Americans gave $4B on GivingTuesday, topping last year’s total
More people also volunteered their time on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving this year, with 11.1 million people in the U.S. volunteering.
Gifts
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IBJ’s 2025 Executive Gift Guide
Welcome to the IBJ newsroom’s second annual Executive Gift Guide, a list that we hope will help you find the perfect thing for someone important in your life.
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Taylor University leans into Christian identity to attract big gifts
Taylor racked up the highest number of individual million-dollar-plus gifts—14—among the 57 donations in IBJ’s 2024 list of largest individual gifts to Indiana organizations.
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Marian University receives $29M gift for medical school
The donation, the largest individual gift in Marian’s history, came from Julie Wood—on behalf of the Tom & Julie Wood Family Foundation.
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Riley Children’s Foundation lands $8M gift from Lechleiters
The Indianapolis-based foundation, which announced the donation Friday, said the funds would help make mental health and behavioral health services more available to children and adolescents.
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Articles
$80 million gift to fund new athletic complex at DePauw
The funding commitment from a DePauw alumnus will fund the construction of a new, 70,000-square-foot athletic stadium and sports performance center.
Charitable giving was up in 2024, according to new Giving USA report
Strong performance by companies, particularly in the tech sector, pushed corporate giving up 6%, to a record amount.
For the middle class, fewer gifts under the tree this year
The middle class is paring back on holiday gifts this year, reflecting a widening inflation-fueled spending gap between the country’s wealthiest and everyone else.
UPDATE: IU lands $138M grant from Lilly Endowment to fund new biosciences accelerator
The gift is the largest grant that Indiana University has ever received in support of research and development. IU President Pamela Whitten said the funding will help “change the very landscape of our capital city and state.”
Lilly Endowment to give $100M grant to National Park Foundation
The park foundation described the gift on Monday as the largest grant in history benefiting the U.S.’s national parks. The money will be used to address the needs of the country’s more than 400 national park sites.
Bloomberg Philanthropies gifting $1B to med school, others at Johns Hopkins
There have been only a handful of previous $1 billion donations to universities in the U.S., most coming in the past several years.
Indiana not-for-profits pulled in $348.7 million in big gifts in 2023
Universities, hospitals, museums, theaters, dance companies and other not-for-profits in Indiana pulled in a total of $348.7 million from 79 gifts of $1 million or more from individuals, family foundations and bequests, according to IBJ’s latest survey.
Warren Buffett, Phil Knight among top charity donors of 2023
The 2023 list of gifts from individuals or their foundations totaled more than $3.5 billion. Four universities received big gifts, along with four scientific research institutes and a health care system.
The secret life of gift cards: Here’s what happens to the billions that go unspent each year
After clothing, gift cards will be the most popular present this holiday season. Nearly half of Americans plan to give them, according to the National Retail Federation. But many will remain unspent.
Report: Charitable giving drops for only the 4th time in 40 years
The decline comes at a time when many not-for-profits, especially ones providing services to those in need, report an increase in requests for help.
More big donors want to be anonymous
Some public interest groups say the rising tide of anonymous gifts to not-for-profits can lead to potential fraud or dark-money abuses, so the groups have pushed to require institutions to list their big givers.
Indiana Senate panel advances bill protecting donor privacy
Not-for-profit organizations in Indiana would be permitted to keep the identity of their members and donors secret under a bill now advancing through the Indiana General Assembly.
MacKenzie Scott makes unsolicited $3M donation to Indianapolis-based charter school
The gift came as a surprise to Paramount Schools of Excellence, said CEO Tommy Reddicks. The funds are already earmarked for the ongoing construction of two new school facilities.
Lilly commits $92.5M to Purdue for drug research, scholarships
In a significant expansion of their longstanding collaboration, the partners hope to develop new models for delivering therapies to patients and provide full tuition to between 75 and 100 students each year for 10 years.
Boys & Girls Clubs in Indiana get $30M grant from Lilly Endowment
The gift is the largest ever received from a single foundation by Boys & Girls Clubs of America in its 160-year history, the group said.
IU School of Medicine gets $12.5M gift commitment from Vera Bradley Foundation
The medical school said the commitment will help launch research efforts to develop better therapies for triple negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of breast cancer that is often not responsive to hormone therapies and is resistant to chemotherapy.
Butler exceeds $250M fundraising goal for its ‘Beyond’ campaign
So far, 34,622 donors have participated in the “Butler Beyond” campaign, including 13,351 individuals who became first-time donors to the university.
Riley gets $5M donation for Duchenne muscular dystrophy program
The gift came from the three children of Jim Ackerman, a local cable television industry entrepreneur and venture capitalist who died in 2013, including John Ackerman, managing director of Cardinal Ventures.
Franklin College receives $1.8M gift of real estate
The college intends to use the 29 acres for a biological field station focusing on botany and field ecology studies.