Charitable donations to colleges reached an all-time high of nearly $38 billion last year, according to an annual survey released today by the Council for Aid to Education.
Donors increased the amount they gave colleges in 2014 by 10.8 percent, up from $33.8 billion in 2013, which was the previous historic high. Without adjusting for inflation, the growth between 2013 and 2014 was the largest since 2000.
Gifts from all sources, including alumni, corporations and foundations, were up in 2014, although each source’s proportion of the total was roughly the same as it was in 2013.
While donations were up at most categories of institutions, a huge chunk of the total was brought in by a small group of elite American institutions. The top 20 colleges in fund-raising brought in more than $10 billion. That means that 28.6 percent of the total was given to fewer than 2 percent of the roughly 1,000 institutions that participated in the Council’s Voluntary Support of Education survey.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/01/28/2014-record-year-higher-ed-donations