What’s New
Donations to colleges and universities reached the second-highest level on record last year, with a growing share coming from big gifts that can run into the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.
The $58 billion given to colleges from July 2022 to June 2023 was topped only by 2022, according to an annual report released on Wednesday by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, or CASE.
The report, which is based on a CASE survey, documents the year before the Israel-Hamas war broke out. Recently, high-profile donors have drawn attention for their criticism of colleges’ responses to the war, and a handful have pledged to withdraw their support.
The Details
According to CASE’s survey, 20 institutions — representing less than 1 percent of colleges nationally — received 26.7 percent of total donations, a share that’s been consistent over the last few years. Most of those colleges are large research universities with medical facilities and hospitals, according to Sue Cunningham, president and chief executive of CASE.
The number of individual donors to higher education is declining, according to Chase McNamee, a research fellow for the Tzedakah Lab at Columbia University’s Teachers College and director of campaign operations in advancement for the University of Denver.
But gift size is increasing. In 2023, according to CASE’s report, there were 11 donations of $100 million or more. Those major gifts accounted for 3.9 percent of total donations, a share that more than doubled from 2022.
“Gifts at this level tend to be the outcome of years of engagement and interaction,” Cunningham said. “They’re often referred to as transformational gifts, because of the profound impact they can have today and for the longer term.” She also said that research has found philanthropic giving to be closely tied to the performance of the stock market, which was weak in 2022 but improved in 2023.
Donations from individuals dropped by over 10 percent from 2022 to 2023, while support from organizations increased slightly. One likely driver of that trend is that individual donors are increasingly giving money through such organizations, Cunningham said.
“Many more people are utilizing vehicles like donor-advised funds or like family foundations with which to make their gifts, arguably enabling them to be more strategic in their philanthropic giving,” Cunningham said.
The Backdrop
As the Israel-Hamas war has sparked a wave of campus unrest, higher-ed philanthropists have tried to exert influence on institutions to which they’ve given millions.
Much of that donor activism has hit the Ivy League, where philanthropists have threatened to withhold donations over what they said were the colleges’ inadequate responses to Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel. At Harvard University, the billionaire donor Kenneth Griffin announced he would pause all donations to the university because he didn’t feel campus leaders were taking antisemitism seriously. The University of Pennsylvania lost several megadonors in the months following the war’s outbreak.
“There’s always been conversations around what are both the donors’ expectations and also the institution’s expectations,” McNamee said. “I think that it is getting more and more scrutiny from people as they’re understanding where money is coming from and transparency of higher education.”
Philanthropists are bound to bring their personal views and experiences to the table, McNamee said. And while it’s important for college leaders to consider the causes that philanthropists are passionate about, he said, administrators must also preserve academic freedom and viewpoint diversity.
“When these kinds of big swings happen in the public,” McNamee said, “I think it’s a good reminder of the balance of philanthropy and the vision and mission of the institution.”
The Stakes
CASE’s global reporting standards for the annual survey define philanthropy as support provided “without expressed or implied expectations that the donor will receive anything more than recognition and stewardship as a result.” Tens of thousands of donors are cognizant “about what is reasonable for donors to expect and what donors cannot expect” when giving to an institution, Cunningham said.
“Have there been a number of individuals in recent months who grabbed the headlines around their intentions around their philanthropy? Yes. But in terms of the greater proportion of donors, how much impact will that have? I hope very little,” Cunningham said. She said she was confident that colleges that had committed to CASE’s standards would continue to reject inappropriate influence from donors.
“The vast majority of donors are really driven and motivated by the impact their philanthropy will have, and are not seeking to influence institutions inappropriately,” Cunningham added.
The near-record level of donations instead is a “source for celebration,” Cunningham said, demonstrating a “vote of confidence” in the work of higher-education institutions.
Recent discussions about prominent donors’ influence on highly selective universities can present an opportunity for both donors and institutions to increase transparency in philanthropy, according to McNamee.
“There’s an option,” McNamee said, “for a much broader definition of what philanthropy can mean in higher education and how people can make a difference through giving.”
