This week’s stories are all about what institutions do with momentum once they have it. Santa Clara converted decades of relationship with one family into a $175 million founding gift for a new medical school. Jacksonville University finished a $175 million campaign four years early and immediately launched a bigger one. And two more shops turned a single good result into the next thing.
Momentum is perishable. It dissipates the moment a campaign closes or a leader’s interim term ends, unless someone deliberately carries it forward. This week, four institutions did. Subscribe to get next Friday’s briefing first.
Santa Clara Lands $175 Million to Found a New Medical School
Santa Clara University and Sutter Health announced the Mark & Mary Stevens School of Medicine, funded in part by a $175 million gift from Mary Stevens, a 1984 Santa Clara graduate, and her husband, venture capitalist Mark Stevens. It will be the first new medical school in the San Francisco Bay Area in more than a century. The gift is the largest ever to Santa Clara and the largest cash gift ever made to Catholic higher education. The Stevenses have been connected to both institutions for decades, long serving as connectors between Santa Clara and Sutter Health.
The Stevens family gave $200 million to USC just ten days earlier. The same donors, two institutions, two weeks. Transformational giving at this level is not spread randomly. It concentrates among a small number of families with deep, multi-decade institutional ties. Knowing who those families are, and where else they give, is prospect research worth doing.
UC Cincinnati’s Day of Giving Raises $2.86 Million and Lands a $2 Million Endowed Chair
The University of Cincinnati reported results from its 24-hour Day of Giving: $2.86 million from more than 3,000 donors. The headline commitment was a $2 million gift from Fred V. Lucas, MD, and Johan D. Lucas, MD, to create the Fred V. Lucas, MD, Endowed Chair of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. The day also generated $250,000 from 1,115 donors for scholarships, while 52 ambassadors inspired 878 gifts.
A $2 million endowed chair landed during a 24-hour giving day. Giving days are usually treated as broad-participation, small-dollar events, run separately from major gift work. UC Cincinnati’s result is a reminder that the two programs can reinforce each other when a shop lets them.
Reading this somewhere other than your inbox? Get the briefing every Friday morning →
Jacksonville University Finishes a $175 Million Campaign Four Years Early, Then Launches a Bigger One
Jacksonville University announced the completion of its FUTURE.MADE. campaign, surpassing its $175 million goal four years ahead of schedule, the largest fundraising effort in the university’s history. A gift from Lee and Becky Nimnicht carried the campaign across the line; Lee Nimnicht is a 1990 graduate and trustee. With the original goal met, JU raised the target to $250 million and relaunched the effort as FUTURE.RISING., anchored by an expansion of need-based scholarship support for students with demonstrated financial need.
Finishing early is the easy headline. The instructive move is what JU did next: it announced the bigger campaign the same day, before the momentum, the volunteers and the donor attention could disperse. A campaign close is not a finish line. It is the most dangerous moment to stand still.
SUNY Geneseo Makes Its Interim Advancement VP Permanent After a $45 Million Campaign Close
SUNY Geneseo named Carolyn Campbell, PhD, vice president for college advancement and executive director of the Geneseo Foundation, effective June 4. Campbell had served in the interim role since February 2025. During her interim tenure she oversaw the successful completion of the $45 million Opportunities Rising campaign and helped facilitate several corporate and academic partnerships. She brings more than three decades of advancement leadership experience.
When an interim leader closes a major campaign, the institution faces a choice: run an external search, or keep the person who just delivered. Geneseo kept her. Losing momentum to a months-long national search after a successful interim run is a quiet, recurring way advancement shops stall themselves.
New Outlook: Donor-Advised Funds Are Becoming the Default Way Americans Give
A 2026 outlook from Foundation Source describes donor-advised funds as having shifted from a niche planning tool to core philanthropic infrastructure. DAFs have surpassed 3.56 million accounts holding more than $326 billion, and now distribute nearly $65 billion a year, with payout rates above 25 percent. Fidelity Charitable alone reported $18.3 billion in donor-recommended grants in 2025, up 23 percent year over year. Both average grant size and the number of seven-figure grants continue to climb.
If DAFs are becoming the default giving vehicle, advancement shops need to make DAF giving frictionless: name it explicitly in appeals, on giving days, and in major gift conversations. The momentum here belongs to the sector, not one institution. Shops that do not adapt their gift acceptance and stewardship to it will quietly lose gifts they never knew were available.
Every story this week is about a transition that could have been a dead end and was not. A campaign that ended. An interim term that closed. A giving day that wrapped. Momentum does not survive those moments on its own. It survives because someone decided, deliberately and immediately, to carry it into whatever comes next.
Dr. Steve Kubasek consults with advancement teams on campaign planning, post-campaign strategy, and sustaining donor momentum between campaigns. Learn more about consulting engagements →
Found this useful? Share it with one colleague who’d appreciate it.
See you next Friday.
Get the Weekly Briefing in Your Inbox
Free for advancement professionals. Every Friday morning. Unsubscribe anytime.
Subscribe Free