<p>Uh-oh. Sharp</a> Drop Is Seen in Gifts to Colleges and Universities - NYTimes.com</p>
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<p>Stanford beat Harvard? Does this happen often? The Silicon Valley nouveaux riches flexing their muscles? The new world taking over the old? Cornell clocked in at third place is impressive.</p>
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<p>Not so sure about that. Cornell is in the fourth year of the “public phase” of a huge 5-year capital campaign that at last report was running well below its goals. The goal was to raise $4 billion by 2011. So far Cornell has pledges of $2.65 billion, or less than two-thirds of the way there with time winding down. That’s a problem, especially as the tpyical pattern is to precede the “public phase” of a capital campaign with a year or two of “quiet phase” in which the early big-money commitments are lined up to get the “public phase” off to a rousing start. It appears likely, then, that Cornell’s capital campaign is going to fall short of the mark. </p>
<p>A one-year snapshot or simple year-to-year comparison of various schools’ fundraising can be highly misleading. Some schools will be in the midst of big capital campaigns that will inflate their fundraising totals for the years in question; others may be coming off the back end of successful capital campaigns and will show big year-to-year declines in fundraising that do not necessarily signal trouble, as these declines were fully anticipated. Also, the totals in these charts do not separate annual giving, which goes straight to the operating budget, from one-time gifts to endowment. These are very different kinds of gifts that perform very different functions in the schools’ budgets and should be listed separately to give a meaningful look at how various schools are doing.</p>
<p>Over the last 10 years or so it’s been pretty steady for the group in the Top 20. They move up and down a few spots YTY but all the names seem familiar. The Top 20 were posted on the other board here but:</p>
<ol>
<li>Stanford University ($640.11 million) </li>
<li>Harvard University ($601.64 million) </li>
<li>Cornell University ($446.75 million)</li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania ($439.77 million) (for the record, $10 of that, or 0.00001 million, was mine)</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins University ($433.39 million) </li>
<li>Columbia University ($413.36 million) </li>
<li>University of Southern California ($368.98 million) </li>
<li>Yale University ($358.15 million)</li>
<li>University of California, Los Angeles ($351.69 million)</li>
<li>University of Wisconsin-Madison ($341.81 million) </li>
<li>New York University ($334.79 million) </li>
<li>University of Washington ($323.55 million)</li>
<li>Massachusetts Institute of Technology ($319.07 million) </li>
<li>Duke University ($301.65 million) </li>
<li>University of California, San Francisco ($300.42 million) </li>
<li>University of Minnesota ($272.35 million)</li>
<li>University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ($270.11 million) </li>
<li>University of Michigan ($263.33 million) </li>
<li>University of California, Berkeley ($255.10 million)</li>
<li>University of Chicago ($248.80 million)</li>
</ol>
<p>10 years ago</p>
<p>Harvard University $451,672,023
Cornell University $341,359,263
Duke University $330,991,502
Stanford University $319,590,155
Columbia University $284,486,570
University of Pennsylvania $270,060,684
University of Wisconsin at Madison $245,382,486
Yale University $224,443,203
University of Nebraska $218,746,396
University of Southern California $216,784,218
University of Washington $210,744,638
Massachusetts Institute of Technology $208,437,037
University of California at Los Angeles $208,203,671
Johns Hopkins University $206,972,839
Vanderbilt University $193,182,979
University of California at Berkeley $184,230,886
University of Michigan $176,993,402
University of Minnesota $161,966,013
Indiana University $159,436,782
Princeton University $159,080,194</p>
<p>Nebraska got a big donation that year–a one time deal. Have not seen them since. Same for Arkansas one year.</p>
<p>This is one of the things I love about CC. You can put up an article where you (I) don’t know the history or the context and get some real information. I’m surprised they don’t just have a permanent link to CC in the NYT ed section.</p>
<p>I am encouraged by the fact, given the situation in california, that the colleges seem to be doing well in this area. I’m not from CA, but it seems like some good news for a change for you guys.</p>
<p>Universities currently in the middle of major capital campaigns include, among many others:</p>
<p>Stanford, goal of $4.3 billion over 5 years, launched 10/10/2006
Cornell, goal of $4 billion over 5 years, launched 10/2006
Penn, goal of $3.5 billion over 7 years, launched 10/20/2007
Yale, goal of $3 billion over 5 years, launched 9/20/2006
Columbia, goal of $4 billion over 5 years, launched 9/29/2006
UC Berkeley, goal of $3 billion over 8 years, launched 7/1/2005</p>
<p>Universities recently completing major capital campaigns include:</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins, successfully raised $3.74 billion over 8 years ended 12/31/2008
University of Michigan, successfully raised $3.2 billion over 8 years ended 12/31/2008
NYU, successfully raised $3.1 billion over 7 years, ended 10/2008</p>
<p>Believed to be in the “quiet phase” of a major capital campaign, securing donations and pledges that must be credited to the year in which they are made but will later be counted toward the capital campaign once it enters its “public phase”:</p>
<p>Harvard, dimensions and launch date unknown</p>
<p>I maintain these rankings by one-year donations are pretty meaningless unless you know where each school stands in its capital campaign cycle. Schools generally give major donors a breather after a big capital campaign; during that period, donations will decline. Donations to schools in the middle of capital campaigns will soar. It doesn’t mean one group of schools is doing better than the other. It is impressive, however, that some schools currently in the midst of big capital campaigns continue to do well even in the current economy. And sorry, barrons, but the 10-year comparisons aren’t very meaningful, either, because both those lists could reflect schools at the peak of separate capital campaign cycles.</p>
<p>I look at it every year–the usual suspects are always there. Campaigns actually have little impact. Just shifts most giving from annual to endowment/specific goals. I can show you every year for the last 10+ at least. Trust me–not much difference on average.
Many of those endowment pledges go out 10 years. I know–I made one myself.</p>
<p>Some more data points that prove my points:</p>
<p>With changes in amounts raised and rank of top 20 since 2008 and 2004 (page 8): </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cae.org/content/pdf/VSE_2009_Press_Relsease.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cae.org/content/pdf/VSE_2009_Press_Relsease.pdf</a></p>
<p>barrons,
Very useful. I’d say the data from 2004, 2008 and 2009 confirm your point that the gang of usual suspects and their relative positions remain pretty constant, though jumps—or drops— of 5 or 6 places in the ranking are not uncommon. Biggest change was MIT which went from 8th in 2004 all the way down to 16th in 2008 before rebounding a little to 13th in 2009.</p>
<p>I don’t buy your point about capital campaigns not making a difference, however. For some schools this appears to be true, but for others there’s huge year-to-year variance in dollars raised. Quite a few of these schools raised 50% or 60% more in 2008 than in 2004, though most fell off a little in 2009 from their 2008 peak. Others showed far smaller fluctuations over this period. </p>
<p>MIT had the smallest variance, with its fundraising increasing only 7.6% from 2004 to 2008, and up another 2.3% from 2008 to 2009. Meanwhile, a bunch of schools passed slow-but-steady MIT in the rankings between 2004 (when MIT ranked 8th) and 2008 when it fell all the way back to 16th despite a modest improvement in its own fundraising; several of those schools then fell back behind MIT in 2009. This says to me there’s a lot of variability for some schools, not so much for others. Some of it may be market conditions, but some, I submit, is where they stand in their capital campaigns, the biggest and most successful of which do bring in huge influxes of money beyond what they’d otherwise get in annual giving and the normal pace of contributions to endowment or particular capital projects.</p>
<p>If the new package of taxes passes Congress (along with the Bush-era tax cuts being allowed to expire), families with incomes of $250,000 and up are going to lose their tax deductions for charitable contributions, which includes donations made to colleges and universities. I expect that if charitable contributions are no longer tax deductable, then many people will reduce or eliminate the amounts that they give (particularly those families making $250,000 to $500,000 and living in expensive, high tax areas).</p>
<p>bc–you could be right too. I just don’t have a list of campaigns to compare against. I Just did not see much pattern over the years and always wondered about it. I know UW had one big bump and then went down due to a windfall that was a onetime deal not connected to any capital campaign. UVa has a huge campaign going but the annual numbers have not gone up that much yet.</p>