Oregon State University Foundation

The Oregon State University Foundation is an American private nonprofit corporation dedicated to enhancing the mission of Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. The OSU Foundation is governed by a volunteer Board of Trustees.

In 1947, Robert M. Kerr, Edwin B. Aldrich and E. C. Sammons established the Oregon State College Foundation with the aid of OSC President A. L. Strand. They saw the foundation as a means of creating opportunities that the college could not fulfill with state funds alone. That year they collected the OSC Foundation's first donation, a sum of five dollars.

The university's endowment began with $20,000 in 1961. It took 16 years to reach its first $1 million in total receipts, and four more years to double that amount. Today the university's composite endowment totals more than $505 million, with earnings distributed annually.

With university leaders, the OSU Foundation publicly launched Oregon State's first comprehensive fundraising campaign, The Campaign for OSU, on October 26, 2007, with a goal of $625 million. Donors exceeded the original goal in October 2010, nearly a year ahead of schedule, and the goal was increased to $850 million. In March 2012 the goal was raised to $1 billion. At OSU's annual State of the University address in Portland on January 31, 2014, President Edward J. Ray announced that campaign contributions had passed $1 billion, putting Oregon State with a group of 35 other public universities to cross the billion-dollar fundraising mark and one of only two organizations in the Pacific Northwest to reach the $1 billion campaign milestone. The Campaign for OSU concluded on December 31, 2014, with more than $1.1 billion from 106,000 donors.