Fundraising Goals and Gift Categories

In recent years, Yale has made a visionary commitment to increase socioeconomic diversity in the undergraduate student population. President Salovey set accessibility as one of the university’s top priorities, “to offer a Yale education to an even more diverse student body from throughout the world without regard to financial circumstances.”

Recent audition cycles have brought us our most diverse orchestra yet while maintaining our traditional excellence of musicianship. Many of today’s exceptionally talented musicians do not own an instrument. It is our ongoing mission to purchase high quality instruments as needed so that incoming talented musicians can participate in the orchestra. The YSO is working to remove barriers to access as our student body has grown and evolved, and we need your help with this mission.

The orchestra regularly embarks on domestic and international tours. These tours serve as outreach for the ensembles and for Yale, and provide the students with formative experiences, travelling and learning with their peers and seeing first-hand the impact of music in the world. Even touring economically, these tours are expensive, and the needs of our increasingly diverse student body have been growing each year. In the past, touring participation has required a significant financial commitment from musicians but this is becoming a barrier for more and more of our orchestra. We seek to raise enough funds to make touring participation possible for every YSO student. These are transformational experiences that are an essential part of YSO membership, and they should be accessible to all members.

The YSO charges admission to their on-campus concerts, in order to cover the costs of producing their regular season. This charge is a barrier for many patrons, including some from the New Haven community, who wish to attend these concerts. Therefore an endowed fund to replace the income generated by these ticket sales would have a multiplied impact, enabling the gift of exceptional orchestral music to the Yale and New Haven communities, without any price barrier. We seek your help to allow the YSO to return to the free admission model with which we began.

American heritage and contemporary music are a mainstay of the YSO’s repertoire. To support this mission the YSO is developing the following two annual projects that will allow the members of the YSO to understand their past and engage with the wider American community of living composers:

1. Commissioning a new work each season from an American composer
2. Annual recording of American music featured during the season.

These two projects support and foster American talent and engage the YSO musicians in the creative process of rehearsing and performing world premieres followed by the discipline of recording sessions.

Gifts under $2,500 would be most welcome in the YSO Annual Fund, and will help maintain operations while we fundraise endowed funds. The Annual Fund supports the annual YSO team building retreat and a concert trip to NYC.
Make a Donation to the Annual Fund

Gifts of $2,500 or more can be put into a general endowment to support the YSO. These endowed funds will support YSO international touring, 6 free New Haven concerts, annual recording, and commissioning.

Individual named endowed funds could support activities such as YSO international touring, free concerts for the New Haven community, annual recording, and commissioning. Named gifts will be recognized on all material associated with the particular activity.