Yale SOM Alumni Fund

Provide flexible funds to meet emerging needs and underwrite progress that furthers the mission and aspirations of the school. To be a true pioneer in management education, Yale SOM must develop innovative programs and new initiatives as they become relevant. By directing Alumni Fund gifts to this area, donors enable essential activities that enhance SOM’s excellence.

Help SOM stay competitive in attracting top students. The school is spending nearly $12 million annually for MBA scholarships this year, and existing scholarship funds cover approximately one-quarter of this expense. Alumni Fund dollars can make a difference in how many scholarships are offered to outstanding students and how many of these students ultimately choose SOM over our competitors.

Support eligible alumni working in the public or non-profit sectors. Yale SOM’s generous educational loan forgiveness program was the first of its kind at a business school, and since 1986 SOM has provided more than $15.3 million in loan forgiveness to more than 500 alumni, with an increasing number of applications to the program each year. Recent recipients work for organizations including Achievement Network, CARE, and Global Warming Mitigation Project. Alumna Hope Taylor Norman ’02 said, “I was able to follow a career dream due to the Yale SOM Loan Forgiveness Program. The Yale SOM Loan Forgiveness Program gave us the extra cushion we needed to take the financial risk and follow my dream.” To sustain this hallmark program, SOM spends more than $1 million per year. Alumni Fund gifts to Loan Forgiveness are critical to the school’s ability to fund the program.

Your support will help Yale SOM strengthen and expand its entrepreneurship curriculum and train the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders. Yale SOM’s Program on Entrepreneurship serves as the academic home at Yale for entrepreneurship curriculum, complementing the extracurricular activities and programs happening across the campus. The Program is built on the conviction that entrepreneurs, like other leaders of organizations, must have a thorough command of the principles of leadership and management, and that entrepreneurial skills are valuable to leaders across all sectors.

Yale SOM faculty are dedicated teachers and leading researchers who play an outsized role in shaping business theory, policy, and practice. Gifts directed to research have enabled Yale SOM to become a leader in the emerging field of behavioral finance, to produce significant work on competition and antitrust behavior, and to make important contributions to the fields of organizational behavior and ethical leadership, among others. Students get unparalleled access to this faculty expertise, thanks to the small faculty-to-student ratio and sense of community at the school. Gifts to support faculty research have enormous impact on the culture and character of the school as well as on the world beyond Yale. 

Help Yale SOM enhance its signature integrated curriculum, which teaches students to approach management challenges with a nuanced understanding of how markets, organizations, and the global economy work. Throughout the curriculum, “raw” online cases train students to find solutions to complex and unstructured problems, like the ones they will encounter in their working lives. Ethical leadership and structured problem solving are woven through every course and case study. Gifts directed to curriculum and case development enhance the curriculum with new courses, initiatives, and programs, while further leveraging the strengths of the Global Network for Advanced Management and Yale University.

Provide critical support for curriculum development, programmatic innovations, and students in the MBA for Executives (EMBA) program. The EMBA program combines the rigor of Yale SOM’s integrated core curriculum and leadership development program with advanced study in a chosen area at the nexus of business and society: asset management, healthcare, or sustainability. Drawing on the expertise and knowledge of thought leaders from across Yale, the program provides students with a broad understanding of management and a deep knowledge of their industry.

Donor support makes a difference in the number of scholarships Yale SOM is able to offer the ambitious and broad-minded students admitted to the Master of Advanced Management (MAM) program. The MAM is a one-year degree program at Yale SOM for exceptional MBA graduates from  Global Network for Advanced Management schools who aspire to become global leaders for business and society. Current MAM students hail from twenty-five countries and a diverse array of industries. Tuition for the MAM program is the same as SOM’s full-time MBA program and can be prohibitive for potential students, especially those from emerging and developing countries.

Yale SOM’s one-year Master of Management Studies degree programs leverage the school’s intellectual strengths. With programs in Asset Management, Global Business & Society, and Systemic Risk, students gain rigorous and specialized training that prepares them for leadership roles. Tuition for the MMS programs are the same as SOM’s full-time MBA program and can be prohibitive for potential students, especially those from emerging and developing countries. Donor contributions will allow the school to offer a greater number of scholarships and enroll talented students in these programs.

The Yale School of Management is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive community. We see it as part of our mission to contribute to greater representation for underrepresented groups in management, and actively seek students with a wide range of backgrounds, interests, and points of view. We aspire to build and sustain a welcoming community in which unique perspectives are heard and valued—and all students feel that they belong. Specifically, the fund would support initiatives for prospective and current students. C&I initiatives focus on promoting access to a Yale SOM education to under-represented markets, attracting an increasingly diverse student body to the school, and fostering an inclusive student community.