Private donations to Hopkins went up by over $50 million last year, making it fourth in the nation among universities, according to the Council for Aid to Education (CAE).
The University attributed this growth to several large gifts, including the gift to launch the Carey Business School, foundation grants from the Gates Foundation, and support for multiple building projects in East Baltimore and Homewood, according to Fritz Schroeder, senior associate vice president for development and alumni relations.
"These gifts, combined with the ongoing, sustaining support of thousands of Johns Hopkins alumni, parents and friends, allowed us to reach the $430 million figure," he said.
Nationally, charitable contributions to institutions of higher education grew by 6.3 percent last year, reaching a new high of $29.75 billion.
According to the CAE, foundation giving was up by 19.7 percent in 2007 - a surge that was responsible for driving the overall increase in private giving.
According to Margaret Hindman, the senior associate director for foundation relations at Hopkins, "For the fiscal year of 2007, we did not see a significant increase in foundation giving. Foundation giving has consistently accounted for a third of private giving to Hopkins in recent years."
Alumni givings to universities, traditionally the foundation of monetary donations, declined by 1.5 percent in 2007.
According to the CAE, an increase in alumni donations by 18.3 percent in 2006 set the stage for this past year's decline.
In the last decade, alumni giving has never increased in a single year by more than this percentage, a trend which the CAE says is caused by an overall decline in alumni participation nationally.
This trend is, in part, caused by the surge in enrollment in the country's colleges and universities over the last decade - from 1994 to 2004, enrollment increased by 21 percent.
The number of young alumni has been increasing because of this enrollment surge, which has affected alumni participation in recent years.
"Younger individuals tend to give less frequently, and they make smaller contributions. This demographic shift in the composition of the alumni pool helps to explain the decline in participation," said Ann E. Kaplan, director of the Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) survey.
However, the drop in alumni participation does not necessary anticipate a decreased in giving, since as alumni age and establish themselves, they are typically more able and willing to make more frequent and large donations.
According to Robin Wray, interim director of annual giving, Hopkins's alumni have followed the national trend.
"We've been seeing in recent years a decrease in participation numbers, and an increase in the actual dollar amounts donors are contributing."
"We've tried to focus less on marketing to alumni who already donate, and instead we're attempting to broaden our reach," Wray said.
"Rather than simply soliciting the same people more often, we're cleaning our alumni records more often, following up on lost contacts. We're really trying to focus on building new relationships."
While the CAE does not forecast donation numbers for the coming year, Kaplan expects a steady amount of growth.
Despite a potential downturn in the country's economy, "donations for the first half of fiscal year have been good, so we may still see growth overall," Kaplan said.
Schroeder agreed with this assessment.
"Generally speaking, American philanthropy is not subject to the ups and downs of the economy. Total giving in this country has increased almost every year since record-keeping of this area began, despite changing economic situations," he said.
"The individual financial views of a donor may affect the timing of their gift, or the specific manner in which they make a gift, but it does not seem to affect their interest or propensity to support Johns Hopkins."
Hopkins raised $430.46 million from private donors in the last fiscal year, up from $377.28 million in 2006 when it was ranked seventh in the nation.
Stanford University raised the most of any in 2007, with a total of $832.35 million.
The results of the survey were compiled by the annual Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) survey, which received financial information from 1,023 institutions.
