Annual Giving Campaign nets record $40 mil

Colleges and Universities A-Z Princeton University
1

<p>participation among undergrad alumni down a hair from 58.6% to 58.2%, but total amount given up sharply from $37 to $40.4 mil.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/giving/ag/agtotals.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton.edu/giving/ag/agtotals.html&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.princeton.edu/giving/ag/agstatus1.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton.edu/giving/ag/agstatus1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>about annual giving:</p>

<p>"Annual Giving is the yearly appeal Princeton makes to all alumni, parents and friends for unrestricted funds which can be used immediately to meet the University's most important needs and opportunities, including faculty recruitment and retention, financial aid and library and computer resources, as well as facilities maintenance and renovation."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/giving/ag/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton.edu/giving/ag/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>even without "restricted" gifts, i.e. those made for specific purposes like professorships, fellowships, and buildings, added in, princeton will once again far outstrip its peers in alumni giving rate.</p>

<p>in anticipation of the inevitable methodological quibbles from byerly, i have attached a link to last year's annual giving thread, where i address them (note "mortal lock" prediction in post #22).</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=77560%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=77560&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

2

<p>The alumni giving rate, while high, seems to have declined for at least 5 straight years ... possibly due to reduced focus on the "Princeton type" in admissions.</p>

<p>As to my predictions in post #22 to which you provided a helpful link: note that one-half the prediction has already proven accurate, as Stanford recently surged past Princeton in the ranking of schools by overall yield.</p>

3

<p>ah, just had to get that negative spin in there, huh? i'm afraid it's incorrect, though, as the giving percentage recently increased from 59.0% in 2002-03 to 59.2% in 2003-4. that was two years ago, well within the last five. as for your "princeton type" hypothesis, i believe it's incorrect also. the giving percentage correlates with capital campaigns and national economic health. the five highest percentages in the last 20 years came in a row, from 1996-97 to 2000-01, the same five years of princeton's last capital campaign, and the height of the clinton era of prosperity.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/giving/ag/agstats/AG_Totals_From_Inception.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton.edu/giving/ag/agstats/AG_Totals_From_Inception.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>as for your edited addition, well, the post to which i referred said nothing about stanford's yield, only about its endowment. i'm not so sure, in any event, that stanford has "surged past princeton in the ranking of schools by overall yield." for the class of 2010, princeton reported a 69.2% preliminary yield (and has not resorted to the waitlist since then), while stanford reported a 69% yield (waitlist use known). note the quote from stanford's adcom:</p>

<p>"Shaw characterized this year’s yield rate as 'very high and probably among the top five yields in the country for selective private universities.' Yale’s yield rate is expected to be 73 percent, while Princeton’s is 69 percent."</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/05/12/news/15614.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/05/12/news/15614.shtml&lt;/a>
<a href="http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=content&id=20694&repository=0001_article%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=content&id=20694&repository=0001_article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

4

<p>The fact remains that the giving rate has been on a downward trend at Princeton, relatively speaking, even though other schools have had to contend with the same economy. Brown is an example of a school that seems to have improved markedly in re this hard-to-pin down stat.</p>

<p>I am looking at the 2000 USNews, which showed Princeton's alumni giving rate at 67% at that time. Quite a drop.</p>

<p>Here are the June 30, 2005 endowment rankings, with the recent number first, the previous year's number second, and the % net increase third. Note that as Stanford was rising to 3rd, Princeton slipped to 4th:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Harvard U $25,473,721 $22,143,649 15.0%</p></li>
<li><p>Yale U $15,224,900 $12,747,150 19.4%</p></li>
<li><p>Stanford U 1 $12,205,000 $9,922,000 23.0%</p></li>
<li><p>U of Texas System $11,610,997 $10,336,687 12.3%</p></li>
<li><p>Princeton U $11,206,500 $9,928,200 12.9%</p></li>
</ol>

<hr>

<p>ps: with between 50-60 reportedly taken off the waitlist, the yield rate at Yale will be a max of 70%, and more likely down a hair from last year.</p>

5

<p>still more spin, i see. last i checked, we were talking about alumni giving rate. and according to u.s. news, princeton is first at 61% and harvard is only fourth, at 47%. in its <em>own</em> last annual giving campaign, harvard set a participation goal of 45%, yet it managed to coax only 39.5% of alumni to contribute, way below princeton's corresponding number of 58.6%. indeed, the "downward trend" at harvard has been particularly pronounced, with its 39.5% last year constituting a 16-year low. (it peaked in 2001, reinforcing my economy hypothesis.) note the care i take to distinguish between numbers from different sources, since annual giving numbers include only unrestricted gifts, while u.s. news numbers include all gifts, restricted ("earmarked") as well as unrestricted.</p>

<p><a href="http://post.harvard.edu/harvard/hcf/html/hcf_nonreunions_classgoals.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://post.harvard.edu/harvard/hcf/html/hcf_nonreunions_classgoals.htm&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=510011%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=510011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

6

<p>The "annual fund" numbers you use are not the same as "alumni contributions" for current use. And Harvard is more honest than most in not subtracting alumni who have not contributed recently, or considering them as per se "deceased."</p>

7

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<p>if you're insinuating that that princeton does this, you're wrong. you won't find another college that makes its numbers publicly available in such detail. if you're not, what's your point here?</p>

8

<p>No, that is not true. USNews has always reported ALUMNI giving rates. </p>

<p>It is this number which, for Princeton, declined from 67% in the 2000 edition to 61% in the 2006 edition - although as you acknowledge, USNews uses a rolling average, and the latest annual figure at Princeton is a hair over 58%.</p>

<p>I have heard of a notorious Princeton fundraiser who contributed $10 a head in the name of various classmates in order to keep the % of contributors number up for his class.</p>

<p>Finally, there remains a great deal of confusion about these numbers. Comparison is difficult as nobody decrees what constitutes a "living alumnus" or what qualifies as a "contribution."</p>

<p>Here is what CAE reported last year for Princeton alumni contributions for current operations (ie, not capital gifts.):</p>

<p>"Princeton University (Princeton, NJ)
50.2 %"</p>

9

<p>once again, you're commingling the numbers. the number reported to u.s. news is always going to be higher than for the number reported for annual giving (princeton) or annual fund (harvard) because the u.s. news number includes ALL giving during that fiscal year, restricted and unrestricted. princeton's annual giving number hasn't been 67% since pre-coeducation, in 1966-67. the highest it's reached since coeducation is 61%. the reason the u.s. news figure reached 67% in 2001 is because that was the last year of princeton's most recent capital campaign, when many alums gave not only to annual giving but also to the capital campaign, and a decent number contributed to the latter only.</p>

<p>as for the rest, you can try to demean princeton's success with hearsay and all the methodological quibbles you want. i've presented the numbers, which are scrupulously detailed, and i stand by them. i'm not turning this into another six-page thread just because you don't like harvard's place in the pecking order.</p>

10

<p>Frankly, I consider all this brouhaha over "alumni giving rate" to be meaningless.</p>

<p>It really doesn't matter to the university WHO gives the money; some old-timer from the Class of '64 or some outside foundation. I don't think Harvard and Princeton alums are really less satisfied with their experience FORTY years ago because they don't give money. Oftentimes (known from experience), appeals from money, especially over-sentimental ones from universities with blatant appeals for money can put people off. </p>

<p>Oh wait, it does matter, because it's another meaningless statistic in the USNews rankings, although it has nothing to do with actual undergraduate excellence. </p>

<p>Although Princeton > Harvard by a significant margin on "alumni giving rate," fact of the matter is that Harvard out-fundraises Princeton per capita by several thousand dollars, and Stanford, with an even lower alumni giving rate, has outshone them both. In the end, it really doesn't matter who gives the money; alums will still attend Alumni Weekend events en masse. But it will be schools like Cornell, USC and Penn that will be able to spend most exorbitantly on buildings. </p>

<p>I'm betting that Stanford is quite pleased with the $500 million from Hewlett and Packard; I'm sure Hennessy would rather have that then thousands of $100 donations, except for the USNews...problem. Is it really in Stanford's best interest to expend tons and tons of time and costly information infrastructure to chase after all those little donors? </p>

<p>Without USNews, there would be no reason to.</p>

11

<p>yes, because the funds are unrestricted, and not tied into projects whereby egotistical donors get their name on something long-lasting. believe me, these funds are are vital to their institutions.</p>

12

<p>But a lot of that can come from endowment returns, rather than alumni checks.</p>

13

<p>The endowment returns are, however, simply alumni contributions from an an earlier period, and often have strings still attached when it comes to expending the income.</p>

14

<p>that would be cool if they gave free tuition. i mean, i'm not sure if the $40 mil will ever benefit me... even $10 or something. but, i guess it's fine?</p>

15

<p>press release from the princeton homepage:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S15/26/35S67/index.xml?section=topstories%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S15/26/35S67/index.xml?section=topstories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>