She said the development team 

sees value in collecting the data 
because it helps them under-
stand ways to better inform 
students on the importance of 
philanthropy.

“We know that a lot of stu-

dents are unaware of the roles 
that private philanthropy plays at 
the University, and how private 
philanthropy impacts students 
experiences,” Walsh said. “It’s 
really important for us to under-
stand what students are aware 
of, what they’re not aware of, 
what their opinions are because 
it’s important to us to develop 
programming that will help ben-
efit students’ education and their 
involvement in philanthropy.”

During 
the 
Giving 
Blue 

Day fundraiser, students were 
encouraged to donate to Uni-
versity units, including student 
organizations, to receive match-
ing gifts from private donors. 
About 80 student organizations 
fundraised more than $157,000.

The top five fundraisers were 

Dance Marathon, the Michigan 
Marching Band, the Medical 

School’s Student-Run Free Clin-
ic, Alternative Spring Break and 
MUSIC Matters.

Though student donors may 

have been most prominently fea-
tured during Giving Blue Day, 
Walsh said student donors have 
long contributed to the Universi-
ty’s development efforts. Walsh’s 
job is to help student organiza-
tions fundraise, and in particu-
lar, help them appeal to potential 
student donors on campus.

“Donors range from under-

grad to doctoral students, and 
are representative of the vari-
ous passions that exist across the 
campus,” she said.

For many students, she said 

the incentive to donate stems 
from their interest in the work of 
the student organizations.

“Everyone can’t take care of 

patients themselves, but they can 
make a gift that will make that 
happen,” Walsh said. “They may 
not be able to go fix up houses in 
the inner city, but they can sup-
port an organization that can do 
that. That’s what all of our donors 
do: they make things happen, and 
our students realize that they 
can make things happen through 
philanthropy whether as donors 
or whether as fundraisers, and, 

in some cases, both.”

However, 
many 
organiza-

tions find it difficult to track the 
amount of student donations 
they receive each year because of 
the various ways that they raise 
money, in addition to the fact 
that most do not keep track of 
how much specifically students 
donate.

LSA junior Macauley Rybar, 

the external director of Dance 
Marathon, said the organization 
often faces a similar problem. 
Because of the way DMUM is set 
up, where dancers are personally 
responsible to meet an individual 
funding goal of $300, he said 
there is really no way to track 
who donates what amount.

In contrast, Giving Blueday 

provided them the unique oppor-
tunity to track donations because 
the student-donated funds were 
matched.

“The first time we received 

anything close to (trackable 
funds) was on Giving Blueday of 
this year, because we were able to 
track student donation due to the 
student matching funds avail-
able for student organizations,” 
Rybar said.

Some student organizations 

also allow students to donate 
directly to other students, as 
opposed to external causes or 
activities.

MUSIC 
Matters, 
founded 

in 2011, holds an annual char-
ity concert each year as well as 
SpringFest. Together, the events 
raise money to not only bring in 
popular artists, but to give back 
to various aspects of the Univer-
sity community.

In their first year, the group 

raised $10,000 to donate to Mott 
Children’s Hospital. In their sec-
ond year, they raised $50,000 to 
create a need-based scholarship 
for in-state students entering 
the University. For the past two 
years, the organization allocated 
donations toward the creation of 
a camp for underserved Detroit 
youth.

MUSIC 
Matters 
President 

Darren Appel, a Business senior, 
said the group employs a two-
tiered approach: continuing to 
support the scholarship, while 
also supporting a separate cause 
each year.

3-News

STUDENTS
From Page 1

2-News

2 — Friday, April 17, 2015
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

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Campus Voices

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LEFT Ann Arbor resident Paul Majar makes bubbles at the Fool Moon event on Washington Street on Friday. (Robert Dunne/Daily) RIGHT 
Mimes Kyle Watts and Jenny Choate perform during the Festifools parade on Main Street on Sunday . (Connor Bade/Daily)

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Closing ceremony 
features prayer of 
mourning, remarks 

from survior 

By ALYSSA BRANDON

Daily Staff Reporter

In honor of Yom HaShoah, the 

National Holocaust Remembrance 
Day, students gathered on the Diag 
on Wednesday and Thursday for 
an annual 24-hour reading of the 
names of those killed during the 
Holocaust.

Members of Hillel’s Conference 

on the Holocaust invited passersby 
to read quotes from several Holo-
caust survivors while student vol-
unteers read a number of victims’ 
names every hour.

The event also featured a special 

ceremony Wednesday evening, in 
which student volunteers sang tra-
ditional Hebrew songs and prayers. 
Students who attended the cer-
emony also lit six candles in honor 
of the 6 million Jews killed during 
the Holocaust.

Two COTH volunteers addition-

ally shared stories of family mem-

bers who survived the Holocaust. 
LSA freshman Shira Kitay, COTH’s 
assistant survivor relations chair, 
shared her grandfather’s story, 
involving how he and his fam-
ily went into hiding after the Nazi’s 
invaded Poland.

“My grandfather barely evaded 

death in so many instances,” she 
said during the ceremony. “His 
story is one of strength, persever-
ance and a lot of luck.”

In an interview following the 

event, Kitay said talking about the 
Holocaust is important in keeping 
the testimonies of survivors alive.

“The Holocaust is the biggest 

failure of humanity,” she said. “It’s 
important to carry on these stories, 
especially since we are the last gen-
eration that will hear them from 
survivors.”

Kitay also said talking about her 

grandfather’s struggle is a way for 
her to honor his determination to 
survive.

“He suffered through all that so 

we could have a family,” she said. 
“I’m here today because my grand-
father persevered. I would not be 
alive if he had given up.”

In the closing ceremony of the 

vigil Thursday afternoon, Holo-
caust survivor Irene Butter spoke to 

students about ongoing Holocaust 
Remembrance projects in Europe.

Butter, who is also a profes-

sor emerita in the School of Public 
Health, was 12 years old when she 
was taken from her home in the 
Netherlands and sent to work in 
two concentration camps. She was 
14 when she was liberated.

During the ceremony, Butter 

stressed the importance of honor-
ing the lives lost during the Holo-
caust.

“When these people were mur-

dered, they were not given a proper 
burial, and their names and iden-
tities were lost,” she said. “We 
depend on you, the future genera-
tions, to tell these stories and read 
the names.”

In an interview after the cere-

mony, Butter said she returns to the 
University to share her story and 
teach the younger generations les-
sons from the Holocaust.

“It’s not just important that they 

learned what happened, but it’s 
important that they also learn the 
lessons,” she said. “You can’t be a 
bystander, because we have to be 
vigilant about stopping and pre-
venting discrimination and oppres-
sion any types of inequality because 
people are all the same.”

Students hold vigil on Diag for 
Holocaust Remembrance Day 

ALLISON FARRAND/Daily

LSA juniors Michelle Shumunow and Polina Fradkin read a prayer at Conference on the Holocaust’s annual Reading of the 
Names ceremony on the Diag Wednesday evening. 

cent of the 103,753 donors giving 
less than $25,000 were alumni; last 
year only 44.6 percent of the 119,168 
donors were alumni. This is signifi-
cant given the fact that the majority 
of donors give within this range.

Additionally, over the past decade 

the University’s alumni participation 
rate has declined. While total dona-
tions have continued to rise, the per-
centage of alumni that donate each 
year decreased from 15.2 percent in 
2005 to 9.9 percent in 2014.

Michigan is not alone in this trend. 

In fact, nearly all schools in the Big 
Ten have seen a decrease in alumni 
participation since 2004, with the 
average dropping from 13.8 percent to 
10.1 percent over 10 years.

Megan Doud, director of the Uni-

versity’s Annual Giving program, 
spends most of her time looking at 
these numbers. Doud explained that 
the University has focused more 
attention on groups affiliated with 
the University who are not necessar-
ily alumni. In particular, individuals 
tied to non-degree granting units — 

such as the hospital, libraries, botani-
cal gardens and others — have been 
an increasing source of funds.

“A shift to broader perspective on 

population and then more emphasis 
on these areas that are really more 
community-based, or almost more 
like a separate nonprofit even though 
they’re from the University of Michi-
gan, has really increased that non-
alumni support,” she said.

Tom Baird, assistant vice presi-

dent of development and campaign 
strategy, said some donors within 
that category are also attracted to the 
“marketable” work done at the hospi-
tal. The prospect of curing a disease 
is particularly enticing to donors, he 
said, and is able to attract donors with 
little prior connection to the Univer-
sity.

“Research is huge,” Baird said. 

“People make gifts to help facilitate 
patient care; there’s a whole variety of 
things people can give to.”

Doud added that this year’s Giving 

Blue Day also played a large role in 
donation totals for the year.

Of course, alumni still provide a 

large portion of the donation base. 
Of the University’s total alumni, 

46.3 percent have given at least once 
in their lifetime. Of those who have 
donated, 39.9 percent live in Michi-
gan. California holds the next larg-
est group of donating alumni with 
8.17 percent; Illinois has 5.52 percent, 
New York 4.77 percent and Florida 
3.42 percent. By region, the North-
east holds 18.15 percent of donating 
alumni, the West 15.41 percent.

Additionally, according to Judy 

Malcolm, senior director of executive 
communications in the Office of Uni-
versity Development, the University 
has a 70 percent donor retention rate 
— meaning 70 percent of donors from 
the previous year gave again. Malcom 
said this is the highest retention rate 
in the Big Ten.

Further examination of the Uni-

versity’s donation data by the Daily 
shows the school ranks among the 
highest in the country in terms of 
total dollars raised. Since 2004, the 
earliest year data was available from 
CAE, the University’s alumni dona-
tion totals has placed it in the top 20 
amounts of all colleges, except for 
2011.

The University’s donations have 

increased by almost 71 percent since 

2004, whereas the median donation 
total for the top 20 has increased by 
61 percent.

Ann E. Kaplan, the Voluntary Sup-

port of Education survey director 
of CAE, said while alumni partici-
pation is generally declining across 
the country, average gift sizes are 
increasing — this year by 7 percent.

Kaplan said public institutions are 

increasingly joining the ranks as top 
fundraisers. She added that while 
public universities have had to catch 
up to private schools, which have his-
torically relied more on philanthropy 
for funding, all large schools have the 
capacity to become top-tier fundrais-
ers.

“A lot of the increase in giving 

in this particular year was due to a 
resurgence of major gifts for positions 
of wealth,” Kaplan said. “So that’s 
where you might see fewer donors 
but you’ll see more contributions at 
greater values.”

The Daily’s data analysis focuses 

on 2013, the latest available year. The 
University was 14th highest in dona-
tions that year, bringing in more than 
$351 million. To understand how dif-

TARGET
From Page 1

See TARGET, Page 3

See STUDENTS, Page 3

