$85.2 million, John and Tashia Morgridge’s latest university gift, lifts their lifetime philanthropy toward the billion-dollar mark
The new $85.2 million renovation of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s historic Science Hall is the latest, luminous chapter in a philanthropic story that has quietly reshaped an entire campus, a state, and, increasingly, the broader landscape of American education and opportunity.
At its center are John and Tashia Morgridge, a Wisconsin love story turned global tech success story turned world‑class force for public good, whose giving to UW–Madison alone now reaches well into the hundreds of millions of dollars and continues to set records for ambition, scale, and impact.
For the Morgridges, the Science Hall project is both profoundly personal and unmistakably forward‑looking. As alumni who first walked Bascom Hill together in the early 1950s, they understand in their bones what a physical campus can mean in a young person’s life: a place where ideas take shape, where friendships become lifelong partnerships, and where a sense of possibility can expand with every staircase climbed and every classroom entered.
Science Hall, a 137‑year‑old landmark perched above Lake Mendota, is one of those spaces—beloved, historic, and increasingly out of step with the way science is taught and experienced in the 21st century.
The Morgridges’ $85.2 million commitment is designed to change that reality completely, turning the building into a light‑filled, accessible, technologically sophisticated hub for the next generation of Wisconsin scientists while preserving the character that has made it iconic for more than a century.
The renovation plans speak to the couple’s trademark philosophy of pairing reverence for the past with a clear‑eyed embrace of the future. A soaring glass atrium will bring natural light and openness to the historic structure, while modern climate control and air conditioning will make the building usable and comfortable year‑round in ways prior generations could only have imagined.
Flexible teaching laboratories, collaborative spaces, and upgraded research infrastructure will allow faculty and students to work across disciplines, better reflecting the way science now addresses complex challenges from climate change to data science to public health. In a single project, the Morgridges are ensuring the building that helped train generations of geologists, cartographers, and scientists remains at the very forefront of discovery for decades to come.
To understand this moment, though, is to see it as part of a generous continuum rather than an isolated act. John and Tashia Morgridge have long been among UW–Madison’s most transformational benefactors, quietly responsible for a portfolio of gifts that rivals the endowment of many standalone institutions.
They helped create the Morgridge Center for Public Service, grounding the campus in a culture of civic engagement and hands‑on learning that spans disciplines and reaches into communities throughout Wisconsin. They provided $50 million in lead support to establish the Morgridge Institute for Research, matching the university’s ambitions in biomedical discovery, computational science, and emerging fields with world‑class facilities and talent.
Their support for academic excellence has been equally bold and inventive. A landmark $100 million gift to invest in faculty—at the time the largest single contribution from individual donors in UW history—was explicitly structured as a matching fund to inspire other donors to endow professorships, chairs, and distinguished chairs across campus. That gift not only strengthened the university’s ability to recruit and retain star faculty but also doubled as a powerful statement about the centrality of teacher-scholars in the life of a great public university.
The Morgridges’ commitment to endowed chairs has since touched fields as varied as reading, computer science, economics, geoscience, business, pediatric nursing, and health systems innovation, ensuring that students encounter world‑class mentors in classrooms and labs across the campus.
Even before the current Science Hall project, it would be difficult to walk more than a few minutes on UW–Madison’s campus without encountering the imprint of John and Tashia’s generosity. Their more than $32 million investment in renovating and expanding the School of Education building on Bascom Hill created a modern home for the training of teachers and education leaders, a cause unusually close to their hearts as 1955 graduates of the School of Education and the Wisconsin School of Business, respectively.
Their support helped reimagine the historic Red Gym as a lively student and public‑service hub, while John’s participation in the Wisconsin School of Business naming partnership—where 13 donors joined together to contribute $85 million—ensured the school’s name would be preserved in perpetuity and the business program would have the resources to compete at the highest levels.
What makes the Science Hall gift particularly resonant is the way it mirrors the couple’s own journey. Both John and Tashia grew up in Wisconsin—he in Wauwatosa, she in the same community—and both chose UW–Madison not just as a place to earn degrees but as the setting for a shared life they could not have foreseen.
After graduation, Tashia taught school while John pursued a master’s degree at Stanford and launched a career in the emerging world of computing and networking. In 1988, he became CEO of Cisco Systems, then a tiny four‑year‑old company with just 34 employees; under his leadership, Cisco grew into a global technology leader and one of the defining firms of the internet age.
That success gave the couple the capacity to give on a scale few can match, but their philanthropy has always remained grounded in the values they formed as Wisconsin undergraduates: love of learning, belief in opportunity, and a strong sense of responsibility to the communities and institutions that shaped them.
Their impact extends far beyond campus boundaries. Separate from their UW–Madison gifts, the Morgridges have made a $175 million endowment gift to create the Fund for Wisconsin Scholars, which provides need‑based grants to low‑income students attending Wisconsin’s public colleges and universities.
The fund, one of the most ambitious statewide scholarship endowments in the country, is designed to open doors for students who might otherwise see higher education as financially out of reach, directly reflecting the couple’s belief that education is the surest path to upward mobility.
They have also committed $8 million to the Wisconsin Technology Initiative, supporting K–12 schools across the state in integrating modern technology into learning environments and ensuring that younger students are prepared for an increasingly digital world.
The breadth of their giving is matched only by the depth of their engagement. John and Tashia were early signers of the Giving Pledge, joining a group of the world’s wealthiest individuals in committing to give the majority of their wealth to philanthropy during their lifetimes or through their estates.
“We’re not leaving it to someone else to give away,” John has said.
“We’re going to do it,” a simple sentence that captures both their decisiveness and their sense of personal responsibility.
They have often remarked that their most effective philanthropy has come when they are closely involved with the causes they support, a philosophy reflected in their service on boards, campaign committees, and advisory groups that guide the university’s long‑term strategy.
The next generation of the family has embraced this ethos as well, extending the Morgridge commitment to education, community, and innovation on a national stage. John and Carrie Morgridge co‑founded the Morgridge Family Foundation (MFF) in 2008, further institutionalizing the family’s approach to catalytic, partner‑driven philanthropy.
Headquartered in Colorado, the foundation focuses primarily on education while also supporting nonprofit innovation, community resilience, and big ideas that can transform lives and communities.
Since its inception, the Morgridge Family Foundation has deployed more than $186 million in grants across a range of sectors, and in 2026 alone, it is already tracking more than $10 million in grantmaking—an impressive testament to the family’s continuing, hands‑on commitment to giving.
At MFF, financial capital is only the starting point. The foundation emphasizes collaboration, introductions, and shared learning among its grantees, echoing the way John and Tashia have approached their own giving in Wisconsin.
Recent grantee stories highlight work ranging from eliminating crushing medical debt for thousands of Americans to equipping students with real‑world financial literacy skills and supporting peer‑mentoring programs that help first‑generation college students succeed.
Each investment reflects the Morgridge belief that philanthropy should be courageous, data‑informed, and humble—focused on empowering partners rather than imposing solutions from afar.
Taken together, the family’s philanthropic footprint is striking in both dollar terms and human terms.
Between their historic gifts to UW–Madison—including $100 million for faculty excellence, $100 million for the Morgridge Institute for Research, more than $32 million for the School of Education building, major support for the Red Gym and multiple endowed chairs and scholarships—and their separate $175 million Fund for Wisconsin Scholars endowment and $8 million Wisconsin Technology Initiative, John and Tashia’s commitments to their home state alone exceed $400 million.
When the Morgridge Family Foundation’s $186 million‑plus in national grantmaking is added to this picture, alongside other personal giving and earlier gifts not formally tallied on public dashboards, it is clear the family has directed well over half a billion dollars to public purposes, with education as the central through‑line.
The Science Hall gift, then, is not simply another generous check; it is a strategic act in a long‑running effort to ensure that Wisconsin’s flagship public university remains a place where world‑class teaching and research happen in world‑class facilities. It modernizes an irreplaceable historic building, positions UW–Madison to compete for top faculty and students in the sciences, and sends a visible, tangible signal that this public institution will not be left behind in the race to attract talent and tackle complex global challenges.
For students who will study in the renewed Science Hall—many of them first-generation, many of them Wisconsin residents whose education will be supported directly or indirectly by Morgridge scholarships and endowed chairs—the gift will be felt not as a headline number but as daylight in a lab, an accessible ramp, a quiet study nook, and a faculty mentor who has the resources to stay.
John and Tashia often say that their philanthropy is fueled by gratitude—for the education that opened doors, for the mentors who believed in them, for the chance circumstances that turned a fledgling tech firm into a global leader.
They have also made clear that they view their giving as a privilege, not a burden, a way to share both the thrill of discovery and the security of opportunity with people they will never meet.
With the Science Hall renovation, they are once again translating that gratitude into something concrete and enduring: brick and glass, lab benches and lecture halls, a building ready to inspire another century’s worth of curiosity.
For UW–Madison, for Wisconsin, and for the countless students and families whose lives will be changed by the doors this family continues to open, the gift is nothing less than transformative.
For the Morgridges, it is simply the next chapter in a story they began together as teenagers on Bascom Hill—a story that, with each new act of generosity, continues to enrich the campus they love and the public it serves.