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American Foundations and Higher Education

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Synonyms

Charitable body; Endowment; Funding agency; Source of funds

Definition

A type of an entity that supports charitable activities by making grants to unrelated organizations or institutions or to individuals for scientific, educational, cultural, religious, or other charitable purposes.

USA has more than 80,000 private grant-making foundations and over 4,700 degree granting educational institutions. American foundations are one of the largest sources of support to higher education institutions representing 30% of the 2016 total with $12.5 billion in giving (Council for Aid Education 2017). Currently, California leads the country in $10 million plus gifts to higher education, with 19 gifts totaling $1.25 billion, followed by New York (11 gifts totaling $263 million), and Pennsylvania (eight gifts totaling $173 million) (Foundation Center 2016). At the same time, more than 25% of total donations go to less than 1% of the universities, with institutions such as Harvard, Stanford,...

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Correspondence to Aurelia Kollasch .

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© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Kollasch, A. (2018). American Foundations and Higher Education. In: Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_199-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_199-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-017-9553-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-017-9553-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference EducationReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Education

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