Monday November 8, 2010
Donations to Notre Dame Plummeted in Obama Commencement Year
By Kathleen Gilbert
NOTRE DAME, Indiana, November 8, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The University of Notre Dame suffered a significant drop in contributions in the year President Obama received an honor at the school and delivered a commencement speech coaching graduating seniors on how to approach the abortion issue.
A CatholicCulture.org report published last month revealed that contributions to the university fell by more than $120 million in fiscal year July 2008 – June 2009, at $226.7 million, down from $347.2 million in FY 2007-2008. A drop in government funds accounted for only about $2 million lost.
News that the university planned to honor Obama at their commencement had broken in March 2009. The announcement sparked an unprecedented shockwave of criticism from Catholics across America, including from 80 active U.S. bishops and over 350,000 signers of a Cardinal Newman Society petition.
Catholic Culture notes that the recession that shook the global economy starting in December 2007, and ending in June 2009, also coincided with the drop in donations. However, according to David Difranco, head of the ReplaceJenkins.com website, the economy alone does not account for the steep losses suffered by Notre Dame. ReplaceJenkins.com spearheaded a campaign last year to withhold donations from the school in protest over the Obama scandal.
DiFranco pointed to data collected by the Center for Aid to Education showing that donations to private research universities fell by just 9.7% in 2009. Contributions to Notre Dame, also a research institution, fell by the much larger 34.7% in that year. Donations to all colleges and universities over the same period fell just 11.9%.
“Certainly 2009 was a horrendous year for colleges in terms of deflated contributions,” DiFranco told LifeSiteNews.com, “but Notre Dame’s loss is staggering, placing the University as an outlier among those who lost.” Meanwhile, he noted, Purdue University, another research university in Indiana, saw an increase in contributions by 6.3% in the same period.
LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) was unable to obtain comment from the university for this story. A Notre Dame spokesman last month said that the school would no longer speak to LSN, but would not disclose a reason.