RISD’s 2023 fiscal year closes with more than $17 million raised in support of undergraduate scholarships, graduate fellowships, internships and museum programming.
Surge in RISD Community Engagement Boosts Giving and Volunteerism
Image
With increasingly robust engagement among alumni, families and friends and support from corporate and foundation partners, RISD raised more than $9.1 million in fiscal year 2024, which ended on June 30. Those gifts enable RISD to sustain its singular approach to art and design education and provide new resources for teaching and learning, enhanced forms of student support and much more.
“We have seen a real blossoming of interest in supporting RISD’s uniquely innovative, human-centered and critical approach to art and design,” says Amanda Clark MacMullan, vice president of Institutional Advancement. “This year, new donors stepped up to support RISD priorities, old friends deepened their giving, and community members volunteered countless hours and gathered to celebrate our successes. The RISD community makes clear, again and again, how valuable RISD is to them and to the world.”
In 2024, donors gave over $3.7 million in gifts to the RISD Fund, a source of unrestricted support that touches all aspects of life and learning at the institution. The RISD Fund provides tools for teaching and learning, social justice and equity programming, improvements to the campus environment, financial aid and more. RISD’s financial aid budget was a historically high $38 million in the 2023–24 academic year, with 100 percent of undergraduates who demonstrated need receiving aid.
“We have seen a real blossoming of interest in supporting RISD’s uniquely innovative, human-centered and critical approach to art and design.”
RISD saw growth in both new donors—118 first-time donors made gifts to the RISD Fund—and the size of donors’ gifts. In fiscal year 2024 there was a 20 percent increase over the prior year in the number of gifts in the $10,000–100,000 range. Donors gave to a wide array of priorities, serving not only students and faculty but also the public.
Project Open Door (POD), a free art and design education program that helps Rhode Island high school students prepare for post-secondary creative and academic opportunities, received new funding from the Richard and Jean Coyne Family Foundation and the McMillan-Stewart Foundation. Together with longstanding support from partners including the Hasbro Foundation, these investments enhance capacity at POD as it prepares to celebrate its 20th anniversary within the Teaching + Learning in Art + Design department.
The RISD Museum received significant collections of art and design as well as funding to support events, exhibitions and public programming. Other gifts deepen the collections and support operations at Fleet Library and bolster RISD’s Trek program, in which RISD alumni and industry partners serve as on-site guides for current students interested in tech, entertainment, apparel and other industries.
In addition, 2024 was a strong year for endowed financial aid that benefits both undergraduate and graduate students. Support for endowed scholarships, like the Tage and Emma Frid Scholarship created in honor of late Furniture Design faculty member Tage Frid, make all the difference in the world to artists like Hili Slav 24 FD/PT, who mastered skills like welding, 3D printing and carving and developed a great deal of confidence at RISD.
“I am so thankful for my scholarship, which allowed me to push myself as hard as I could and not be afraid of attempting to make something too ambitious for crit,” Slav says. “I feel ready to steward the knowledge that has been so generously shared with me during my time at RISD.”
RISD students themselves extended a hand to their peers, donating art supplies and food products for fellow students during the inaugural collaboration between the RISD Food Pantry, 2nd Life Exchange, the Center for Student Involvement and the RISD Fund.
Volunteerism at RISD continues to grow. In 2024, 452 alumni, family members and friends served on RISD’s board, councils, giving societies, advisory groups and committees. With more than 40 alumni clubs, 20 affinity groups and over 3,700 registered alumni in the RISD Network, opportunities to connect personally and professionally abound.
That sense of coming together was on display during Commencement + Reunion Weekend, held May 31–June 2. Featuring the Inaugural Black Alumni Reunion, the weekend celebration was attended by 886 alumni, families and friends dating back to the Class of 1959.
Learn more about giving to RISD.
Gillian Kiley / top photo by Leah LaRiccia
September 16, 2024
Related Stories
Graduating students, families, alumni, faculty and staff marked the occasion with three days of events, including dinners, discussions and dancing.
Four incoming first-year students discuss the enormous impact that POD has had on their lives.