Cornell Donations Up

According to this article from BusinessWeek, Cornell posted the biggest percentage fundraising gains of the twenty schools that raised the most money last year. While total donations to U.S. colleges fell 12%, Cornell recorded a 9.1% increase in donations ($446.8 million total). Other top schools mentioned in the article experienced large drops in annual giving: Harvard (-7.5%), Stanford (-19%), Yale (-26%), UCLA (-23%), Duke (-22%).

One could raise the objection that Cornell’s numbers are inflated by the $170 million gift to Cornell from Sanford Weill, which was included in the overall calculations, but I don’t think this should be any reason to add an asterisk to our stats. I don’t have access to the data, but it’s obvious that lots of other schools received large donations from individual donors. Ours just happened to be the biggest this time around.