COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES Alumni donate record 28B

The top 10 fund-raising universities collected 16.3 percent of all gifts, or 7.2 billion, last year.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Prosperous alumni helped make 2006 a record fund-raising 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 fund-raising 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 being 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 fund-raising campaigns.
What's behind this
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 fund-raising employees asking for money in 2006, finishing up one formal campaign early in the year and starting another. It was a demonstration of how fund-raising 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 CAE 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 fund-raising universities collected 16.3 percent of all gifts, or 7.2 billion, compared with 14.7 percent in 2005. The top 20 institutions accounted for more than a quarter of all fundraising.
Top 10
Stanford was followed by Harvard, which raised 595 million, then Yale ( 433 million) and the University of Pennsylvania ( 409 million). All of the biggest fund-raising schools are large research institutions with medical schools that typically attract private support for research from well beyond their alumni base.
Rounding out the top 10 were Cornell, Southern California, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Duke and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which was the top fundraiser among public universities, raising 326 million.
The elite fundraisers typically get money from a higher percentage of alumni, but the real difference comes from a small number of mega-gifts. About 40 percent of Stanford's total came from just 10 donations, Shell said, the largest of which was 100 million from alumnus and real estate developer John Arrillaga.
The university's latest campaign aims to raise 4.3 billion over five years. Stanford charges 43,361 this year for tuition plus room and board but says it provides full financial aid for students who need it and does not charge families with annual income under 45,000.