Each year, the Weitzman Annual Fund provides critical financial support to dozens of students, allowing them to succeed. As the need for financial assistance grows, support is even more vital in helping our future designers thrive.
Annual Fund
The University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design is committed to education that is creative in nature and transformative in impact. Unrestricted gifts to the Weitzman Annual Fund provide vital support for the School’s most urgent priorities.
At the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, we are dedicated to an education that is both creatively driven and profoundly impactful. Unrestricted gifts to the Weitzman Annual Fund are essential to advancing this mission, providing flexible support for the School’s most pressing needs. In design disciplines where experiential learning, materials, and specialized fees add up quickly, these contributions help ease financial burdens and ensure that all students can stay focused on preparing for their future careers.
The programs below offer meaningful ways for donors to give back—strengthening both Weitzman and Penn as a whole.
Financial Aid
Emergency Fund
Emergency grants help students facing urgent financial needs or acute financial hardship due to unanticipated, one-time expenses. The Weitzman Annual Fund can help prevent an emergency from derailing a design career.
Design Fellows
Design Fellows are outstanding graduate students and young alumni who work with PennPraxis—the applied research, engagement, and practice arm of the Weitzman School—collaborating with clients, community organizers, and, sometimes, high school students. These teams develop tools, strategies, and design interventions that focus on communities with limited access to design services.
Career Services
Comprehensive support for students and alumni makes the School a springboard for professional growth and advancement. Services include CV development and portfolio reviews, industry exploration through internships and externships, and alumni career panels.
Student Services
Expert staff support students holistically, providing assistance with academic and personal wellbeing, while fostering a culture of care and respect. The Weitzman School is also committed to supporting student-led initiatives, such as interest groups, publications, and events. These build cohesion, enhance professional identities, celebrate global perspectives, and add to the vibrancy of the learning community.
Honor Roll
On behalf of Dean Steiner, the School's devoted faculty, staff, as well as the ambitious and talented students, thank you to all of the donors who contribute to the Weitzman Annual Fund.
Giving Societies
Contributions to the Weitzman Annual Fund may qualify donors for recognition in a variety of University-wide giving societies.
In 1995, the University of Pennsylvania founded the Charles Custis Harrison Society as a way to provide ongoing thanks and to acknowledge the generosity of all who have named Penn as a beneficiary of a will, living trust, retirement plan, or life insurance policy, or have set up a life income gift that benefits Penn in the future.
Founded in 1955, the Benjamin Franklin Society (BFS) is the University’s leadership unrestricted annual giving group. These distinguished donors make gifts and pledge payments of $2,500 or more to annual giving funds across the University in a given fiscal year.
The Thomas Webb Richards Society honors alumni and friends who have financially supported the Weitzman School of Design Annual Fund for the past three or more consecutive years. Society members are designated in the School's Honor Roll and receive a special gift annually.
Richards was the first professor of architecture and drawing at the University of Pennsylvania, from 1874-1891. He paved the way for today's practice professors, as he concurrently taught and practiced. Richards designed four buildings for Penn's campus, including the landmark College Hall (1873) on Blanche Levy Park.