Law School Private Giving Again Breaks Records in Fiscal Year 2015
William & Mary Law School once again enjoyed a record-breaking year in private giving.
Gifts to the Annual Fund totaled $2,306,830, extending an 18-year streak of increasing annual donations. In the past three years, contributions to the Annual Fund have risen by 21 percent.
The Law School’s achievement mirrors William & Mary’s fiscal year success, with the university also enjoying record gift and participation levels. (Click here for more.)
“Annual giving is definitely helping fuel our steady forward momentum as a top law school,” said Davison M. Douglas, dean of the Law School and Arthur B. Hanson Professor of Law. “Thanks to our alumni and other friends, we continue to build on our strengths to ensure that the incoming Class of 2018 and future classes will receive the best education possible.”
Douglas said that the Law School relies on private giving in order to provide substantial financial aid for students. Annual giving also supports the Law School’s research centers, clinical programs, public service initiatives, law library, and student competition teams and journals.
Total giving to the Law School (including the Annual Fund, endowment gifts, the building fund, and in-kind gifts) came to $4,635,842--also the largest total in the Law School’s history. During the past three years, total giving to the Law School has increased by 65 percent. The Law School only considers received expendable gifts when counting Annual Fund gifts or total giving dollars.
Donor participation was also exceptionally robust this past year, with 28 percent of the Law School’s alumni making a gift, one of the largest alumni giving percentages of any law school in the nation.
The graduating class of 2015 broke the record for the largest percentage of students supporting the 3L class gift. Ninety-two percent of the members of the graduating Class of 2015 gave or pledged to the Law School’s Annual Fund, the second year in a row that the 3L class has exceeded a 90 percent participation rate.
“Our recent graduates have really pulled out all the stops,” Douglas said. “They clearly understand the role that private support played in their legal education. I am grateful for their generous support of the Law School.”
Faculty also played a significant role in the Law School’s fundraising success, as more than 90 percent of the Law School’s faculty members contributed to the Annual Fund in 2014-15.
About William & Mary Law School
Thomas Jefferson founded William & Mary Law School in 1779 to train leaders for the new nation. Now in its third century, America's oldest law school continues its historic mission of educating citizen lawyers who are prepared both to lead and to serve.