Giving to colleges rises, especially to rich ones

Prosperous alumni helped make 2006 a record fundraising year for colleges and universities, which hauled in an all-time high of $28 billion – a 9.4 percent jump from the year before.

There were increases across the board, but as usual it was the already wealthy who fared best. Stanford’s $911 million was the most ever collected by a single university and raised the staggering possibility of a billion-dollar fundraising year in the not-too-distant future.

“There were a set of ideas and a set of initiatives that the university is undertaking that people wanted to invest in,” said Martin Shell, Stanford’s vice president for development. “This is an unbelievably generous response from an unbelievably philanthropic set of alumni, parents and friends.”

Nationally, donations from alumni rose 18.3 percent from 2005, according to new figures released Wednesday by the Council for Aid to Education. Alumni donations account for about 30 percent of giving to higher education. Giving from other groups, such as corporations and foundations, increased by much smaller amounts.

Survey director Ann Kaplan said the strong economy played a role, but universities also were asking more aggressively as part of formal fundraising campaigns.

Colleges “are making a good case for support,” Kaplan said. “The level at which they can receive contributions will have something to do with the economy, but they have to be out there asking for it.”

Stanford had about 300 full-time fundraising employees asking for money in 2006, finishing up one formal campaign early in the year and starting another. It was a demonstration of how fundraising campaigns, like political ones, now run virtually full-time.

Still, the timing did give Stanford’s annual numbers an artificial boost, because more money tends to be collected at the beginning and end of such campaigns.

The Council for Aid to Education survey contains good news for a number of schools with small endowments that saw large percentage jumps, such as Wagner College in New York and the University of La Verne in California – both of which raised about $10 million and more than doubled 2005’s collections.

But in absolute dollars, the wealthiest institutions still dominate – and are expanding their lead. Last year, the top 10 fundraising universities collected 16.3 percent of all gifts, or $4.6 billion, compared with 14.7 percent in 2005. The top 20 institutions accounted for more than a quarter of all fundraising.