Learn how to begin raising tribute gifts in support of Harvard Medical School and ensure a successful and meaningful fundraising campaign.

Tribute gifts honoring and memorializing members of our community are a treasured tradition, and we are grateful for those of you who lead these special fundraising efforts.

Since 1782, HMS has prepared generations of physicians for leadership roles in education, research, and policy to bring their skill, compassion, and integrity to patient care. For over 200 years, the School has influenced and shaped the design of medical education throughout the world, always supported by philanthropy as we strive toward our mission each day. Thank you for your support and advocacy on behalf of HMS.

PLEASE NOTE: If you’d like to make a tribute gift in memory of a lost loved one or in honor of someone special rather than organizing a campaign, please visit our online gift form and select “Other” from the “Select a Fund” dropdown. In the “Other Fund Name” text box, write the name of the fund you want to support along with the phrase “in memory of [name]” or “in honor of [name].” Alternatively, you can download and complete this form and return it with your check to the address indicated.

Step One: Directing Gifts

Consider where you’d like donors to direct their giving. Which School priority would be most meaningful to the individual you are honoring or memorializing? Tribute gifts of any size can be directed to:

Scholarship Fund

$500,000 endowed // $50,000 current use

Supports exceptional HMS students dedicated to pursuing their life’s work in medicine as compassionate physicians and researchers working to improve human health. Student beneficiaries are honored with the named scholar title.

Financial Aid Fund

$250,000 endowed // $25,000 current use

Provides critical, need-based support to many talented HMS students each year—future leaders in medicine and the biomedical sciences. Financial aid funds provide the School with much-needed latitude in fulfilling its commitments to all of its medical students each year and are intended to be broad, with no restrictions. Financial aid funds can be named, but beneficiaries are not named.

REACH Scholarship Program

$22,500 current use

Enables admitted students with financial need who demonstrate qualities of Resilience, Excellence, Achievement, Compassion, and Helping the underserved to accept their admission to HMS by offering additional scholarship funds within their financial aid package. Gifts to the REACH Scholarship Program will advance the School’s goal to recruit the most deserving students who have overcome remarkable obstacles to become the physicians of tomorrow. Each gift of $22,500 allows us to offer a REACH scholarship for one year.

Total Tribute Giving of $5,000-$9,999

To any fundraising priority

In gratitude for these gifts, HMS develops a framed certificate acknowledging these efforts. This certificate may be presented to the effort’s honoree or kept by the leader of a memorial fundraising effort.

Total Tribute Giving of $10,000-$24,999

To Financial Aid and Education

Name a chair in honor of or memory of someone special in the Joseph B. Martin Conference Center Amphitheater. Select a personal inscription for the elegant, brushed steel plaque, which will be affixed to the back of your chair.

Total Tribute Giving of $25,000-$49,999

​​​​​​To Where it is Needed Most

Name an Individual Study Room in the Tosteson Medical Education Center Student Study and Collaboration Center. These individual study rooms offer students quiet space and privacy to study. Study rooms are 30 square feet each.

Total Tribute Giving of $50,000-$99,999

To Where it is Needed Most

Name a tutorial room or classroom in the Tosteston Medical Education Center Learning Suites. These rooms support a dynamic and flexible learning environment with moveable furniture facilitating seamless transitions between various teaching formats. They accommodate moderate and small-group interactive teaching modalities; peer observation of teaching and other faculty development activities; teaching and evaluation of clinical skills; and simulation of clinical situations and pathophysiological processes.

Total Tribute Giving of $100,000

To Where it is Needed Most

Name a Clinical Study/Exam Room in the Tosteson Medical Education Center (TMEC) Clinical Skills Center. These rooms accommodate students’ clinical skills teaching and assessment, including the OSCEs (Objective Structured Clinical Exams) and the GU and GYN exams with standardized patients. These 221-square-foot rooms incorporate observation booths and audio capabilities for small-group training.

Emily Cahill

Executive Director, Development Communications and Donor Engagement

617-384-8529