History of the Foundation

During the 1940s, discussions began for creating a program to take Virginia Athletics to new levels. By December 1948, the charter for the Virginia Student Aid Foundation, now known as the Virginia Athletics Foundation, had been granted and Mr. J. Malcolm Luck, then Alumni Association Secretary, named Gilly Sullivan the Secretary of the Foundation.

With the first recorded meeting of the Foundation’s Board of Trustees on April 9, 1949, discussion centered around the advantages of offering full grants versus partial funding to attract the best student-athletes to the University.

In 1958, Ted Davenport became Secretary for the Foundation when Gilly Sullivan took over retiring President Luck’s position as Secretary of the Alumni Association. It was during this same period that the VSAF Board realized the need to raise both annual and endowment monies, and an endowment committee chaired by Lawrence Lewis, Jr. was formed. By 1958, fundraising goals had reached $100,000 and six programs (basketball, baseball, boxing, football, lacrosse, and track) received financial assistance.

The ‘60s realized great gains in the number of contributors and by the end of the decade, there were 2,136 donors who contributed a total of $189,271. By the late ‘70s, 16 programs, including eight women’s programs, were receiving $741,891 in scholarship monies.

During the next decade, great emphasis was placed on gender equity and by 1989, 120 female student-athletes were receiving scholarship assistance. In the ‘80s, gifts increased from $800,000 to nearly $3 million.

Fundraising continued to climb in the ‘90s and by 1995, donors took VSAF to the highest levels of increase in the history of the Foundation. The annual campaign reached $4,526,508 and the endowment grew to more than $11.7 million.

In 2000, the role of the Foundation grew to encompass all areas of fundraising for Virginia Athletics to include sport specific contributions in the “Friends Of” program, facility replacement and renovations, luxury suite sales and an endowment to fully fund the entire athletics program. In the fall of 2002, the Foundation changed its name to the Virginia Athletics Foundation to reflect this change in responsibility.

Today, there are more than 663 student-athletes in 25 intercollegiate programs at the University of Virginia. In 2006, more than 9,600 donors contributed $13.5 million to fund scholarships and a portion of operational costs of the athletics department.

Mission Statement

The Virginia Athletics Foundation,
through its fund-raising efforts,
strives to support a preeminent intercollegiate athletics program
at the University of Virginia
by providing student-athletes
the opportunity to achieve
academic and athletic excellence.