Cornell Giving Day: Alumni Vote With Their Dollars

Thursday, March 16, was Cornell Giving Day, a 24-hour fundraising frenzy when Cornell’s friends and alumni were called upon to donate to very specific causes.  Giving Day is the closest thing to a free market in philanthropy where many causes were very visible in their fundraising success.

Giving Day is based upon a website that contains a separate page for each cause replete with color photos, enticing text and videos – all designed to convince a donor to choose a gift amount and then donate.  Each cause can recruit matching donors or donors that release a bonus gift once a certain benchmark is reached.  Competition between causes is highlighted by leaderboards and by bonus gifts when a group’s donor count exceeds last year’s total.  

Alumni were brought to the website by repeated emails, Facebook campaigns, tweets, postcards, and solicitation phone calls.

Giving Day is a true measure of donor support because it generally funds current spending rather than big gifts that go toward endowments, multiyear projects, or deferred giving plans.  Admittedly, it measures “street appeal” rather than the result of long-term cultivation and grooming by one or more of Cornell’s development officers.  It is also skewed toward younger students and alumni who prefer online donations instead of gifts of securities or complex deferred giving arrangements.

It is close to a bare-knuckled brawl to prove which Cornell programs and departments are most valued by alumni donors.  Are they “woke” or more traditional?  What in their Cornell experience gave them lasting value that deserves their support?

Of the $13,043,165 total raised, $5,471,787.05 was for Athletics and Physical Education, with specific gifts being targeted to specific sports.  Men’s Hockey got $181,103 from 296 donors.  The women’s hockey team got $51,318 from 230 donors. Our less successful varsity football team had 477 donors give $188,621, In contrast, the Sprint Football team, which is funded only through Giving Day and does not otherwise receive Cornell funding, had 641 donors give $134,771.

The top sport was Women’s Field Hockey with $293,320.48 from 80 donors. Next, the baseball team, which is being relocated from historic Hoy Field, had 208 donors give $213,885.

Sprint Football had the most donors, followed by Men’s Soccer with 592 donors giving $89,547.  Next, Track and Field had 528 donors give $85,540.08.

After Athletics, the next highest unit was the College of Arts and Sciences with 1,381 donors giving $1,102,779.71.  Of this, Latino Studies raised $13,180 from 27 donors, and the Africana  Studies and Research Center raised $7,794 from 51 donors.  The Asian American Studies Program had 52 donors give $11,421, and Women’s Studies raised $1,914 from 18 donors.

Arts also had some noteworthy special funds.  Memorial funds were collected to honor Walter LaFeber and Isaac Kramnick.  For those who believe that McGraw Hall is held together with rubber bands, donations could be directed to the McGraw Renovation Fund.  And for those who believe that Liberal Arts Majors will be replaced by ChatGPT, donations were accepted for the new “College of A&S – Offline Upload Misc” fund. Total donations to these causes were kept private.

The College of Agriculture and Life Sciences is less dependent upon alumni donations due to annual appropriations from New York State.  Yet, it ranked eighth on the list of units with $476,252 raised from 912 donors.  Of this, the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program raised $4,340 from 25 donors.  The AIISP Giving Day page was the only one which included a land acknowledgment.

Donors seeking to support their colleges were given the option to earmark the gift for DEI.  For example, the CALS DEI fund did not disclose their totals.  The Bowers CIS Diversity, Equity and Inclusion fund raised $1,310 from 15 donors.  The Diversity Programs in Engineering had 16 donors raise $2,205.

Within Campus Life, the Intergroup Dialog Project raised $12,145 from 24 donors. Multicultural Student Leadership & Empowerment (MSL&E) raised $275 from 3 donors.

In terms of living units, Cornell Hillel raised $142,259 from 416 donors. Delta Kappa Epsilon raised $82,822  from 106 donors.  Akwe:kon received $3,593 from 17 donors.  Alpha Chi Omega raised $2,790 from 41 donors.  Ujamaa raised $4,205 from 58 donors.

Each donor was asked to identify his or her graduating year.  The top five classes for donations were:

The top five classes in terms of number of donors were:

So, Cornell Giving Day skews toward the youngest classes in terms of number of donors, but is more middle aged when looking at the size of donations.  One reason for the number of donations from current students is that each college conducted fundraising events on campus during the day to attract students’ attention to this giving opportunity.  Colleges also offered bonus gifts when the specified goals of student gifts were reached.

As with last year, when Day Hall looks through all the data, it is clear that alumni are enthusiastic supporters of more traditional programs, and that if left to alumni donations, woke programs would go broke.