The University of Michigan marked its second-highest fundraising year ever, with $886 million raised in the 2025 fiscal year. Following the launch of the Look to Michigan campaign, which seeks to raise $7 billion towards causes including the student experience, health, sustainability and civic engagement, the campus community saw 40% of this year’s donations devoted to Michigan Medicine, $183 million to research, $152 million directly to students and $51 million given to faculty, according to a fact sheet provided by the Office of University Development.
In an email to The Michigan Daily, Todd Baily, the University’s associate vice president for development, campaign strategy and initiatives, said campaigns such as Look to Michigan help establish important connections with donors.
“Launching a fundraising campaign generates publicity, awareness, and engagement with both our donors and our prospective donors, and that motivates giving,” Baily wrote. “Campaigns create special opportunities to engage with current and prospective donors and raise awareness about the need and the impact that they can have.”
Recent large donations to the University include a $40 million gift for supporting both Michigan Medicine’s Frances and Kenneth Eisenberg Troy Center for Specialty Care and mental health research, a $50 million gift for the creation of the Rogel and Blondy Center for Pancreatic Cancer and a $1 million donation to the Maize and Blue Cupboard.
In an interview with The Daily, Kelly O’Mara, Maize and Blue Cupboard program manager, said the Cupboard relies almost entirely on donations in order to support its mission of fighting food insecurity among the student body.
“In the last couple years, we’ve been really fortunate to be pretty well funded by donors,” O’Mara said. “And so the majority of the funds that we use to purchase food and staff the Cupboard comes from donors.”
The Cupboard, which serves around 30,000 shopping visits each year, primarily subsists on donations. However, the program is also working on creating an endowment fund so it can operate comfortably for years to come. O’Mara said the Cupboard also accepts non-monetary donations in the form of time and resources.
“There’s a lot of ways to donate to the Cupboard,” O’Mara said. “So we accept canned goods, non-perishables … Every home gardener has too many zucchinis right now, and so we accept those. We accept the offer of time, so a lot of our donations we see (are) volunteer hours. Folks come and spend their time with us, help us unload our trucks, help us do the operating, those types of things.”
Many student organizations with high operating costs also rely on donors to fund their programs. One such program is the Michigan Mars Rover Team, a student-run organization focused on constructing and entering competitions with a rover designed to explore extraterrestrial terrain.
In an interview with The Daily, Engineering sophomore Riya Desai, the MRover external relations officer, said despite also receiving funds from industry companies, a significant portion of their funds come from the University itself.
“We deal with a five-to-six-figure budget every year, and a solid third of that does come from the University,” Desai said.
MRover participates in the various University-led fundraising days throughout the year to meet their goals and support students from all the University’s schools. Desai emphasized the importance of each donation to the team.
“Every dollar counts, and it’s all being used towards helping build future engineers,” Desai said. “I know our members learn a lot of industry standard skills just through this project and are better able to contribute to their professional careers once they leave Rover.”
In addition to major contributions, Baily said the majority of the University’s contributions are smaller donations from a wide variety of donors.
“More than 230,000 donors have given to the campaign so far, from all ranges of the giving spectrum,” Baily wrote. “Yes, large, transformational gifts are transformational to the university. But just as important is the collective impact of all giving, which makes a substantial difference. In fact, more than 90% of our gifts are under $1,000.”
Baily emphasized the far-reaching impact of each donation. He wrote that investing in the University means investing in young people who operate in both local and global communities.
“People want to have an impact on what they care most about,” Baily wrote. “And because of the breadth and the depth of the University of Michigan, we pretty much have something that resonates with everyone. And it’s almost always world-class work in a wide range of areas, as well as support of students. Donors can have a tremendous amount of impact on the university. The university in turn has a significant local, regional, national, and global impact on our society.”
Daily Staff Reporter Grace Schuur can be reached at gschuur@umich.edu.
