Annual Giving: Raising $59 Million in an Uneasy Year

The 2015–16 Annual Giving campaign brought in $59.3 million, second only to the $61.5 million raised the previous year. But donor participation declined to the lowest level in seven years: 58.4 percent of undergraduate alumni. An Aug. 4 article in The New York Times drew a connection between campus protests and a decline in giving at small liberal-arts colleges. At Princeton, a student campaign to remove the name of Woodrow Wilson 1879 from buildings and programs “was almost certainly a factor, although not something a lot of people cited for not giving,” said William M. Hardt ’63, assistant vice president of development for Annual Giving. “In addition, we thought we detected something in the mood of the country — the presidential campaigns, terrorist threats, economic anxiety — a general mood of uneasiness.”

Hardt added that the University’s latest numbers “on an absolute scale were exceedingly high.” The 25th-reunion Class of ’91 led all classes, raising $7.3 million.