Principal gifts can have important and transformational impacts on institutions and the constituents they serve. CASE, with generous support from Bank of America, studied 70 gifts identified by a broad cross section of U.S. colleges and universities as among the most important principal gifts received in recent years.

To place the largest gifts in the context of institutions’ total annual fundraising, the study included an analysis of 555 institutions who participated in the CASE Voluntary Support of Education Survey (VSE) in each of the last 16 years. The findings include the primary sources of the gifts, uses and purposes, the anticipated impacts, considerations extended to donors, donor characteristics, and the cultivation and stewardship that led to these gifts.