The Blue & Gold Women’s
Varsity Endowment Fund

Female varsity athletes are passionate, indispensable members of university life. They work hard and represent UBC boldly on and off the field. They often go on to be leaders in their communities, using the skills they have gained balancing athletics and academics long after graduation.

UBC Athletics has made raising funds for female varsity athletes a priority. For too long, these talented young women have not received the same level of financial support as male Thunderbirds. Women’s varsity sports are not less important, but they are underfunded and in some cases, don’t have the longstanding history of our men’s varsity teams.

Currently, scholarships for women’s sports receive only 38% of the total funds available from endowments and fundraising, despite making up 12 of UBC’s 25 varsity teams. With your help, we can start closing the gap and creating gender parity for female athletes.

In 2017, UBC President Santa J. Ono announced the Blue & Gold Campaign for Students to support the success of students across UBC. The campaign—the largest focused on students in UBC’s history—aims to raise $100 million in student support over three years. As part of this campaign, Athletics created the Women’s Varsity Endowment Fund to provide awards exclusively for deserving female athletes.

Your support for female athletes will help close the funding gap between male and female Thunderbirds and help to ensure any female athlete with the ambition and talent to be called a Thunderbird has the opportunity to pursue their sport. Funds raised through this initiative are evenly distributed across our 12 women’s varsity teams. In 2020-21, over $33,500 was distributed to 18 deserving female athletes.

UBC has committed to matching all donations to this fund up to $100,000, meaning your gift will have double the impact! Please empower a female varsity athlete today by making a gift to the Blue & Gold Women’s Varsity Endowment Fund.