Hour by Hour: How Harvard’s Donations Surged After Garber Challenged Trump

Harvard is receiving an average of 88 online donations an hour as alumni rally behind University President Alan M. Garber ’76’s resounding rebuke of the White House’s demands on Monday.

Between Garber’s email and 9 a.m. on Wednesday, Harvard received nearly 4,000 online gifts totalling $1.14 million, according to a giving update produced by Harvard Alumni Affairs and Development and obtained by the Crimson.

Forty-seven percent of the development office’s gifts have been directed to the Harvard College Fund and 14 percent to Garber’s unrestricted fund, according to the document. Seventy-seven percent of the gifts have been less than $250.

The surge in donations to Harvard comes as it faces a $2.2 billion cut in federal funding. Last year, Garber grappled with a large-scale donor exodus after accusations that it tolerated antisemitism following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. While no high-profile donors have indicated that they plan to resume their donations, the surge indicates that small-dollar donors are flocking back to Harvard.

On Sunday, the day before Garber’s message, Harvard received just 37 donations. The next day, donations surpassed 1,000, then continued to rise.

Just six hours after the message, sent around 1 p.m. on Monday, Harvard had received 450 individual donations, surpassing the total number of gifts it had received in the week prior, according to the document.

But the largest surge in donations came in the aftermath of Trump’s $2.2 billion funding cut, announced around 7:30 p.m. on Monday.

According to the development office, between 8 p.m. and midnight on Monday, Harvard received nearly 1,000 online donations — an average of more than 200 donations an hour.

Donations also saw a slight uptick around 4 p.m. earlier that day, the same hour that Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra offered to meet with members of the Harvard College Fund Executive Committee, a group of top donors, according to an email obtained by The Crimson.

On Wednesday, Harvard received more than 2,200 online donations — an increase of nearly 1,000 compared to what it received the previous day, according to the document.

Donations rose steadily, reaching a mid-morning peak around 10 a.m. on Tuesday, just minutes after Trump threatened to strip Harvard’s tax-exempt status in a scathing post on Truth Social. Though the number of donations declined after midday, they spiked again later in the day, hitting a high of 238 donations at 10 p.m.

Donations continued to rise early Wednesday morning, recording 304 online gifts by 9 a.m. Figures for later Wednesday and Thursday were not included in the report.

The pressure on Harvard continued to rise toward the end of the week, with the Internal Revenue Service reportedly planning to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and a letter from the Department of Homeland Security that it could lose the ability to enroll international students.

The influx of donations is a mere fraction of the $2.2 billion in funding that the White House has now slashed — and is likewise small in comparison to the $528 million Harvard received in current use gifts in fiscal year 2024. But it represents a striking show of donor support as Harvard confronts a cascade of financial penalties from Republicans.

A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment on the donation trends.

—Staff writer Dhruv T. Patel can be reached at dhruv.patel@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @dhruvtkpatel.

—Staff writer Grace E. Yoon can be reached at grace.yoon@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @graceunkyoon.