Ruth Gottesman, a former professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the 93-year-old widow of a Wall Street financier, donated $1 billion to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Wealthy donors gave nearly $300 million more to nonprofits in the first five months of 2024 than they did over the same period last year, according to a Chronicle analysis. From January through the first of June, affluent donors gave nearly $5.2 billion to nonprofit groups. That is a 6 percent increase over the same period in 2023; however, when subtracting a single $1 billion donation from the 2024 total, giving is actually down by 14 percent.
Still, fundraisers say that while big giving does not compare to 2020 when nonprofits were receiving a flood of donations from
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Wealthy donors gave nearly $300 million more to nonprofits in the first five months of 2024 than they did over the same period last year, according to a Chronicle analysis. From January through the first of June, affluent donors gave nearly $5.2 billion to nonprofit groups. That is a 6 percent increase over the same period in 2023; however, when subtracting a single $1 billion donation from the 2024 total, giving is actually down by 14 percent.
Still, fundraisers say that while big giving does not compare with 2020, when nonprofits were receiving a flood of donations from philanthropists in response to the pandemic, they are optimistic about major donations this year.
Courtesy of Graham-Pelton
Nonprofits are asking for bigger gifts post-pandemic — and getting “yes” for an answer, says Meredith Schneider, a fundraising consultant.
“Over the last 18 months, we’ve seen organizations kind of reset their fundraising amounts to pre-pandemic levels,” says Meredith Schneider, a fundraising consultant and former major gift officer. “And then if you look at the first five months of this year, major gift officers who are making bold solicitations are hearing donors say yes to that and rising to the occasion to pledge their support.”
The Chronicle’s tally of big gifts is based on publicized donations of $1 million or more from individuals and their private foundations.
Predictably, colleges and universities received the most gifts — 118 donations totaling $3.7 billion in 2024, with $1 billion of that coming from Ruth Gottesman, who gave the Albert Einstein College of Medicine $1 billion in February to support free medical school tuition in perpetuity. Donors gave $2.7 billion to colleges and universities last year, so without Gottesman’s gift, contributions to higher education institutions for the first five months of the year would have remained flat.
Some of the country’s wealthiest philanthropists said they were pausing their donations to colleges and universities because they were unhappy with higher education officials’ responses to campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war. But wealthy donors’ giving so far this year shows they have in no way abandoned higher education.
Schneider, who works with development teams at universities, notes that fundraisers have been successful in attracting big gifts when they’ve been able to show rich donors what their contributions can accomplish.
“When gift officers are able to clearly demonstrate that impact, it allows the donor to focus and understand how their philanthropy can make a difference,” she says. It helps them focus on the task in front of them and not all the other things going on in the world.”
Health groups, including hospitals, medical centers, and health care systems, received the second largest amount from wealthy donors. Forty gifts totaling $780 million were made to such organizations in 2024.
Photo by Les Talusan
The need for food assistance, housing, senior care, and other services has soared in the past several years, according to Don DuChateau, chief development officer at So Others Might Eat, known as SOME.
Human service groups, the third largest category in 2024, received 13 gifts totaling nearly $47 million. Such charities have seen the need for food assistance, housing, senior care, and other services soar in the past several years, says Don DuChateau, chief development officer at So Others Might Eat, known as SOME, a human service organization in Washington, DC.
“The numbers of people we need to serve in all aspects of what we do has gone up substantially in the last three years, and it’s quite evident that the pandemic played a big part in that,” says DuChateau who says the organization served 4,600 people last year and has provided services to roughly 5,200 people in the first half this year.
DuChateau echoes what Schneider says about the need for charities to recalibrate fundraising expectations in the post-pandemic era and work hard to attract big donors.
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“We had the COVID bump, as everybody did when the numbers were off the charts, and then reality came back last year, and this year there’s been a little uptick in our major gifts,” says DuChateau.
His team has raised about $2 million in the first five months of this year, compared with about $840,000 during the same time period last year. DuChateau says SOME’s recent major gift efforts have been successful because his team focused on inviting donors to its health care clinic and new residential facility and plans to bring donors on tours of its renovated and expanded dining hall when it opens in October.
His team has also started holding more in-person gatherings for big donors, including a new series of Friday night events in that are held in a donor’s home or in the offices of one of SOME’s corporate supporters, where SOME officials discuss the organization’s work.
“Those salons are definitely helping to bring major gift potential stakeholders into the organization,” DuChateau says. “They’re a good way for us to really just try to get to know our donors better and get to know who gives to us.”
To see who has given big donations this year and in previous years, see our database of gifts of $1 million or more, which is updated regularly.
Maria directs the annual Philanthropy 50, a comprehensive report on America’s most generous donors. She writes about wealthy philanthropists, arts organizations, key trends and insights related to high-net-worth donors, and other topics.
