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Feb. 17, 2006

Private Giving Hits Record Total

Contributions to American colleges and universities rose by 4.9 percent in 2005, to a total of $25.6 billion, the Council for Aid to Education said in a report Thursday. The total was the highest ever.

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The council’s annual Voluntary Support of Education survey, which tracks giving to higher education and private elementary and secondary schools, struck a generally positive tone, noting that the overall increase in giving was the second straight uptick after two years of decrease, in 2002 and 2003.

“The 2005 survey results indicate that higher education fund raising has firmly recovered from weak performances in 2002 and 2003,” said Ann E. Kaplan, who directs the survey for CAE. “The growth over the past two years is a positive sign that individuals and institutions respond to increases in their own capacity to give by increasing their support for the nation’s colleges and universities.”

But amid the overall upturn, the survey found a mix of results. While giving by alumni rose by 6 percent, to $7.1 billion from $6.7 billion (accounting for about 27 percent of the overall private support for higher education), the proportion of alumni who made gifts fell by 12.4 percent, continuing a several-year drop from 13.8 percent in 2001.

So while the size of the average gift increased, it appears that fewer alumni felt compelled to contribute to their alma maters. (Kaplan offered some alternative explanations for the drop in alumni participation, though, including technological and other improvements in alumni record keeping that could increase the number of alumni that colleges know about,without necessarily increasing the number of donors.)

Contributions by individuals who are not alumni also declined, by 3.8 percent from 2004 to 2005, after increasing by 21.5 percent from 2003 to 2004.

The increase in support from foundations, which rose to $7 billion from $6.2 billion in 2004, was accompanied in a leveling off of direct gifts from corporations, which remained constant at $4.4 billion.

Much of the rise in giving was concentrated in a relatively small number of institutions, said Kaplan, who noted that the “increase in giving to just the top 10 universities accounts for half of the total growth in higher education giving in 2005.”

And one major grant — $296 million to the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s medical school, which resulted from the conversion of Blue Cross & Blue Shield United of Wisconsin from nonprofit to for-profit status — represented more than a third of the growth in foundation giving to higher education institutions.

One institution just outside the Top 10 — the University of California at Los Angeles — announced Thursday that it had completed the first $3 billion campaign by an institution of higher education.

Following are several tables that show where the money went, by sector of higher education, and then the leading institutional recipients of the funds, over all and in several categories.

Voluntary Support by Type of Institution, 2004 and 2005

 

2004

2005

  

Institution type

Total gifts ($000s)

Total gifts ($000s)

% change from 2004

Research/ Doctoral

$14,328,972

$15,522,803

6.3%

—Private

6,767,559

6,999,422

6.5

—Public

7,561,413

8,523,381

8.0

Master’s

1,897,424

2,039,175

3.9

—Private

1,170,463

1,226,285

1.3

—Public

726,961

812,890

8.2

Liberal Arts

2,380,908

2,509,859

6.5

—Private

2,314,556

2,482,184

7.6

—Public

66,352

27,675

-53.7

Specialized

889,796

692,609

-24.4

—Private

442,438

299,269

-33.9

—Public

447,357

393,340

-15.6

2-Year

132,735

175,600

10.2

—Private

10,338

5,665

-31.5

—Public

122,397

169,935

13.8

Total, all Institutions

$19,629,834

$20,940,046

3.1

Top 25 Institutions in Private Giving, 2005

Stanford U

$603,585,914

U of Wisconsin at Madison

595,215,891

Harvard U

589,861,000

U of Pennsylvania

394,249,685

Cornell U

353,931,403

Columbia U

341,140,986

U of Southern California

331,754,481

Johns Hopkins U

323,100,408

Indiana U

301,060,946

U of California at San Francisco

292,932,382

Yale U

285,706,955

U of California at Los Angeles

281,552,472

Duke U

275,815,542

U of Minnesota

265,498,507

U of Washington

259,118,639

U of Michigan

251,353,272

New York U

247,126,717

Massachusetts Inst of Tech

206,007,428

Ohio State U

204,598,172

U of California, Berkeley

198,863,654

Purdue U

183,672,193

U of Chicago

180,462,601

U of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

179,300,321

U of Virginia

174,370,854

Princeton U

165,339,982

Top 25 Community Colleges in Private Giving, 2005

Indian River CC (Fla.)

$11,168,000

Maricopa CC District (Ariz.)

7,630,501

Santa Rosa JC (Fla.)

6,278,633

Gulf Coast CC (Fla.)

5,771,112

Sinclair CC (Ohio)

5,414,686

SUNY Westchester CC

5,334,026

Montgomery C (Md.)

5,295,664

Vincennes U (Ind.)

5,084,986

Broward CC (Fla.)

3,952,515

Valencia CC (Fla.)

3,946,154

Delta C (Mich.)

3,897,221

Cuyahoga CC (Ohio)

3,456,057

Kirkwood CC Fdn (Mo.)

3,060,548

Sandhills CC (Fla.)

2,944,578

Northwestern Michigan C

2,922,952

SUNY Monroe CC

2,859,891

U of Arkansas at Fort Smith

2,845,418

Lake Michigan C

2,839,355

Harrisburg Area CC (Pa.)

2,806,600

Palm Beach CC (Fla.)

2,510,651

Northampton CC (Mass.)

2,464,485

Dallas County CC District (Tex.)

2,419,059

Reinhardt C (Ga.)

2,312,364

Ranken Tech C (Mo.)

2,296,130

SUNY C of Tech at Canton

2,267,975

Top 25 Liberal Arts Colleges in Private Giving, 2005

Wellesley C

$88,617,686

Hillsdale C

48,171,418

Colgate U

41,185,059

Middlebury C

40,545,723

Smith C

36,235,627

Williams C

35,434,191

Bowdoin C

34,809,867

Davidson C

34,570,740

Mount Holyoke C

32,517,216

Amherst C

31,249,933

Mills C

31,179,483

Pomona C

30,727,167

Wesleyan U

30,562,402

Dickinson C

29,673,606

C of the Holy Cross

28,041,764

Colby C

27,796,099

Bryn Mawr C

27,670,550

Vassar C

27,397,787

Berea C

25,401,575

Barnard C

23,853,769

Wheaton C

23,504,773

Bucknell U

23,438,201

Berry C

23,143,478

DePauw U

22,765,818

Oberlin C

22,691,869

— Doug Lederman

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