative partnerships and launch new institutes including the University of Washington School of Medicine-Gonzaga University Regional Health Partnership, Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine, Garvey Institute for Brain Health Solutions and the UW Medicine Diabetes Institute;
- Make breakthroughs in research to prevent and treat humanity’s most serious diseases through precision medicine, protein design, stem cell-based therapies, artificial organs, cancer vaccines, and much more;
- Increase access to high quality healthcare in our region by expanding mental and brain health programs, specialist services in underserved urban and rural communities and care for our uninsured and underinsured community members;
- Contribute to addressing the physician shortage in underserved urban and rural communities by expanding training programs and increasing our MD scholarship endowment by more than 300% to over $100 million; and,
- Provide critical leadership and support to the regional, national and global public health response to COVID-19, with more than $30 million raised this past spring to fund a variety of urgent needs from mobile testing vans to caregiver wellness programs.
Accelerate has allowed us to attract and retain the best and brightest students, faculty and staff and has given us the ability to advance many of your most innovative ideas in service of our mission. Above all else, this fundraising achievement shows how much our community believes in each one of you and in our collective potential to significantly improve the health of people here in our community and around the world.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how fortunate we are to have such a high-performing, experienced Advancement team working in partnership with each of you to develop the successful fundraising strategies necessary to increase our impact and bolster mission-critical work. Congratulations to our Advancement colleagues for exceeding the goals of the Campaign and to each of you who were collaborative and responsive partners along the way.
While the Accelerate Campaign has allowed us to significantly increase our impact and pace of progress, there is still much more to be done and now is not the time to slow down. I encourage each of you to continue deepening your partnership with our Advancement colleagues to find new opportunities for our patients and community to express their gratitude and support our mission through philanthropy.
The extraordinary generosity that our community has shown us over these past 10 years reflects their gratitude and belief in you, in your excellence and in your commitment to advancing our mission to improve health for all people. Thank you for your tireless efforts and for your contributions to this philanthropic achievement.
Sincerely,
Paul G. Ramsey, M.D.
CEO, UW Medicine
Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs and
Dean of the School of Medicine,
University of Washington
