$35 million gift from the family of Liz and Dick Uihlein to university intended for “holistic football success”

Northwestern University football has received a commitment for a $35 million gift from the family of Liz and Dick Uihlein, one of the largest single commitments in the program’s history and a powerful vote of confidence in the Wildcats’ future.

Structured over the next three years, the gift is intended for “holistic football success,” a phrase that encompasses everything from recruiting support to the broader operational needs of a modern Big Ten program, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel.

The commitment arrives at a symbolic moment for Northwestern athletics, just as the Wildcats prepare to christen the new, roughly $850 million Ryan Field and open the 2026 season under new offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, giving the program fresh momentum to match its ambitions in one of college football’s toughest conferences.

For Liz and Dick Uihlein, the gift is the latest expression of a philanthropic instinct built on one of the great entrepreneurial success stories of the Midwest.

The couple met as students at Stanford University and, in 1980, started what would become Uline together from the basement of their Northbrook, Illinois home, selling a single product: a $17 carton sizer designed to help warehouse managers cut down on shipping waste.

From that modest beginning, the Uihleins built Uline into the largest privately held distributor of shipping, packaging and industrial supplies in North America, a company that today employs more than 9,000 people, ships from thirteen distribution centers across the United States, Canada and Mexico, and generates an estimated $7 billion to $8.5 billion in annual revenue.

It is a distinctly American growth story of patience and reinvestment, built without an IPO or outside investors, which has allowed Dick, who still serves as chief executive, and Liz, who serves as president, to retain full control of the company they founded together more than four decades ago and to direct its rewards toward causes they care about.

That entrepreneurial success has translated into a broad and increasingly visible pattern of giving. Dick Uihlein leads the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation, named for his father, which channels support to schools, clinics, churches, environmental initiatives, and Uline’s own employee scholarship fund, alongside grants for civic and educational programming.

Liz Uihlein operates the LUMW Foundation, which has directed millions of dollars annually to community organizations in Chicago’s northern suburbs and around Manitowish Waters, Wisconsin, supporting local recreational and civic infrastructure in the towns where the Uihleins have deep roots.

The broader Uihlein family has also long been active in cultural and educational philanthropy across the region, with relatives serving on the boards of institutions such as the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Milwaukee Ballet, and the extended family has separately supported Northwestern’s academic mission: Northwestern Life Trustee Julie Uihlein recently established the Kathryn Aring Piper Center for Frontotemporal Cognitive Disorders at the university’s Feinberg School of Medicine, a gift that will help advance research into Alzheimer’s disease and related conditions.

Northwestern holds a particularly personal place in the Uihlein family’s giving. Dick and Liz’s grandson, Mac Uihlein, is a senior linebacker who arrived in Evanston as one of the highest-rated recruits from his native Lake Forest, Illinois, and has spent his college career wearing purple for the Wildcats

That family tie gives this latest commitment an added layer of meaning: it is not simply a philanthropic transaction between a wealthy family and a university athletic department, but the gesture of grandparents investing in a program their own grandson has represented on the field for the past several seasons.

Combined with the family’s decades of support for education, community development and civic institutions throughout Illinois and Wisconsin, the $35 million pledge fits a consistent pattern in the Uihleins’ giving: identifying institutions close to their family and community, and backing them not with token gestures but with transformative, multi-year commitments designed to produce lasting results.

For Northwestern, the timing could hardly be better. The Wildcats are preparing to debut Ryan Field, one of the largest athletic facility investments in program history, and are building toward a more competitive footing in the Big Ten under a retooled coaching staff.

A commitment of this scale, arriving alongside the university’s other investments in football, sends a clear signal that Northwestern intends to compete at the top of the conference for years to come—and that the Uihlein family intends to be one of the driving forces behind that ascent.

As the athletic department looks toward its Sept. 5 season opener against South Dakota State, the gift stands as a marquee example of how a single family’s business success and its enduring philanthropic values can help reshape the trajectory of an entire athletic program.