Harvard Leads in Donations

Harvard led the nation’s universities in fundraising last year with $540.3 million in contributions, according to a RAND Corporation survey released last week.

The University, which is gearing up for a multibillion-dollar capital campaign, took the top spot for the second consecutive year.

Stanford University, which raised $524.2 million, was the only other school to exceed $500 million in contributions.

Among other Ivy League schools placing in the top 10, Cornell University ranked third with $385.9 million, University of Pennsylvania was fourth with $332.8 million, Columbia University ranked seventh with $290.6 million, and Yale University placed ninth with $264.8 million.

The survey, conducted by RAND’s Council for Aid to Education, found that total contributions to higher education in the U.S. rose 3.4 percent last year, to reach a total of $24.4 billion.

Personal donations from individuals shot up 9.7 percent among surveyed institutions, and made up nearly half of all gifts.

“The results indicate that giving to higher education is recovering from the weak performance of the past two years,” said Ann E. Kaplan, the survey’s director, in a press release. “This year’s survey results also underscore the significance of personal giving in higher education fundraising.”

A 21.5 percent increase in gifts from non-alumni donors drove the rise in personal contributions, the survey said.

But contributions from alumni increased only two percent across surveyed institutions. While the average gift size rose, the percentage of alumni who contributed declined to 12.8 percent.

But Harvard enjoys above-average participation rates.

According to University statistics cited by Bloomberg, 44 percent of the 320,000 living alumni from Harvard College contributed last year.

Among surveyed institutions, the percentage of alumni who contribute has decreased each year since 2001. RAND’s survey does not explain the downward trend, but Kaplan outlined several possible explanations in a press release outlining the results of the study.

Software improvements that enable universities to maintain more complete alumni records could potentially lower the percentage of alumni who participate by increasing the number of alumni “on record,” she said.

And if institutions concentrate on landing large gifts, rather than cultivating a greater number of donors, participation rates would also decrease.

Corporate gifts saw modest gains in 2004, rising 3.5 percent, which the survey attributed to “moderate recovery in the stock market.” Contributions from foundations, however, dropped 6.1 percent.

RAND’s Voluntary Support of Education survey annually tracks contributions to higher education and private K-12 schools. More than half of the four-year institutions in the U.S. participated, according to the press release.

—Staff writer Nicholas M. Ciarelli can be reached at ciarelli@fas.harvard.edu.