Stanford Breaks Another Fundraising Record: $1.035 billion

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
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<p>Stanford</a> releases fiscal year fundraising results </p>

<p>In the latest fiscal year Stanford became the first university to surpass $1 billion in donations in a single year (a 46% increase from FY2011), breaking its previous record of $911 million in 2006. Note that this figure is actual received donations this year; including pledges, which are typically spread out over time, it raised $1.2b. For context: </p>

<ul>
<li><p>besides Stanford and Harvard, only 6 universities have broken $450 million in a single year (only once each): Yale, Penn, Columbia, UW-Madison, UCLA, and USC. By contrast, Stanford hasn't dropped below $450 million in over a decade. </p></li>
<li><p>Stanford and Harvard are the only two to break $600 million.</p></li>
<li><p>Stanford is the only one to break $700 million, which it has done five times. It has broken the $800m mark three times, the $900m mark twice, and the $1 billion mark once, this last year.</p></li>
<li><p>while other universities haven't released their FY2012 fundraising totals yet, it's likely that Stanford will continue its streak of being the top fundraising institution in the world, for the 8th year in a row.</p></li>
<li><p>in the last 12 years, there hasn't been a single year that Stanford wasn't running a (formal) fundraising campaign - also a record. From 2000-2005, the Campaign for Undergraduate Education surpassed its $1.1 billion goal. From 2006-2011, the Stanford Challenge raised $6.23 billion, far surpassing the next largest campaign ($3.9 billion set by Yale) and averaging a record $1.25 billion per year in pledges over the five-year campaign. Its original goal was to raise $4.3 billion, which it reached in 2009, two years ahead of schedule (despite the economic crisis). In 2012, it launched the Campaign for Stanford Medicine, a $1 billion campaign that already has more than $500 million in pledges and gifts. So during Hennessy's 12-year tenure, Stanford has raised more than $8 billion in pledges and gifts - a total that surpasses the endowments of all but four other institutions.</p></li>
<li><p>because of strong donations in the last year of the campaign, Stanford's endowment in FY2012 rose 3.2% to $17 billion, despite a sluggish economy (esp. internationally). By contrast, Harvard's dropped $1 billion to $30.7 billion, and Yale's dropped slightly from $19.4b to $19.3b. Stanford's merged pool, which includes additional funds that act as endowment but are not legally included as such, rose to $19.7b.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>Other impressive facts:</p>

<ul>
<li><p>Stanford was the first university to set a fundraising goal over $1 billion, which was considered ambitious/unlikely; the largest at that point was Columbia's $475 million. The Centennial Campaign, launched in 1987, finished in 1992 with $1.3 billion.</p></li>
<li><p>due to a perennial dominance in fundraising and to strong investment returns, the gap between Stanford's and Harvard's endowments has been cut in half in only the last 14 years. </p></li>
<li><p>while Stanford doesn't have the largest endowment today, it does have the largest unrestricted endowment (i.e. no-strings-attached funds that can be spent at the discretion of the university), with $6.6 billion in FY2011, or 40% of its overall endowment. Harvard has $5.6b, Yale $2.9b. The margin is greater with unrestricted net assets (which include non-endowment assets, minus liabilities): Stanford at $11.2b in FY2011, Harvard at $8.8b, and Yale at $3.6b. Also in FY2011, Stanford had $32 billion in consolidated assets, and $25b in net assets. [The figures for FY2012 have not yet been released.]</p></li>
<li><p>the total of university, hospital, and capital budgets is approximately $7 billion this year, making Stanford's operating budget again the largest of any institution in the world. On a budget-per-capita basis, the gap between Stanford and its nearest competitors widens even more.</p></li>
</ul>

<p>Average donations among top fundraising institutions, 2003-2011:
1. Stanford: $677m
2. Harvard: $598m
3. JHU: $395m
4. Columbia: $391m
5. USC: $382m
6. Yale: $378
7. Cornell: $372
8. Penn: $359m
9. UCLA: $349m*</p>

<p>Average on a per-capita basis* (average donations divided by # alumni):
1. Stanford: $3563
2. MIT: $2396
3. JHU: $2324
4. Yale: $2259
5. Harvard: $1851
6. Cornell: $1431
7. USC: $1273 ($1592 with 240k alumni)
8. Columbia: $1261
9. Penn: $1249</p>

<ul>
<li>Duke and Princeton don't make the list in absolute fundraising, but on a per-capita basis would be around Cornell's figure.</li>
</ul>

<p>Sources:
Stanford</a> Management Company releases 2012 results
Finances:</a> Stanford University Facts
<a href="http://bondholder-information.stanford.edu/pdf/AR_FinancialReview_2011.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://bondholder-information.stanford.edu/pdf/AR_FinancialReview_2011.pdf&lt;/a>
Budget</a> 1998-99: President Rodin's Report to University Council- Almanac, Vol. 45, No. 31, 5/4/99
With</a> $1.1 billion and counting, key capital campaign surpassed goals
The</a> final tally: Centennial Campaign raised $1.269 billion
<a href="http://provost.unc.edu/announcements/srlevelbrief2012/adv%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://provost.unc.edu/announcements/srlevelbrief2012/adv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Top fundraising totals 2003-2011:
<a href="http://www.cae.org/content/pdf/VSE-PressRelease2004.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.cae.org/content/pdf/VSE-PressRelease2004.pdf&lt;/a>
Top</a> Fundraising Colleges and Universities,in Total Amount Raised, 2004 — Infoplease.com
<a href="http://www.cae.org/content/pdf/VSE2005SurveyPRwithTables.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.cae.org/content/pdf/VSE2005SurveyPRwithTables.pdf&lt;/a>
Stanford</a> Tops Harvard, Yale With $911 Million in Private Gifts - Bloomberg
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/463839-top-fundraisers-2006-07-a.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/463839-top-fundraisers-2006-07-a.html&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.cae.org/content/pdf/VSE_2008_Survey_Press_Release_with_Tables.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.cae.org/content/pdf/VSE_2008_Survey_Press_Release_with_Tables.pdf&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.cae.org/content/pdf/Top_Twenty_and_By_State_2009.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.cae.org/content/pdf/Top_Twenty_and_By_State_2009.pdf&lt;/a>
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1081870-top-fundraisers-2010-a.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1081870-top-fundraisers-2010-a.html&lt;/a>
Top</a> 20 fundraising universities - CBS News</p>

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<p>Small addendum: this year’s donations came from nearly 79,000 donors, also a record. That’s an average of $13,101 per donor, nearly 4x the average per-capita in 2003-2011 (of course, the former includes all individual/organization donors, while the latter is based on the 2011 total of living alumni).</p>

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<p>Hey phantasmagoric, quick question-why does JHU do so well at fundraising but yet its total endowment trails a number of schools that significantly do consistently worse than it like Wash U and Vanderbilt? You would think that JHU would be using a portion of the revenue collected to bolster its endowment.</p>

<p>Also, why is Princeton never make the top 20 fundraising schools list? I’m assuming its because it doesn’t have major professional programs to support like all its peers but who knows.</p>

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<p>I believe JHU’s numbers are especially high because of its medical/health science divisions, which are among the largest in the nation. Donations to medical units are frequently spent immediately rather than invested (the health sciences are very expensive to support, so there’s less money to throw around at the end of the day). </p>

<p>I’m guessing Princeton’s raw fundraising numbers tend to trail its peers for two reasons: one, it doesn’t have the typical cash-cow professional schools (which attract many non-alum donations, and which produce alumni who go on to earn big bucks), and two, its alumni base is small compared to its peers. It has 80k alumni, vs. 190k at Stanford, 320k at Harvard, 170k at Yale, and 125k at MIT. It does well on a per-capita basis though, as does Duke, which has been in the “>300 million” (a significant benchmark) category 7 of the past 9 years.</p>

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<p>I’m not sure how fair it is to compare the alumni of public universities on a ‘per-capita’ basis. Public universities traditionally get far less donations from their alumni than private universities.</p>

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<p>^ I agree, which is why I didn’t (notice that UCLA is cut from the per-capita list). But I’m sure you don’t object to UCLA making the top 10 in the raw-average list, right? ;)</p>