With a battered economy and volatile financial markets taking their tolls on donors’ pocketbooks, private giving to American colleges dropped sharply in 2009, according to findings of the annual Voluntary Support of Education survey, which were released on Wednesday. Donations were down $3.75-billion from the previous year””a decline of 11.9 percent, the steepest in the survey’s 50-year history.
Colleges brought in an estimated $27.85-billion in gifts in the 2009 fiscal year, according to the survey, which included 1,027 institutions and was conducted by the Council for Aid to Education. The year before, colleges raised $31.6-billion, which was the highest total ever reported in the survey. In 2009, alumni participation dropped to a record low, and the size of the average alumni gift was down, too.
The survey’s findings were grim but not unexpected. During the period of the survey””July 1, 2008, to June 30, 2009””college fund raisers had reported “hitting a wall” with donors who had either lost significant portions of their wealth or were nervous that they would.
Most all of the schools mentioned in the article, especially those who made the top 10 list, are also those sitting on billions of dollars of endowment monies. Many of those are also among a huge number of schools with year over year tuition hikes by double-digit percentages, with questionable justification for it. So what is the concern exactly???