Higher-Education Giving, by Institution

ROW 83-7 · DUG AT BOUNDARY SIZE · NO COLLEGE IS SEATED IN THE CDP

The threshold fact is the Schools section's tested negative, carried here as this article's frame: no college or university is seated inside the Granger CDP (EXPAND-SCHOOLS-NOTE, intact note — the roster test whole). Higher-education giving therefore reaches this ground only as the record of the two institutions Granger's students actually use, printed at boundary size, each college's record gifts in sequence.

University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame CDP, west of the line). The record-gift succession, each dated and each the largest in the university's history when given: the Mendoza naming gift, $35 million from Thomas F. and Kathy Mendoza (announced 2000; the previous record had been Edward J. DeBartolo's $33 million of 1989); the Kroc bequest, $50 million (2003); Jay Jordan's $75 million (May 2, 2014), which made Jordan the university's most generous benefactor at a giving total of $150 million across his course; the $100 million poverty-initiative gift of 2024; and the Walsh gift of $150 million (September 25, 2025), the current record (articles 4 and 5 carry the Walsh and Kroc courses whole). Two smaller record-class gifts complete the institution's printed shape: Harry and Linda Fath's $50 million of November 2021, the largest gift in the university's history restricted to undergraduate financial aid; and Francis and Kathleen Rooney's $55 million of October 2025, endowing the Rooney Democracy Institute — announced within two weeks of the Walsh gift, $205 million in a fortnight.

Bethel University (Mishawaka). The small college's record, at the size its own magazine gives it: Wyn and Carol Laidig's gift to the university's Faithful Campaign — a $6.5 million capital campaign for Bethel's "people, purpose and place" — is, in the university's words, the largest individual gift the university has ever received; its amount is not published in the record reached and prints as unpublished. (The Bethel record is easily corrupted by a namesake: Bethel University of Minnesota, bethel.edu, publishes its own $3 million estate gift of 2015 and a $28 million campaign gift of 2023. Those are a different university's gifts, in a different state, and they are not carried here; the Indiana Bethel's record is the Laidig line above and no more, at this run's reach.) The banker's named school and the trust's decade of the generic checklist do not appear in either institution's record as reached; the settlers for Bethel's fuller course are the university's advancement office and its Form 990 contribution schedules.

Sources:

1. Notre Dame Magazine — the Mendoza $35 million naming gift and the DeBartolo $33 million predecessor; Notre Dame News — Kroc $50 million (2003), Jordan $75 million / $150 million total (May 2, 2014); Inside Higher Ed, November 17, 2021 (the Fath $50 million financial-aid record) and October 9, 2025 (Walsh $150 million; Rooney $55 million); the 2024 poverty-initiative announcement as reported (the $100 million gift, then the university's largest).
2. Bethel University (Indiana), Bethel Magazine, April 27, 2025 — the Laidig gift as the university's largest individual gift, toward the $6.5 million Faithful Campaign; amount unpublished. The Minnesota namesake's records were read only to exclude them, as printed.