By Marie Lambert-Chan. A culture of philanthropy takes root in Quebec’s francophone universities.
Five hundred million dollars. This figure represents Université de Montréal’s ambitious objective for its major fundraising campaign, undoubtedly the loftiest goal in the history of Quebec’s francophone universities. For its part, the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières collected $27 million in donations, $7 million more than its target; and Université de Sherbrooke expects to exceed its internal fundraising campaign objective of $10 million, or fully 40 percent more than the sum of donations collected only five years ago. More...
A Look at the 50 Most Generous Donors of 2013
America's biggest donors gave $7.7-billion to nonprofits in 2013, with higher education and family foundations receiving the most money. Read more about how The Chronicle compiled this list.
Data compiled by Maria Di Mento, with assistance from Caroline Bermudez. Interactive by Justin Myers.
Use the drop-down menus below to filter the list by state of residence, age, and more. Click on each donor's name to learn more about his or her gifts, or click on the arrow in each listing to view more details about that person. More...
A culture of philanthropy takes root in Quebec’s francophone universities
Universities dominate 'big gifts' list in US and UK
By . Major philanthropists are more generous to higher education in the US and UK than they are in other regions, according to a new report.
The Million Dollar Donors Report 2013, compiled by the bank Coutts, looked at 1,249 gifts of over $1 million (£629,922) made last year across the six regions. Of the $19 billion in donations it analysed, $7.05 billion went to higher education, 37 per cent of the total. Around $14 billion of this was accounted for by gifts in the US, where 40 per cent of the total donated went to higher education. In the UK, 42 per cent of philanthropy also went to universities. More...
Philanthropie - McGill récolte 1 milliard
Par Lisa-Marie Gervais. Leader québécoise en matière de philanthropie, l’Université McGill persiste et signe: au terme d’une campagne de financement qui a duré neuf ans, l’université a recueilli 1,026 milliard, sur un objectif de 750 millions.

Philanthropy, innovation and the idea of the university

Philanthropic giving to UK universities: a case of onwards and upwards

Higher education philanthropy: four steps to fundraising success

There is no quicker conversation stopper at a party than saying you work for a university development office. But those in the know realise there's a lot more to the job than "rattling a tin". The rewards can be spectacular, as today's announcement of a £7m donation to the University of Leicester from a single benefactor testifies.
La philanthropie face à la crise - Situations comparées Québec-France.
Recherche et Enseignement Supérieur - La philanthropie face à la crise: Situations comparées Québec - France. Le Mercredi 20 juin 2012, de 14h30 à 17h00 à Paris, de 8h30 à 11h00 à Montréal, l'IFFRES vous convie à sa Matinale à la Maison du Poumon, 66 Bld St Michel, 75006 Paris (RER Luxembourg). En partenariat avec Deloitte Montréal. Venez échanger avec nos experts français et québécois:
· Max Anghilante – Président IFFRES, Associé Fondadev, Créateur et dirigeant de fondations de recherche et de l'enseignement supérieur
· Arnaud Marcilhacy – MBF Consultants
· Michel Poulin - BNP Stratégies - Québec
· Marie-Blandine Prieur - Experte, membre du club des Amis de l'IFFRES.
En France, les grandes réformes et les grands programmes initiés par l'État qui concourent à redéfinir les enjeux et les perspectives de l'Enseignement Supérieur, de la Recherche et de l'Innovation... ont maintenu l'État dans son statut d'unique interlocuteur valable pour le Monde académique limitant l'ouverture de celui-ci vers le citoyen et l'entreprise.
Dans ce contexte, un développement de liens directs entre les forces vives que sont les citoyens, les acteurs des entreprises, les chercheurs, les professeurs et les étudiants paraît de nature à suppléer aux limites d'un centralisme en crise par manque de moyens et par manque de perspectives.
Les fondations de Recherche et de l'Enseignement Supérieur, qui se sont multipliées ces dernières années, sont des acteurs clef, non seulement comme moyen d'accéder à des sources de financement complémentaire permettant des prises de risques, mais, surtout, comme lieu d'expérimentation de nouveaux rapports et lien d'implication de la société civile (citoyens et entreprises) dans l'enseignement supérieur et la recherche académique.
Il est évident que les lien à construire, particulièrement atrophiés en France et dont les fondations peuvent être les médiatrices, ne peuvent en aucun cas se limiter à un flux financiers. Seuls des échanges et la construction d'objectifs communs concertés sont en mesures d'assurer la cohésion recherchée.
En ce sens, les premiers changements sont perceptibles. Ainsi, les Universités, mais seulement elles, commencent à se remettre en question, à s'organiser et nombreuses à passer à l'action.
Gageons que cette mue du monde académique inspirera les entreprises, qui restent trop souvent sur l'expectative.
Car malgré la dynamique de création de fondations nouvelles s'il n'y a pas corrélativement d'accroissement important des ressources financières issues du mécénat et de la générosité publique. La Recherche et l'Enseignement Supérieur restent les parents pauvres du mécénat.
Inscription: Frais d'inscription 50 €. Bulletin d'inscription. Tarif privilège pour le club des amis de l'IFFRES. Inscription gratuite pour les Québécois Pour formaliser votre inscription, pour participer à Paris ou à Montréal, contactez: a.elsayed@iffres.com. L’IFFRES étant un organisme à but non lucratif non subventionné, vos soutiens, sous la forme d’adhésion ou de dons, seront appréciés. Bulletin d'adhésion. BlogIFFRES:
pour suivre l’actualité du Mécénat, de la Recherche et de l’Enseignement Supérieur.
Výskum a vysoké školstvo - Filantropia na krízu: Situácia v porovnaní Quebec - Francúzsko. V stredu 20. júna 2012, od 14.30 do 17.00 hodín v Paríži, od 8:30 do 11:00 v Montreale, sa IFFRES Vás pozýva do svojho domu v rannom Lung, 66 Boulevard Saint Michel, 75006 Paris (RER Luxembursko). V spolupráci s Deloitte Montreale Príďte sa zoznámiť s našou odbornou francúzštinu a Quebecu. Viac...
Beware Big Donors

At Ann Arbor, President Obama captured the spirit of the megafoundation program for higher education. Should we be worried about that confluence?
First, consider how the foundation world has changed. Also in January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Bill Gates announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was contributing $750-million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. That's a big number. For purposes of comparison, on the same day Japan announced that it would contribute $340-million to the Global Fund, less than half the Gates gift. As of the end of 2010 (the last year for which figures are publicly available), the total assets of the Gates foundation were $37.4-billion, and that does not include the approximately $30-billion Warren Buffett pledged in 2006 to give the foundation. The next largest American philanthropic foundation in terms of net assets is the Ford Foundation (for decades our largest), which at the end of September 2011, had net assets of $10.3-billion.
While, at least for the moment, unique in size, Gates is also representative of an explosion in the net worth and annual-giving potential of the private-philanthropic sector in the United States. According to the Foundation Center, as of March 8, 2012, there were 65 private and community foundations in the United States with net assets of more than $1-billion, 11 private foundations with assets of more than $5-billion, and 30 with assets of more than $2-billion. Total foundation giving in the United States (circa 2010) was about $20.5-billion.
According to a recent Chronicle study, America's top 50 donors gave a total of $10.4-billion in 2011, rebounding from the $3.3-billion of the previous year, with its recession worries. Those numbers reflect the continued growth in the number of private philanthropic foundations in this country—10,093 were created in the 1990s, and more than 8,500 appeared between 2000 and 2009 (as opposed, for instance, to the 1,264 created in the 1970s). There are now more than 33,000 foundations in the United States.
But what grabs my attention is the number with megaresources, almost all of which have emerged over the past two decades. This is truly the era of the megafoundation.
That, of course, is a function of America's reinvention of the One Percent. Look at the most recent Forbes 400 (the magazine's annual list of the richest Americans), headed by Bill Gates (net worth $59-billion), Warren Buffett ($39-billion), Larry Ellison ($33-billion), the Koch brothers ($25-billion each), one of the Waltons (Christy, $24.5-billion), and so on. As of August 2011, more than 40 families had pledged themselves to the effort by Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates to galvanize other billionaires to give away, inter vivos, the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. Many of them have already set up family foundations (and more will do so), and many of those new foundations have bounded to the upper reaches of the Foundation Center's list of the top 100 private philanthropies.
They are new foundations, and they are behaving in novel ways, departing from the more reflective, more patient, and generally less aggressive behaviors of the classic 20th-century foundations.
In the past, our large philanthropic foundations, Rockefeller and Carnegie particularly, were what I have earlier characterized as "learned"—much of their grant-making was devoted to trying to understand the underlying causes of the problems that concerned their boards, and the means they used toward that end was investment in research. They had a long-term strategy, hoping to find deep solutions to big problems, and they tended to support investigators who had strong research programs of their own design. Think of the Rockefeller investments in public health, both abroad and in the American South, and the large and long-term Carnegie financing of Gunnar Myrdal's study An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and American Democracy. More...