Charitable Donations to Colleges are On the Rise

It seems like 2010 was a good year for charitable donations to colleges and universes around the nation. In 2010, colleges and universities in the USA received $28 billion in contributions, which is 0.5 percent more than the schools received in 2009, according to the Council for Aid to Education.
The amount of support for higher education donated in 2010 was the same a it was in 2006, measured in total dollars. However, if the donations are adjusted to account for inflation, the donations fall by eight percent.
“We’re still not out of the woods,” said Ann Kaplan, director of the Voluntary Support of Education survey. “Charitable contributions to education are recovering very slowly.”

Which schools received the most donations in 2010? Stanford comes in first place with a total of $599 million in donations from private donors. Harvard received the second most amount of donations with $597 million and Johns Hopkins University came in third with $428 million.
There were 996 schools included in the survey. Interestingly enough, 25 percent of the donations went to the top 20 colleges and universities, and four of these universities received at least 10 percent more donations than they did in 2009.
Another interesting trend is where the donations are coming from. Donations from alumni declined in 2010, while donations from companies and foundations increased. Gifts from alumni averaged $1,080 last year, down from $1,195 in 2006.
Via NY Times