• Giving by the numbers >

  • Commitments: Annual Totals

    A tally of gifts and pledges made during the fiscal year, commitments reached $633.5 million.

  • Cash: Annual Totals

    The cash total of $600.3 million reflects new gifts and pledge payments received between July 1, 2016 and June 30, 2017.

  • Commitments by Source

    Individual donors, including alumni, parents, and friends, provided 77.6 percent of the giving total. Corporations and foundations provided another 19.5 percent.

  • Endowment Funding Support

    The Endowment contributed $1.2 billion net of spending, allocated to university operations as shown here. Forty-eight percent of new gifts and pledges, or $304 million, was directed to the Yale Endowment. These gifts and a 11.3 percent return helped the Endowment reach an all-time high of $27.2 billion.

  • Impact of Gifts to the Endowment

    Since 1950, more than 77 percent of the Endowment’s value has derived from gifts and the investment performance on those gifts. Over the past twenty years, the Endowment has significantly outperformed its peers with annualized returns of 12.1 percent as of June 30, 2017.

  • Effect of Investment Performance on Gifts

    Endowment performance can multiply the impact of your gift. Over the ten years ending June 30, 2017, a $100,000 scholarship established at Yale would have grown to $189,822, exclusive of spending. With annual payouts, this same fund would have produced $46,055 to support students, finishing at $116,099.

The Financial Story

In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2017, donors contributed $633.5 million in new gifts and pledges toward Yale’s core academic and research priorities, unparalleled collections, and growing campus.

Supporters of the university, including alumni, parents, friends, corporations, and foundations, gave $276.4 million to current use funds and $304.4 million to the endowment—funds that will grow and support Yale’s mission in perpetuity. Cash revenue, a measure of new gifts and pledge payments received during the year, reached $600.3 million in 2016–2017, the highest total in Yale’s history.

Sustaining Yale’s mission and its campus
In keeping with Yale’s best traditions, giving sustains research, teaching, collections, student life, and perhaps most visibly this year, the campus. Fiscal 2016–2017 saw the completion or launch of several new construction and renovation projects, with substantial support from generous donors:

  • Established in 2014 to advance the university’s longstanding commitment to excellence in education, the Yale Center for Teaching and Learning moved in January 2017 to occupy 24,000 square feet of purpose-built space in Sterling Memorial Library. The center unites programs in teaching, tutoring, writing, and technology-enabled learning, previously distributed across the university, in the heart of campus.
  • On Science Hill, following a major renovation, Sterling Chemistry Laboratory reopened with undergraduate teaching laboratories in chemistry, physics, and biology. A renewed Wright Laboratory is providing a home for neutrino physics, while work has begun on the construction of the Yale Science Building, which will house biology and physics research facilities, along with the O.C. Marsh Lecture Hall.
  • Beneath Becton Plaza, the Linda and Glenn H. Greenberg Engineering Teaching Concourse recently opened its doors. Providing state-of-the-art spaces for teaching in the engineering disciplines, the concourse serves as a crossroads for School of Engineering & Applied Science faculty and students, physically linking Becton Engineering and Applied Science Center, Dunham Laboratory, and Arthur K. Watson Hall. It will also connect to the planned Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (Tsai CITY).
  • The Adams Center for Musical Arts also opened in January 2017. The complex—totaling 88,604 gross square feet—connects a renovated Hendrie Hall to Leigh Hall by way of a new annex housing a dedicated orchestra rehearsal room, sunlit practice rooms, and an atrium in which students from the School of Music and Yale College now gather to make music together.
  • Construction began in the summer on Robert C. and Christina Baker Hall at Yale Law School, which will bring residential life back to the Law School for the first time since 2007. Slated to open in fall 2018, Baker Hall will meet a broad range of needs for the Law School. The building will house both student apartments and programmatic space. In addition, student gathering spaces will help foster a collegial environment, including a student lounge, study rooms, and a large courtyard.
  • The university broke ground this summer on the Carol Roberts Field House, a comprehensive facility that meets the training and programmatic needs of two women’s sports: field hockey and softball. Situated between Johnson Field and William O. DeWitt ’63 Family Field, the 5,900-square-foot building will have a lasting impact on these programs and the enthusiastic network of fans, alumni, and spectators who support them.
  • In Sterling Memorial Library, Manuscripts and Archives is under renovation and will reopen in spring 2018. The project will enable the enhanced stewardship of materials through environmental control and security upgrades, enrich the researcher experience with improved consultation space, and create a secure classroom to meet increasing faculty demand for teaching with the collections.
  • On Yale’s West Campus, researchers carefully installed artifacts into the Yale University Art Gallery’s (YUAG) new Wurtele Collections Study Center. The 32,000-square-foot space has turned traditional storage at West Campus into unparalleled access to the YUAG’s collections for hands-on scholarship.
  • And following a decade of planning, fundraising, design, and construction, Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray colleges opened their doors in August to 761 undergraduates. Their addition to the residential college system marks the first expansion of the undergraduate student body since the admission of women in 1969.

An outpouring of generosity
All told, in fiscal year 2016–2017, annual giving achieved a new high of $38.2 million, and Yale College reunion giving totaled $83.2 million. Yale College parents contributed $28.7 million, including record-breaking support for the Parents Annual Fund. And among corporations and foundations, giving reached $123.7 million.

These gifts support core priorities such as undergraduate financial aid, teaching, and research. Together, Yale’s community of dedicated donors helps build a university of permanently greater strength and breadth—a Yale equipped to preserve and advance knowledge in the twenty-first century and beyond.