What To
Support
There are many ways to give through Michigan Athletics, and we'd love to discuss them with you to find something that suits your character, your principles, and your desire for impact.
The Michigan Athletics Champions Fund allows us to comprehensively prepare student-athletes in the most meaningful enrichment areas: counseling, career and leadership development, performance nutrition, athletic medicine, strength and conditioning, international travel and recruiting.
Our reality is that more than 20 percent of our annual budget comes from private philanthropic donations; it is your generous support that enables us to comprehensively support our more than 900 student-athletes. Michigan Athletics receives: academic success, athletic medicine, career preparation, counseling, leadership development, performance nutrition, recruiting, strength and conditioning, and team travel.
$0
... in Michigan Tax Revenue
... from the state of Michigan Budget
... from the University of Michigan Budget
... from University of Michigan Student Fees
Check out the Fiscal Year 2024 Champions Fund Impact Report here
to see how our donors collectively came together to support Michigan student-athletes!
Nine Pillars of the
Champions
Fund
2
Academic Success
- Prioritize academic excellence to ensure our student-athletes succeed in the classroom and graduate, prepared to take on the world.
- Provide access to top-tier academic resources, personalized tutoring, and dedicated study spaces.
- Facilitate a holistic academic experience catered to each student-athletes' interests and needs.
3
Career Preparation
Michigan Athletics Career Center
- Proactively support career readiness and planning through MACC programming.
- Offer transformative experiences and global networking opportunities.
- Key offerings include:
- Interview Labs
- Resume Reviews
- Name, Image, and Likeness Entrepreneurship
- Career Venture Networking Trips
- Professional Etiquette Seminars
- Micro-Internships
- Contract and Other Legal Considerations
4
Counseling
- Ensure access to comprehensive mental health services that nurture the mind, enabling our student-athletes to face challenges in competition and in life.
- Support resilient individuals ready to thrive amidst the pressures of elite sports and academia.
- Key sessions include:
- Personal 1:1 counseling
- Team sessions
- Mental health workshops
- Restorative yoga and other wellbeing classes
5
Leadership Development
- Empower Wolverines through transformative experiences to be the best version of themselves, now and in the future.
- Provide invaluable life skills through innovative programs and hands-on learning.
- Facilitate community service and engagement opportunities.
- Key activities include:
- Discover Your Leadership Style Workshop
- Living Your Values Seminar
- Personal Branding for Name, Image, and Likeness
- Financial Literacy Workshops
- Leadership W.I.N.S. Series, focusing on Wellness, Integrity, Navigation, Self-Awareness
6
Performance Nutrition
- Provide tailored, individualized nutritional strategies, critical for the high demands of a student-athlete.
- Deliver an evidence-based, sport-specific nutrition approach.
- Function within three areas, providing: team education, fueling and data collection.
- Dietitians collaborate with coaches and medical staff to optimize health and performance.
- Part of a comprehensive team ensuring the well-being of all Wolverine student-athletes.
7
Recruiting
- The lifeblood of Michigan Athletics, recruiting brings fresh, determined talent to Ann Arbor.
- Coaches recruit top student-athletes locally, nationally and internationally.
- Over 75% of student-athletes come from outside Michigan.
- Donor support empowers coaches to discover talent and showcase the Michigan Difference.
8
Strength and Conditioning
- Sculpt resilient and powerful student-athletes equipped to face the rigors of competition.
- Offer individualized, year-round training programs for 29 sport programs.
- Supported by 16 full-time trainers, 2 fellows, 1 graduate assistant and 8 interns across 6 facilities.
- Employ scientifically supported methodologies tailored for each sport.
- Generous donor support helps maintain training environments that allow our student-athletes to excel.
9
Team Travel
- Essential to the collegiate athletic experience, covering transportation to accommodations.
- Logistical backbone for away games and tournaments.
- Ensure safe, comfortable, and efficient travel for our student-athletes and coaches.
- Your support enables teams to focus on excellence, arriving prepared and ready to represent Michigan with distinction.
Scholarships
Support of Michigan Athletics scholarships allows our programs to strive for excellence in competition, while providing our Wolverines a world-class academic experience. Scholarship funds are critical to the long-term success and sustainability of our student-athletes and athletic programs, and donors create a lasting legacy of support to Michigan Athletics through their generosity.
Athletics Scholarship Fund
Your gift to the scholarship fund provides incredible opportunities for our student-athletes. Help us fund the nearly $40 million it costs to cover scholarships each year.
The 2024-25 Expendable Scholarship Impact Report is available here.
Named Expendable Scholarships
Empower Michigan's student-athletes immediately by creating a named expendable scholarship. Contribute $100,000 for Olympic Sports or elevate your impact with $200,000 for Ice Hockey, Football, Men's and Women's Basketball. Your contribution fuels their dreams today, nurturing their potential and shaping champions in sport and life.
By investing in endowed scholarships, donors help enhance our legacy and ensure that Michigan Athletics continues to be the Leaders and Best in every way. Visit our interactive endowment gallery to see endowed scholarship support by team. We sincerely thank all of the generous supporters who have established endowed scholarships. Their gifts, which are listed here, provide academic support for our student-athletes in perpetuity and contribute to the long-term sustainability of our programs.
Postgraduate
Scholarships
Thanks to the exceptional generosity of our donors, Michigan student-athletes have access to transformative postgraduate scholarship opportunities as they prepare to take the next steps in their academic and professional journeys. These scholarships help our student-athletes pursue advanced degrees, professional certifications, and meaningful research, empowering them to grow beyond the playing field and classroom. With the help of our donor community, these scholarships unlock new possibilities, enabling Wolverine student-athletes to shape impactful careers and inspire change in their fields
Letterwinners M Club
Postgraduate Scholarship
Study Abroad
Scholarships
Through generous contributions from donors, Michigan student-athletes have the unique opportunity to travel abroad with their teams to compete, experience new cultures, and build lifelong bonds as a program. Many U-M student-athletes are not able to study abroad, due to the rigorous balance of athletics and academics. International travel supported by donors makes it possible for our student-athletes to make unforgettable memories while seeing the world.
Providing support for student-athlete scholarships is one of the most powerful gifts you can make to Michigan Athletics, allowing us to support our mission of providing our student-athletes with all of the resources they need to be successful at Michigan and beyond. We provide scholarship funding to pay the academic costs for the NCAA maximum number of scholarship-eligible athletes, providing them with one of the finest educations available anywhere in the world.
Hills Family
Scholarship
Marc and Lisa Jacobson
International Experience Scholarship
Rocchio Family Foundation
International Scholarship
The Athletic Department offers a limited number of scholarships for student-athletes to participate in university-run study abroad programs during the spring or summer terms. This opportunity is open to all student-athletes, regardless of athletic scholarship status
Apply Today For the Raeder's Raider Spirit Award 
I am thankful for my scholarship for countless reasons, but perhaps most importantly because my career at Michigan will not be ending as an athlete; the institution has given me too much passion for learning and igniting change to stop representing it after my body no longer can perform as an athlete.
Erin Finn, MD, MPH
Women's Track and Field Alumna
U-M School of Public Health Master's Degree, 2019
U-M Medical School, 2023
Michigan Athletics prides itself in providing unique, eye-opening experiences for its student-athletes that help them develop comprehensively as individuals. Through career and leadership development programming, community service, and international travel, our student-athletes are exposed to businesses, cultures and communities they may not otherwise have the opportunity to learn about.
Career Venture Trips
The Michigan Athletics Career Center organizes Career Venture trips every summer, connecting student-athletes with passionate U-M alumni and donors in a diverse array of professions and corporate settings. Student-athletes may apply to participate in five separate ventures to Minnesota, Chicago, New York City, Miami and Washington, DC, where they visit a myriad of businesses while experiencing the unique personality of each city. The goal is to help them learn what they do - and do not - want to pursue in life after college.
Once the student-athletes return, they are asked to submit reflections on the experience; critical takeaways, what they learned about themselves, and feedback on how to improve the trips. Some call it a game-changer, we call it the Michigan Difference.
Let's Go Do Vietnam Trip
Thanks to the generosity of a donor, Michigan student-athletes travel to Vietnam annually with the purpose to live social responsibility internationally, enhance global perspectives, strengthen leadership mindset and skills, and experience American culture and history through a different lens.
The week-long experience typically includes stops in Hanoi, Ninh Binh, Hoi An, Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh City and Hong Kong. The juxtaposition of some of the most beautiful places in the world next to places that the world seems to have forgotten, is a reminder of privilege and that we are all connected by our humanity. The student-athletes return home with a new perspective, deep connections with each other, and inspiration to create a positive impact in their own communities.
Facilities
The Stephen M. Ross Athletic Campus provides student-athletes with state-of-the-art facilities that they need to excel athletically and academically. All of our teams, regardless of revenue generation, benefit from world-class facility projects, setting a new standard for the rest of the country. The following projects will unify our program and build a stronger community with our teams, department, campus, alumni, donors and fans.
We would like to sincerely thank all of the individuals who invested in strengthening the foundation of Michigan Athletics.
Michigan has the best academic and athletic facilities in the world to help my development as a student-athlete. I'm from Ghana and am a first-generation college student, and the area I grew up in doesn't have a lot of resources. I am so grateful to be at Michigan.
Farouk Osman
Men's Soccer Student-Athlete |
2017, '19-21
To learn more about making a capital gift, please contact our Major Gifts team at AthleticsMajorGifts@umich.edu
LOOK TO MICHIGAN CAMPAIGN
FACILITY
PROJECTS
Through generous donations during the Look to Michigan Campaign, Michigan Athletics has successfully completed the below facility renovations. For a list of other proposed facility and campus plans, click here.
1
Schembechler Hall
Football Locker Rooms
In partnership with leaders across Michigan Athletics and the football program, we set out to pursue a new vision for the Schembechler Hall locker room to truly support our football team like the champions they are. The space requires considerable innovation and ingenuity to accommodate the needs of over 100 student-athletes.
In addition to state-of-the-art strength and conditioning and athletic medicine and rehabilitation facilities, the locker room and adjacent spaces will serve as multi-purpose areas that allow our student-athletes to relax, re-energize and strengthen team culture and unity.
2
William Davidson
Player Development Center
Women's Basketball Locker Rooms
Thanks to funding from loyal Michigan Athletics supporters, approximately 11,500 gross square feet will be renovated to create expanded and improved inclusive locker room, shower, team and support areas in the William Davidson Player Development Center for the women's team. The project also includes necessary electrical and mechanical work at a total estimated cost of $5 million.
3
William Davidson
Player Development Center
Men's Basketball Locker Rooms
Thanks to funding from loyal Michigan Athletics supporters, approximately 11,500 gross square feet will be renovated to create expanded and improved inclusive locker room, shower, team and support areas in the William Davidson Player Development Center for the men's team. The project also includes necessary electrical and mechanical work at a total estimated cost of $5 million.
CELEBRATING GENEROSITY
Though Spaces Change,
the Impact Remains
With gratitude, we recognize the following donors who supported facility upgrades in the past.
Schembechler Hall
Eugene B. Power
Robert W. Olsen
Bruce Zenkel
William Davidson Player Development Center
Robert Coven
Mike D. Highfield
Mary Petrovich
