Major Gifts

America’s wealthy are in a less generous mood so far this year. The number of donations of $1 million or more has dropped 8 percent since the beginning of 2012 compared with the same period last year, according to a Chronicle of Philanthropy tally.

Since the start of 2012, The Chronicle has confirmed, 318 gifts of $1 million or more have been made, totaling $2.5 billion. In the first half of 2011 there were fewer such gifts, 292, but the overall total was larger, $2.7 billion.

Cornell Law School has received one of the largest gift commitments in its history: $25 million from a donor who wishes to remain anonymous. The gift will be used to expand endowment support for faculty research, student financial aid and a diverse array of national and international academic programs.

President David Skorton noted that the gift will make an indelible impact on the Law School and contribute to the success of the current Cornell Now capital campaign.

Barry Diller, chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp., is donating $30 million to a $350 million endowment campaign for the Motion Picture & Television Fund, the fund said Tuesday.

The gift is the largest single donation to the campaign for the nonprofit, which provides support, including health and social services, to active and retired entertainment industry workers.

Loyola University will change the name of its business school — in honor of an alumnus who is giving the university a $40 million gift.

The gift from alumnus Michael R. Quinlan to Loyola’s business school was announced Saturday night at Loyola’s annual Founders’ Dinner on the university’s Lake Shore campus in Rogers Park.

The $40 million gift is the largest gift ever given to Loyola University Chicago by an alumnus, the second largest gift ever given to the university, and the largest gift ever given to the business school, a release from Loyola said.

As I've looked at this whole area of proposal writing for major donors I find that a great deal of emphasis, by many authors, is placed on the actual writing of the case, proposal or whatever you want to call it. Most of the material starts with "create a need statement" or "create a theme," or with some instruction on how to begin to draft some element of the actual proposal. This is all good, but it starts in the wrong place. Why? Because it doesn't start with the most important part of the whole equation — the donor.

Here are four ways (with four more to come next week) that smaller nonprofits can compete with — and even beat — bigger organizations in fundraising.

Mica Ertegun, widow of Ahmet Ertegun — founder of Atlantic Records and mentor to some of the most significant musicians of the 20th century — donated $41 million to Oxford University to create graduate scholarships in perpetuity in fields across music, literature, history, archaeology and art history.

The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City has received a $2 million gift from alumnus Calvin Klein, and the company he founded, Calvin Klein Inc. Klein made a donation of $1 million, through the Calvin Klein Family Foundation, which was matched by a $1 million donation by Calvin Klein Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of PVH Corp. This is the largest gift received to date from an FIT alumnus to the institute.

A family donating $30 million to McMaster University wants to speed up the development of stem cell therapies.

Of the total going to the university, $24 million will be used to establish the Boris Family Centre in Human Stem Cell Therapies, which will speed the commercial development of discoveries made at the McMaster Stem Cell and Cancer Research Institute.

The other $6 million from the Marta and Owen Boris Foundation is for a unique clinic that will allow patients with complex health problems to see several specialists and have related tests during one visit.

While we can't prevent all "bad things" from happening to our good organizations, we can take proactive steps to make them less likely.