Annual giving turns in good performance and pool for student support reaches $513MM out of $1Bln

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Michigan
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ANN ARBOR—For the second straight year, University of Michigan donors have given more than $400 million in cash and pledge payments. In addition, more donors made gifts to the university than ever before in its history—129,600 individual donors in all.

Jerry May, U-M vice president for development, provided the annual report for the fiscal year ending June 30 during today’s Board of Regents meeting.

“I continue to be astounded by the generosity of our donors,” May said. “Their generosity makes possible so much at U-M that could not happen without their support.”

While larger gifts often make the news, it is noteworthy that about 121,400 donors made gifts of $25,000 or less, an increase of nearly 2,000 donors making gifts of this size over last year.

One indicator of donor confidence in giving to U-M is that within the Big Ten, U-M has the highest retention rate of donors at 75 percent, up from 73 percent last year when U-M also was the leader.

The impact of two such record-breaking fundraising years on the Victors for Michigan campaign is significant, May said. Since the campaign began, 276,000 donors have made gifts to the campaign, giving $2.97 billion toward the $4 billion goal as of Aug. 31.

Included in that total is $513 million toward the $1 billion goal for student support. While raising funds for student support is the campaign’s highest, most ambitious priority, the campaign also is raising funds for engaged learning to give students learning opportunities outside the classroom, and bold ideas, such as sustainability, entrepreneurship, childhood obesity and K-12 education. The campaign is scheduled to conclude in 2018.

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Good news indeed that the capital campaign is very nearly 3/4 of the way toward its ambitious $4 billion goal with 3 years still left on the clock. Less heartening is that the portion of the capital campaign going to student support is only a little more than halfway toward its $1 billion goal. That means of the roughly $1 billion still to be raised overall, nearly half would need to go to student support if both goals are to be met. I’m surprised and a bit disappointed that student support hasn’t been a higher priority for University of Michigan donors. To my mind, the ability to meet full need for all students is the critical, transformative centerpiece of the entire capital campaign–the piece that will do the most to cement Michigan’s place in the front ranks of American and global higher education going forward.

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@bclintonk - question for you on your point of the level of funds designated for student support. Would a good portion of the $2.97B raised thus far possibly be ‘undesignated’ whereby the University could allocate a portion to meeting the $1B student support goal? I’m just not sure how those things work. Thanks.

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Keep in mind that the figure above is the current campaign only. Here is my understanding from several articles on this topic: 1) the university had raised $1Bln in the prior campaign; 2) with growth of the endowment, that figure was circa $1,700,000,000 as of a year or so ago; 3) the campaign increment is the roughly $500MM that is mentioned above.

By composition, and assuming no overlaps in reportage (or defect in my memory), the aggregate balance for student aid should be in the ballpark of around $2,200,000,000 specifically earmarked for aid.

Again, this is my best understanding of the topic, but be aware of the prior figures before you get too discouraged.

It should be remembered that circa 1985, the ENTIRE university endowment was $250MM or so. These days, $250MM is generally less than the annual growth and only half of the attained amount and half of the amount to be raised. There are 3 years left so there is some hope the goal will be met. Somehow, it is easier to rev up donors for things that are very concrete (pun intended) and less abstract. Extensions of current research also draw big money as do endowed professorships where the gift is very visible.

Scholarships are not quite the same draw for money, but that has been slowly changing over time.

The minimum level is on the order of $25,000 to name a scholarship, so that figure is well within the reach of many graduates and we are likely, in future, to see more such scholarships added to the overall pool.

Go Blue!

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@wayneandgarth That’s possible. My impression is that for most large gifts, the donor wants to know that the funds will be used for a particular purpose (often with the donor’s name attached to it). I assume there are lots of smaller donors who aren’t that picky, though I think a lot of smaller donations are treated as “annual giving” rather than as additions to the endowment. I should think that from the university’s perspective, there’s a bit of tension here: on the one hand, they’d like some flexibility as to how the funds can be used, but on the other hand it’s almost always easier to raise funds for a particular purpose than for “general support.” If you look at the Victors for Michigan (capital campaign) web pages, they seem to push pretty hard for gifts for particular categories. But I don’t know; I’ve always managed to stay far away from the fundraising side of academic life, so I’m not the best person to answer your question.