Donations to higher education have soared in recent times, along with concerns about how the money is being used.
Summary
To maintain mission-driven philanthropic strategies, U.S. colleges and universities need to consider a range of stakeholders while attending to complex external forces and challenges-everything from demographic shifts to public health crises. This paper, which examines 30-year trends in U.S. higher education philanthropy, looks at how donors’ purposes have changed over time, as well as how and for what purposes different groups of donors give across a range of institutional types.
Key Insights
- Donors increased their support for U.S. higher education during the study, especially for public institutions.
- Donors showed an increasing desire to limit their gifts by choosing restricted giving and supporting current operations, rather than giving for capital and endowment purposes.
- Research was the most popular recipient of the restricted current operations support at each time period studied.
- Student financial aid received one-eighth or less of the restricted current operations support.
- All donor types gave more over time, but organizational donors increased their giving more because of a steeper rise in foundation giving.
