Private donations to U.S. colleges and universities dropped a sharp 11.9% in the recessionary year of 2009 from the previous year to $27.85 billion, according to the Voluntary Support of Education Survey released this week by the Council for Aid to Education.
The 20 institutions that raised the most in 2009 received $7.28 billion — $1.13 billion less than the top 20 institutions raised in 2008, the Council said. (The ranks of the top 20 werent exactly the same, it noted.) In 2009, Stanford University raised more from private donors ($640 million) than any other school.
“The economy was so bad the only thing that would have been a surprise is if it had been a really good year,” said Ann E. Kaplan, the survey’s director, told the Chronicle of Higher Education. She predicted this year will be better.
Last week a survey, by the National Association of College and University Business Officers and Commonfund, Inc., noted college endowments fell sharply for a second year in a row, raising doubts of a recovery any time soon.
| Institution | 2009 Amt. Raised (in millions) | 2008 Amt. Raised (in millions) | Percent change from year earlier | 2009 Rank | 2008 Rank |
| Stanford University | $640.11 | $785.04 | -18.5% | 1 | 1 |
| Harvard University | $601.64 | $650.63 | -07.5% | 2 | 2 |
| Cornell University | $446.75 | $409.42 | 09.1% | 3 | 9 |
| University of Pennsylvania | $439.77 | $475.96 | -07.6% | 4 | 5 |
| Johns Hopkins University | $433.39 | $448.96 | -03.5% | 5 | 7 |
| Columbia University | $413.36 | $495.11 | -16.5% | 6 | 3 |
| University of Southern California | $368.98 | $409.18 | -09.8% | 7 | 10 |
| Yale University | $358.15 | $486.61 | -26.4% | 8 | 4 |
| University of California, Los Angeles | $351.69 | $456.65 | -23.0% | 9 | 6 |
| University of Wisconsin-Madison | $341.81 | $410.23 | -16.7% | 10 | 8 |
| New York University | $334.79 | $387.61 | -13.6% | 11 | 12 |
| University of Washington | $323.55 | $302.77 | 06.9% | 12 | 18 |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | $319.07 | $311.90 | 02.3% | 13 | 16 |
| Duke University | $301.65 | $385.67 | -21.8% | 14 | 13 |
| University of California, San Francisco | $300.42 | $366.07 | -17.9% | 15 | 14 |
| University of Minnesota | $272.35 | $307.61 | -11.5% | 16 | 17 |
| University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | $270.11 | $292.39 | -07.6% | 17 | 19 |
| University of Michigan | $263.33 | $333.45 | -21.0% | 18 | 15 |
| University of California, Berkeley | $255.10 | $285.35 | -10.6% | 19 | 20 |
| University of Chicago | $248.80 | $256.90 | -03.2% | 20 | 24 |