Expanding Access

With your partnership, we can keep CU Denver accessible and affordable through scholarship support. When you contribute to a scholarship fund, you create the potential to transform a life and create a ripple effect throughout our city, state, and region.

How Students Benefit

Affordability

More students, particularly the many first-generation and lower income students we serve, will have an affordable path to a degree.

Greater Value

By reducing or eliminating student debt, scholarships directly and significantly influence the overall value our graduates receive from their degrees throughout their lifetimes.

More Opportunity

Students who earn their degrees benefit from more opportunity throughout their lives, enjoy greater career satisfaction, and own homes at twice the rate of those without degrees.

Five students seated on stairs interacting with each other.

How the Community Benefits

Greater Social Mobility

CU Denver continues to be ranked #1 in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain Region for social mobility by U.S. News & World Report. This means students who graduate from CU Denver are destined to elevate their socio-economic potential, create strong communities, and contribute to a more vibrant society.

Civic Engagement

People who earn college degrees are more likely to participate in civic life, including volunteering, voting, attending public meetings, and joining community organizations.

Student presenting renderings to a group in a classroom.

Types of Scholarships

Keep CU Denver accessible and affordable to deserving students throughout our communities.

Endowed Scholarships

Endowed scholarships support students in perpetuity by creating a lasting legacy. A donor may establish an endowed scholarship with a minimum gift of $25,000. The University of Colorado Foundation invests and manages these funds, and, based on performance, 4 percent to 4.5 percent of the endowment’s fair market value becomes available annually to provide scholarship awards to students (e.g., a gift of $25,000 can provide an annual scholarship of $1,000). The larger the endowment, the greater the annual award available to students.

Donors often work with us to establish an endowed scholarship with a pledge payable over time (up to five years). While contributing at least $5,000 annually to build the principal of the endowed fund, donors can also provide additional annual gifts to award scholarships while the endowment builds. These gifts generally equal the anticipated annual disbursement of the fund once it is fully endowed. When the principal reaches the desired level of funding ($25,000 minimum), the endowment is considered fully funded and provides awards in perpetuity.

A Scholarship Changed Everything

When Jabez Brown enrolled at CU Denver, he expected his life to be shaped by long work hours as much as study. To cover tuition and living costs, he would need to work six or seven days each week. Receiving a scholarship changed everything.

“It really lifted the pressure off me,” Brown said. “Now I can focus more on school, on my mental health, and on things that will help me grow.”

I want to make the most of this chance. Someday, when I’m in the position to help other students, I want to make sure they can feel the same support I’ve felt. - Jabez Brown, Gates Scholarship Recipient

Man in a navy polo, facial hair, and black hair in locks smiling with his teeth.

Brown is a marketing major who grew up in Denver and wanted a place where he could keep growing while remaining connected to family.

Tools

Resources

Schools & Colleges

Campus Affiliates

Office of Advancement