For the second year in a row, University of Michigan donors have given more than $400 million in cash and pledge payments. In addition, more donors made gifts to the university than ever before in its history — 129,600 individual donors in all.
Vice President for Development Jerry May provided the annual report for the fiscal year ending June 30 during Thursday’s Board of Regents meeting.
“I continue to be astounded by the generosity of our donors,” May said. “Their generosity makes possible so much at U-M that could not happen without their support.”
While larger gifts often make the news, it is noteworthy that about 121,400 donors made gifts of $25,000 or less, an increase of almost 2,000 donors making gifts of this size over last year. One indicator of donor confidence in giving to U-M is that within the Big Ten, U-M has the highest retention rate of donors at 75 percent, an increase from 73 percent last year when U-M also was the leader.
The impact of two such record-breaking fundraising years on the Victors for Michigan campaign is significant, May said. Since the campaign began, 276,000 donors have made gifts to the campaign, giving $2.97 billion toward the $4 billion goal as of Aug. 31.
Included in that total is $513 million toward the $1 billion goal for student support. While raising funds for student support is the campaign’s highest, most ambitious priority, the campaign also is raising funds for engaged learning to give students learning opportunities outside the classroom, and bold ideas such as sustainability, entrepreneurship, childhood obesity and K-12 education.
The campaign is scheduled to conclude in 2018.
