Giving Day 2025

Thursday, March 13, was Cornell Giving Day, a 24-hour fundraising frenzy when Cornell’s friends and alumni were called upon to donate to specific on-campus organizations, athletics, and academics. Giving Day is akin to a free market in philanthropy where many causes were visible in their fundraising success. Unlike most of Cornell’s fundraising for current use funds (which are not publicly disclosed), Giving Day is transparent and encourages competition between various Cornell causes for donations. Giving Day reveals the philanthropic preferences of Cornell’s donor base.

Overall, Cornell raised $11,206,717, down from $12,172,046 last year. There were 17,591 donors, down from 18,693 donors in 2024.

Giving Day is facilitated by a website that contains a separate page for each cause, replete with colorful photos, enticing text, and videos – all designed to convince a donor to choose a gift amount and donate. Each cause can recruit matching donors or donors that release a bonus gift once a certain benchmark is met. 

The website also featured a new arcade-style game where rocket ships resembling McGraw Tower could deliver pumpkins across campus. Bonus gifts were awarded to the causes whose donors delivered the most virtual pumpkins. The Cornell Laboratory for Ornithology won $500 for having the highest score during the day.

Alumni were brought to the website through repeated emails, Facebook campaigns, social media posts, postcards, and solicitation phone calls. Although most gifts were made during the 24-hour period, Cornell allowed large donors to make gifts in advance, particularly to fund the matching gifts or bonus awards.

The website guided users to relevant causes by dividing its pages into broad categories: Animal Heath, Arts, Big Red Spirit, Community Engagement, Diversity and Inclusion, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Environment, Experiential Learning, Health and Wellness, Humanities and Social Science, Public Policy, Science, and Student Access. The treatment of “student access” separate from “diversity and inclusion” marked a different approach, perhaps due to the controversy surrounding “woke” aspects of campus culture. There were 60 causes in the diversity and inclusion category, arranged alphabetically, and 72 causes in the student access category, representing scholarship funds and student support groups. This change appears to resolve the criticism of prior years where the prior website design appeared to steer users to particular causes.

Donors Named

Each page listed most donations by name. Some donations were anonymous, and others were made under inventive names such as “President Trump” or “Cornell staff member.” The listing of donors would encourage their friends to donate as well. In the case of the Cornell College Republicans, donations were made in honor of famous Cornell Republicans from the past such as Barber Conable ‘42 or Dan Meuser ’88.

Jon Anderson ‘71, winner of the 1973 Boston Marathon, gave a total of $25,000 in matches and challenges for track and field that drew donations from two-time Olympic Marathoner Peter Pfitzinger ‘79 and three-time Olympic Hammer Thrower Rudy Winkler ‘17.

Day Hall Administrators and Trustees were encouraged to donate generously to various visible causes. VP for Student and Campus Life Ryan Lombardi donated $1,000 to the Student and Campus Life Annual Fund. His predecessor, Susan H. Murphy ‘73, donated to the Class of 1973 Scholarship Endowment and $200 to Wrestling. VP for Alumni Affairs and Development Fred Van Sickle gave $5,000 for the Access Fund for First Generation and Low Income Students.

Outgoing Board Chair Kraig Kayser MBA ‘84 gave a number of matching and challenge gifts, including a $10,000 challenge for the Football Team and a $10,000 challenge when 125 MBA students donated. Trustee Martin Scheinman ’75, MS ’76, matched $25,000 for donations to the ILR Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution.

Law School Dean Jens Ohlin donated $5,000 when 50 Law School faculty and staff members made a gift to the Law School. University Librarian Elaine Westbrooks donated $5,000 after 50 Cornell faculty or staff members made a gift to the Library. Graduate School Dean Kathryn Boor ‘80 donated an undisclosed amount to the Graduate School.

Alex and Laura Hanson ‘87 matched $200,000 in donations to the College of Arts & Sciences.

Dean of Students Marla Love donated an undisclosed amount to the Black Student Empowerment Office. Recent Student Trustee Dustin Liu ‘19 donated to the Einhorn Center for Student Engagement.

Colleges

Most of Cornell’s fundraising efforts are based in its colleges. The top college Giving Day totals were:

In turn, each college separately sought funds for specific departments, programs and scholarships. The ILR School and the Law School moved up in the rankings compared with 2024.

Athletics

The largest beneficiary of Giving Day was athletics, where 7,005 donors gave.$3,036,661, down from $5,033,588 in 2024. These donations are used to pay coach’s salaries and travel expenses. These funds do not pay for scholarships, NIL, or other direct compensation to student athletes. The top sports by total donations were: Baseball raising $333,878 from 123 donors; Football raising $203,959 from 593 donors; Rowing raising $192,908 from 590 donors; Sprint Football raising $155,665 from 476 donors; and Men’s Soccer raising $154,093 from 442 donors.

The top sports by number of donors were: Football, Rowing, Sprint Football, Men’s Soccer, and Track and Field, which raised $139,069 from 410 donors.

Men’s Ice Hockey is perhaps Cornell’s most competitive team, but it placed 17th after raising $113,458 from 244 donors.

Top Student and Campus Life Causes (non-athletic)

Student and Campus Life drew $844,890 from 4,366 donors. Although many causes had their own web page, donors had the ability to designate any registered student organization to receive funding.

The Sorority and Fraternity Life office performed very poorly, with nine donors giving $1,050.

“Woke” Causes Did Not Attract Substantial Funding

Although each college had a DEI fundraising cause, most of them provided an opportunity to donate without listing totals raised or the number of donors. This is understandable given the Trump Executive Orders prohibiting federally funded programs from promoting DEI. However, there was a page for “Bowers CIS – Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging” that raised $1,202 from 18 donors. The Dyson Office of Diversity and Inclusion raised $1,350 from 10 donors. The Johnson Graduate School of Management Office of Diversity and Inclusion raised $1,886 from 18 donors

The Africana Studies and Research Center raised $6,058 from 42 donors. Loving House raised $3,010 from 21 donors. Ujamaa raised $1,665 from 27 donors. The Latino Living Center raised $905 from 13 donors. Black Students United raised $775 from 9 donors.

The “Scholars Under Threat” raised $27,393 from 28 donors using a $25,000 2 for 1 match from an anonymous alumna.

The “Global Grand Challenge” of Global Cornell did not attract any gifts.

Class Breakdown

Each donor was required to specify a graduating class when making a donation. The donation totals by class were evenly distributed, with a bit of a drop-off for the oldest classes. The top fundraisers were classes from the 1980s and 1990s, which represent the peak earning years of Cornell alumni.

The class rankings based upon number of donors are topped by all of the recent classes due to on-campus fundraising events and special matching challenges directed toward students and recent alumni.

Cornell had 4,994 acceptances into the class of 2027, which means that the Giving Day participation rate for that class was 10.5%.

The overall Giving Day trend is downward over time for this important fundraiser:

Possible explanations include the recent stock market downturn, Cornell’s uncertain relationship with the Trump Administration, and the negative publicity Cornell received in the national media during the past year.