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.

Table of Contents

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:

Where it is Needed Most

Provides vital discretionary funding that Dean George Q. Daley can leverage to propel his plans and vision for the future of HMS.

Financial Aid and Education

Upholds our twin values of need-blind admissions and need-based aid, ensuring that HMS is accessible to and affordable for all admitted students.

Diversity and Community

Enables HMS to serve communities beyond our campus, convene a diverse student body across our campus, and develop and promote a faculty as diverse as the communities we serve.

Global Health and Service

Enables HMS to train future leaders and to strengthen and transform care delivery models, policies, and systems in pursuit of health equity across the U.S. and around the world.

Research and Therapeutics

Fuels and enhances HMS’s ecosystem of discovery of the basic mechanisms of biology and disease development.

Step Two: Notifying HMS

Once you have decided to initiate a tribute-giving campaign and you’ve chosen a designation area for tribute donations, please inform us of your intentions so we can assure your gifts reach your desired fund.

Notify HMS AAD

Step Three: Fundraising

Next, consider whether your efforts will yield the minimum for an endowment gift—which establishes a named program, professorship, or scholarship in perpetuity—or a current-use gift, which provides HMS with critical, immediate resources to meet the current needs of our community and support innovative, emerging research and projects. Endowment gifts are distributed every year, while current-use funds are deployed in a single year. Both types of gifts are essential to HMS and are recognized and celebrated.

To establish an endowment in perpetuity, it is typically necessary to identify one or two donors who can meet at least 75% of the endowment minimum.

Minimums

  • 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.

Learn more about additional endowment and current-use fund options, including fellowships and professorships here »

Interested in an Endowed Tribute?

Endowments are a wonderful way to honor someone and leave a permanent legacy at Harvard Medical School. Endowments start at $100,000 and generate an annual impact that will continue to support you or your honoree's passions in perpetuity.

If you have questions, please contact Emily Cahill, executive director of development communications and donor engagement.

Contact Emily

Communicating With Contributors

Sharing personal stories is often the most effective way to fundraise from colleagues, family, and friends. In the case of raising tribute gifts, consider the individual you are honoring or memorializing and their relationship with HMS. Why is it special to them? What has the School enabled in their lives?

This is also an opportunity to articulate why you’re asking donors to designate their gift to a particular school priority, such as global health or financial aid. AAD staff can provide resources that explain more about the impact of giving to each of these areas.

Ways to Give

Online

The easiest way for donors to support tribute efforts is via our online giving form »

Please ask donors to select “Other” from the “Select a Fund” dropdown and enter the designation you selected in step one and the name of the person you’re fundraising for.

Give online

Via Check

To mail a check, instruct donors to download our tribute giving form »

Have them complete the form and mail it with their check, made payable to Harvard Medical School to:
Harvard Medical School
Alumni Affairs and Development
P.O. Box 419720
Boston, MA 02241-9720

Other Ways to Give

Learn more about the many ways to make tribute gifts to HMS, including:

Step Four: Acknowledging Gifts

In thanks for every tribute gift, donors will receive a customized thank-you note from the AAD office, acknowledging their gift, its intention, and who is being honored.

In the case of honoree gifts, HMS will also send the honoree a notification of the gift. In the case of memorial gifts, the leader of the fundraising effort will receive a notification that a gift has been made, allowing them to reach out and thank the donor personally.

Our office will also periodically update you on the status of your fundraising efforts, with reports on aggregate giving toward your goal. We will work with you on the best cadence and timing for these reports.

With Our Gratitude: Recognition and Naming

We are deeply grateful for your work in supporting our community. In addition to thanking donors and notifying you or the honoree of gifts, we can formally recognize fundraising efforts in the following ways:

  • 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.

Questions? Please contact:

Emily Cahill

Emily Cahill

Executive Director, Development Communications and Donor Engagement

617-384-8529