Monash U’s first philanthropy campaign has raised $1bn over the past 12 years – which is no small change.
The university is pulling the plug on “Change It. for future generations” launched in 2013, after collecting $1.04bn from nearly 59,000 gifts, “to support the next generation of Monash students and researchers.”
Nearly 80% of individual gifts were for student funding and assistance, including “immersive opportunities beyond the classroom.” The result is 1,400 scholarships, including for 518 first-in-family and 110 Indigenous students.
The campaign used Monash’s long-running student recruitment campaign theme which positions its degrees as a bulwark against global decay. The university’s generic fund-raising pitch for “transformative research and education,” including climate change, is “we are at a turning point and have to act now to ensure a quality future for the generations to come. Join us as we tackle the climate crisis.”
There is no word on what will replace the concluded campaign.
Monash U joins universities that have cracked the $1bn barrier for gifts, including:
- Uni Sydney: “Inspired” is said to have been Australia’s first nine figure campaign. Among the mainly big-bucks gifts that got it there, in 2019, the most intriguing is the anonymous donation of a Picasso, that netted $20m.
- Uni Melbourne: “Believed” closed in 2021 with $1.1bn in the kitty.
- Uni Queensland: “Not if, when” took just seven years to raise $607m; two-thirds for research.
Industry observers suggest that Group of Eight universities generally collect 70% of annual philanthropic donations to higher education.
