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Method: announced amounts as announced, in the dollars of their year; commitments, totals across gifts, collective campaigns and regional grants labeled as such
The threshold is the record's own: every gift this section could document at 1 million dollars or more appears below, followed by the largest documented gifts below that line in the categories where the record runs thin. Notre Dame's gifts are ranked with the city's because the university stands at the city's edge and its record is this place's record; gifts whose scope is regional are labeled. Series totals and combined packages are included because their scale belongs in the ranking, and are labeled so no reader mistakes them for single checks.
| Donor | Recipient | Amount | Year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Matthew and Joyce Walsh | University of Notre Dame — School of Architecture | $150,000,000 | 2025 |
| Kenn and Pamela Ricci | University of Notre Dame (unrestricted commitment) | $100,000,000 | 2017 |
| Anonymous alumni couple | University of Notre Dame — Poverty Initiative (lead gift) | $100,000,000 | 2024 |
| Francis and Kathleen Rooney | University of Notre Dame — Rooney Democracy Institute | $55,000,000 | 2025 |
| Lilly Endowment Inc. | University of Notre Dame — DELTA Network | $50,800,000 | 2025 |
| Joan B. Kroc estate | University of Notre Dame — Kroc Institute (bequest) | $50,000,000 | 2003 |
| Donald and Marilyn Keough | University of Notre Dame — Keough School and Jenkins Hall (gifts totaling) | $50,000,000 | 2014 |
| Harry and Linda Fath | University of Notre Dame — undergraduate financial aid | $50,000,000 | 2021 |
| Lilly Endowment Inc. | University of Notre Dame — LIFT Network (regional grant) | $42,431,066 | 2019 |
| Joan B. Kroc bequest, through The Salvation Army | Kroc Center, South Bend (grant as announced; the center's later account says $70,000,000 combined) | $40,000,000 | 2007 |
| Lilly Endowment Inc. | University of Notre Dame — research building | $35,000,000 | 2022 |
| Thomas and Kathy Mendoza | University of Notre Dame — Mendoza College of Business | $35,000,000 | 2000 |
| Edward J. DeBartolo | University of Notre Dame — DeBartolo Hall, quadrangle and performing arts center | $33,000,000 | 1989 |
| Matthew and Joyce Walsh | University of Notre Dame — Walsh Family Hall | $33,000,000 | 2013 |
| Mary and Jay Flaherty | University of Notre Dame and the Congregation of Holy Cross (the donors' gifts within a $50,000,000 combined commitment) | $25,000,000 | 2017 |
| William J. Carey estate | University of Notre Dame | $15,000,000 | 1999 |
| Franklin Eck | University of Notre Dame | $10,000,000 | 1995 |
| Anonymous | University of Notre Dame | $10,000,000 | 1997 |
| Kellogg Foundation | University of Notre Dame | $10,000,000 | 1979 |
| Community match, collective | Kroc Center, South Bend — operating endowment | $10,000,000 | 2007–2012 |
| MaryAnn and Clayton Mathile | Saint Mary's College — Science Hall | $9,000,000 | 2011 |
| Lorraine Sheehan Wilson and Chris Wilson | Saint Mary's College — Wilson Sheehan Scholarship Fund | $7,500,000 | 2026 |
| Marjorie A. Neuhoff trust | Saint Mary's College (bequest, at its settled figure) | $6,200,000 | 2011 |
| Vera Z. Dwyer Charitable Trust | IU South Bend — Dwyer College of Health Sciences | $5,850,000 | 2015 |
| Lilly Endowment Inc. | Community Foundation of St. Joseph County (education grant) | $5,000,000 | 2001 |
| Vera Z. Dwyer Charitable Trust | IU South Bend — Dwyer Healthcare Simulation Center (lead gift) | $5,000,000 | 2022 |
| Lilly Endowment Inc. (GIFT VII) | Community Foundation of St. Joseph County | $4,066,025 | 2020 |
| Judd Leighton Foundation | IU South Bend — Leighton School of Business and Economics | $4,000,000 | 2012 |
| Lilly Endowment Inc. | University of Notre Dame — Alliance for Catholic Education | $3,000,000 | 2013 |
| Judd Leighton | University of Notre Dame — performing arts directorship | $3,000,000 | 2003 |
| Anonymous benefactors | Holy Cross College (commitment) | $2,250,000 | 2026 |
| Judd and Mary Morris Leighton and the Leighton-Oare Foundation | Community Foundation of St. Joseph County — Leighton Award endowment | $2,100,000 | 1999 |
| Guy Gundlach and the Elkhart County Community Foundation | Holy Cross College — scholarships | $2,000,000 | 2013 |
| Ernest and Ella Morris | University of Notre Dame — Morris Inn | $1,000,000 | 1947 (year divided in the record) |
| Judd Leighton Foundation | IU South Bend — Administration Building (challenge grant, same agreement) | $1,000,000 | 2012 |
| Vera Z. Dwyer Charitable Trust | IU South Bend — Dwyer Scholarship in Healthcare | $1,000,000 | by 2015 |
| Jennifer Mathile Prikkel | Saint Mary's College — Science Hall | $1,000,000 | 2011 |
| Lilly Endowment Inc. | Holy Cross College (Charting the Future grant) | $1,000,000 | 2020 |
| City of South Bend | Kroc Center (city pledge, public funds) | $1,000,000 | 2007 |
Below the line, the gifts whose consequence outweighs their figures: Ella Morris's purchase of the Palace Theatre and its resale to the city for 1 dollar (1959; her purchase price undisclosed); Ernest Morris's Tippecanoe Place, bought for 20,000 dollars in 1941 and given to the South Bend schools; Albert Russell Erskine's single deer (1921), which founded the Potawatomi Zoo; Carlotta Banta's bequest of her life savings (1947), which founded the art museum, its amount unpublished; the Studebaker Corporation's deed of its vehicle collection and archives to the city (1966) and the Oliver family's gift of Copshaholm (dated in the 1970s in the Register documentation, to 1988 in the museum's account) — the two great gifts in kind, neither valued in the record; Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center's gift of its downtown land to Saint Joseph High School (2009); Franklin D. Schurz's gift completing the IU South Bend library (1989), its amount unpublished; and the founding gifts of the 1830s — fifteen town lots, church lots and a graveyard from Taylor and Coquillard, against a 3,000 dollar county-seat bond. The table's lesson runs both ways, as it did in Fort Wayne: South Bend's largest gifts are real and documented, the greatest of them came from outside the city, and its most consequential were sometimes its smallest.
Sources:
- The entries above, each of which carries its own sources; this table introduces no figure that does not appear, sourced, in the leg's text.