FAS Raised Roughly $800 Million In FY2026, Far Surpassing Its $500 Million Target

Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences raised roughly $800 million in fiscal year 2026 — far surpassing its $500 million target and marking the school’s strongest fundraising year in at least five years, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The figure caps a year of cuts and layoffs aimed at closing a $365 million budget deficit and follows a sustained push by FAS leadership to raise money for academic programming.

The school has not broken the $500 million mark since fiscal year 2021, when it raised roughly $590 million in gifts and pledges. It brought in $455 million and $463 million in fiscal years 2024 and 2025, respectively.

It is unclear how much of the increase comes from major and principal gifts, which can range into the millions.

Those figures count gifts and pledges, including multiyear commitments that donors have not yet paid — not money the school can spend right away. Most philanthropy to the FAS flows into the endowment, which the school draws down gradually.

Current-use gifts — the narrower slice of funds donors allow the school to spend completely and immediately — totaled $165 million in fiscal year 2025, the most in at least five years. The FAS had collected $95 million by the end of December this year, up from $59 million at the same point the year before.

This year saw a spring initiative to raise $100 million to endow 50 Ph.D. fellowships amid financial pressure — a goal the FAS met in just four months. The effort generated so much support from donors that FAS Dean Hopi E. Hoekstra announced a second $100 million challenge last week.

“We are deeply grateful to the alumni and donors who believe in Harvard’s mission and in the importance of sustaining its leadership in teaching and research,” FAS spokesperson James M. Chisholm wrote in a statement. “At a time of uncertainty in the research funding environment, their generosity helps ensure that the FAS remains a place where curiosity is encouraged, bold ideas are pursued, and discovery can make a meaningful difference in the world.”

The new numbers indicate continued enthusiasm from donors more than a year after the Trump administration began attempting to pull Harvard’s federal funding. The Crimson previously reported the FAS raised $222 million in the first half of the 2026 fiscal year, $62 million ahead of the same period in 2025. January slides from a presentation by Dean of FAS Development Michael J. Faber showed the first eight-figure gift of the year — $20 million, from an unnamed donor.

The gains follow $629 million in current-use donations across the University in fiscal year 2025, the highest in its history. Harvard Law School also brought in a record $61 million in the first half of fiscal year 2026.

The successes arrive amid a funding crisis for the FAS. Over the past year, the school has sharply cut Ph.D. student admissions, slashed department’s non-tenure-track faculty budgets, and shed 165 staff positions in a summer restructuring.

The cuts drew opposition from professors. Respondents to The Crimson’s annual survey of FAS faculty were overwhelmingly opposed to reductions in both Ph.D. admissions and non-tenure-track faculty budgets. Fifty-four percent of respondents expressed dissatisfaction with the school’s efforts to centralize staff positions.

The fundraising also follows a shuffling within Alumni Affairs and Development, the office that oversees FAS contributions. AA&D lost more than 50 employees this spring in a restructuring of its own, and staff have pushed back against a new two-day in-person work requirement set to begin this fall.

But the office has also been hiring, mounting a concerted effort to bring on frontline fundraisers focused on major gifts. Roughly 20 positions in the office were posted online Monday.

—Staff writer Abigail S. Gerstein can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at abbysg.97. Follow her on X @abbysgerstein.

—Staff writer Amann S. Mahajan can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at amannsm.38. Follow her on X @amannmahajan.