Optometry scholarships meet a critical need in ensuring the supply of highly skilled and compassionate optometrists for Alabama, the region, and the world. The increasing cost of providing our best and brightest students with a top-caliber optometric education means tuition can become a major burden.

Your support of optometry scholarships can directly impact the future of these promising aspiring ODs and the quality of vision care throughout our region. You can help more talented students realize their dreams of a career in optometry by easing their financial worries, allowing them to focus on their studies and clinical experiences.

Your gift can change everything – not only for the students who benefit, but for their future patients, too.

The School of Optometry seeks to enhance education across all platforms with significant institutional and philanthropic investments in:

• Simulation learning – using new technology in training to foster teamwork and skill-building
• Improving and updating our classrooms and laboratories
• Transformational naming opportunities – naming buildings, programs, endowments, and even naming the school itself
• Strengthening service opportunities for our students and residents through our Western Health Clinic, Gift of Sight, and the Black Belt initiative

Gifts to support our faculty provide:

• Funds to assist with recruiting and retaining outstanding faculty
• Endowed chairs and professorships for senior faculty – a critical component for both recruitment and retention
• Research funding, such as pilot grants for junior faculty and bridge funding for faculty investigators
• Flexible funds to be used at the discretion of the dean

Discovery is at the core of UAB’s mission – it is the essential thread that weaves together the fabric of innovative research, world-class medical education, and first-rate health care.

UAB’s basic scientists conduct studies at the cellular, molecular, genetic and systems level, leading to a better understanding of the mechanisms of disease. At the other end of the continuum, clinical research measures and tracks outcomes, applying ideas generated in the laboratory to improve the health and well-being of patients.

An outright gift puts your contribution to work immediately — funding existing programs or creating a reliable source of future income as part of the university's endowment. An outright gift may comprise almost any asset of value:

Cash is the simplest and easiest gift. It can be made through credit/debit card transactions, legal tender, personal checks, cashier's checks or money orders made payable to the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The university also has a wire account; please contact the UAB Gifts Records office at 205-934-7242 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for details.

Appreciated securities, stocks, and bonds also provide considerable tax advantages when transferred to UAB before they are sold. If you have held your securities for more than one year, your gift may provide a twofold tax benefit — a income-tax deduction and elimination of the capital-gains tax due on their sale.

Real estate — including personal residences, second homes, income property and vacant land — offer many tax and other benefits. For example, it is possible to give only a portion of the property (an undivided percentage interest) while retaining the rest for other purposes.

Personal property — including rare books, works of art, collectibles and tangible items of demonstrable value — may enable you to make a significant gift to support UAB with outstanding tax benefits to you. Likewise, gifts of intangible personal property, such as copyrights, patents and mineral rights, can generate income for the program of your choice on a continuing basis.

For information about giving an outright gift, please contact the UAB Gifts Records office at 205-934-7242 or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

To learn about deferred or planned gifts, including bequests, life-income plans and other options for your estate — and for information about increasing your income, earning valuable income-tax deductions and reducing your estate taxes — please visit UAB's Planned Giving website or contact the Planned Giving office at 205-934-0759.

You may be able to double or even triple your donation to UAB if your company has a gift program that matches all or a percentage of employee contributions to charitable organizations. Ask for a matching-gift form from your personnel office and complete and submit it to UAB with your contribution. Click here to see if your employer has a matching gift policy.

UAB welcomes your gift through a pledge — a formal statement of intention to make a gift to the university. A pledge enables you to make regular payments over time, give more generously than you may have considered possible and count each payment as a charitable deduction on income tax.

An endowment establishes a fund managed by the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which provides perpetual, annual support for its initiatives. For as little as $25,000, an endowed fund may be established to support a college, program or initiative of your choosing. Endowment gifts provide long-term security by expanding the university's permanent financial base and creating a predictable source of future income for needs such as endowed faculty positions, student scholarships or fellowships, broad-based interdisciplinary research projects or entire academic programs.

Creating an Endowment

A tribute gift is a thoughtful way to honor or memorialize a loved one while making difference in the world. Your memorial gift can establish an endowment, renew a scholarship or help fund other projects. There are several ways to establish a memorial gift:

• Make an outright gift to a campaign or fund at any time
• Set up an endowment to fund a special program or project in perpetuity
• Make a bequest in your will