Day of Giving Results

[CrazyPaco]

The final overall tally is currently $5,543,591.56 from 5,577 total gifts (this may continue to go up even though the matching gift challenges are over). This doesn't include the $125K that was anonymously donated as matching funds, and $10K donated by Chancellor Gallagher in matching funds for young alumni, so the actual total could be thought to be $5.679 million. For a comparison, in FY 2016, $78 million total was raised from individual alumni, friends, and groups (excluding corporations and foundation gifts). That means Pitt raised about 7% of last year's total in one day. That's about 25X more than would be expected if gifts were evenly distributed throughout the year. I have to think this campaign was a success.

Here's the results of the Challenges:

Experience Category (by total # of gifts)
1. Athletic Training Panther Pack Project (wins $25K in matching funds)
2. University Center for International Studies (wins $20K in matching funds)
3. Pitt Athletics (wins $12.5K in matching funds)

Student Organizations (by total # of gifts):
1. Pitt Club Tennis (wins $5K in matching funds)
2. Men's Glee Club (wins $2.5K in matching funds)
3. Pitt Rowing Club (wins $1.5K in matching funds)
4. Society of Women Engineers (wins $1K in matching funds)

School Category (by percentage of living alumni)
1. School of Pharmacy (wins $25K in matching funds)
2. School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences (wins $20K in matching funds)
3. University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown (wins $12.5K in matching funds)

Pitt Athletics was at about 175 individual donations at last look before the total gift counts went blank with about 15 minutes to go. That was about 100 short of the athletic trainers pack and 15 short of UCIS. The club tennis team solicited about 3X as many gifts as the athletic department. I think the varsity tennis team needs to bring in the tennis club's fundraiser.

For those discussions that come up about how athletic donations compare to overall donations to the university, at last available look, the # of Athletic Department donations today made up about only 3% of the total number of individual donations. So when you see donation numbers to the university and think the AD is well supported because of that, remember this little experiment today.

The largest and oldest school of the University, the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences, finished dead last in the % of living alumni that donated at #20. Considering that size of A&S, it isn't unexpected it would be harder to reach that goal, but it is also troubling from not only the aspect of the general support of that school, but also for the university as a whole since it is by far the biggest school and most university graduates come from A&S.

Swanson, the next biggest school, finished only marginally better at 15th. UPJ, the third biggest unit, finished in the money at 3rd. The fourth biggest school, the College of Business, finished 7th. So there is not necessarily a direct correlation between size and % lack of support. Only Pharmacy got to the goal of 2% of living alumni. It doesn't look like any other school got to 1%. Not great.

My guess is that there is likely little connection of alumni to the School of A&S due to its size and broad nature of its offerings. I wish A&S would consider setting up individual departmental funds to drive donations. I've been advocating this for years. Have a Department of Neuroscience scholarship fund, a Philosophy department fund, a Mathematics fund, a Studio Arts fund, etc. I believe they need to set up scholarship and/or research funds (I prefer endowed funds) for every department to encourage (and make it easy) for alumni to donate to something they feel more of a connection with. And I mean easy so that when they give a link, there is a webpage just for that Department and a drop down link at general giving sites. I think Swanson could consider the same with their individual programs.

On the bright side, the Young Alumni Challenge crushed it, more than doubling the goal of 230 young alumni donors (classes 2013 to 2017) and getting the full $10K match form Chancellor Gallagher and his wife.

There is seriously a lot to learn from this. I hope they do it next year, and hope there are even more matching funds.

 

[Tony Zimmermans Dennys Adversary]

Hmmm

 

[CrazyPaco]

And here are some of the bigger individual donations just for people to get an idea where some of these gifts are being directed (this may not be a complete list, but is based on Alumni Association tweets throughout the day):

$2.075 million to the College of Business Admin & the Cancer Center by the Tom Olofson Family
$1 million to the Alzheimer Disease Research Center & Honors College from Ligia Wiegand
$200,000 to the Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences from Harvey S. Cohen
$150,000 to the Athletic Department by Steve and Tami Tritch
$125,000 in anonymously donated matching funds
$124,000 to the College of Business Admin and Katz Buisness by Charles and Rhoda Steiner
$61,000 to the Western PA Writing Project and the Institute for Learning
$50,000 to the Barry J. Epstein Faculty Fellowship by Barry Epstein
$47,500 to the College of Business Administration by Paul Hillier
$30,000 to the Thomas & Patricia Kennedy Memorial Fund by Thomas Jr. & Richard Kennedy
$15,000 to the Integrated Healthcare Scholarship in the School of Social Work by Henry R. Loubet
$10,000 to the Department of Psychology in the Dietrich School by Dr. Rebecca Lipner
$10,000 to Study Abroad programs in Italy by Dr. Arcangela & John Balest
$10,000 to the Dominic & Frances Bernardo Memorial Fund by James F. Bernardo
$10,000 to the Judith A. Kroll Endowed Student Resource Fund by Judith Kroll.
$10,000 to Katz Graduate School of Business by Howard Baybrook
$10,000 to Katz Graduate School of Business by Bibiana Boerio
$10,000 to the School of Nursing and the Pitt Innovation Institute by Debbi Gillotti
$10,000 to the College of Business Administration by Kim Taylor
$10,000 to the College of Business Administration by Miles and Cheryl Cohen
$10,000 to the general student scholarship fund by Patrick and Nancy Gallagher
One other "significant contribution" of an undisclosed amount was made to the College of Business Admin by Dr. Audrey J. Murrell.

That's about $4 million in gifts of $10K or more, which could mean smaller individual gifts raised around $1.5 million.

Out of the above total of larger gifts, under 3.8% was directed to athletics, which is near the ~3% of the total number of individual gifts that were directed towards athletics in the original post above.

Interestingly, Carnegie-Mellon received a single $10 million gift yesterday from one of its board members to support undergrad scholarships.

 

[recruitsreadtheseboards]

Nice to see all those ex Pitt players who made milllions step it up.

 

[OriginalEther]

Nice to see all those ex Pitt players who made milllions step it up.

Everything will be better when Steve is gone.
Wait a minute.......

 

[ThePanthers]

I'm disappointed in the athletic gifts, but as an event as a whole, I think it was successful, and also it was fun to follow.

 

[HailtoPitt]

It seems odd that Arts and Sciences has a lower giving rate than the College of General Studies.

 

[pitt-girl]

My only gripe (and it is very small but I think it is significant) is that they had the School of Information Science listed which doesn't even exist anymore - should have read College of Computing and Information (School of information Science) IMHO.

 

[HailtoPitt]

My only gripe (and it is very small but I think it is significant) is that they had the School of Information Science listed which doesn't even exist anymore - should have read College of Computing and Information (School of information Science) IMHO.

I don't think it has officially changed over yet.

 

[pitt-girl]

I don't think it has officially changed over yet.

Pretty sure it has, but I could be wrong. I know if you go onto the Pitt website and look for School of Information Science it brings you to the new School of Computing and Information.

http://www.ischool.pitt.edu

(Edit: Ok - I read further down the page and it looks that it isn't official until July 2017. You are correct!)

 

[CrazyPaco]

I'm disappointed in the athletic gifts, but as an event as a whole, I think it was successful, and also it was fun to follow.

Yes, I say it was successful and they can tweak it to make it better next year. It should only grow in success.

As a tweak building on what I mentioned above, bigger schools like Dietrich could do their own sub challenges during the event for alumni to support individual departments. They could fund some of their own matching funds for intraschool challenges from part of their Dietrich endowment disbursement (which they've already used to match traditional fundraising campaigns).

 

[CrazyPaco]

BTW, as a follow up to the Athletic Training Panther Pack Project that crushed the Athletic Department, the Engage Pitt micro financing project for that project states that each fully loaded pack costs $150 and there are about 50 students so about $7500 will cover the entire incoming class of juniors.

That means the $25K matching funds that they won will alone cover their project for 3 years. Assuming the minimum standard donation of $17.87 for the challenge, they're probably at 4 years.

BTW, for those interested in Nationality Rooms, the Philippine Nationality Room (which is back from the dead) is nearly completion of their fund raising and has an Engage project set up to make it easy to contribute. They're currently targeting 2018 to start construction if they can finish off fundraising (they're over 3/4 of the way there). https://engage.pitt.edu/project/5041