Hello there and thank you for spending some time with NILnomics. The news broke this week that in response to the Big 10’s private equity deal collapsing, Michigan State had received a $401 million donation from Greg and Dawn Williams. Here’s how the money is being broken down:
$290 million to seed an alumni drive with the target of $1 billion
$100 million to jumpstart Michigan State Athletic’s LLC to increase revenue
$11 million for business and entrepreneurship programs for athletics
That is a whole lot of dough. But how much is it in relation to other big donations? And how much are schools usually getting from alumni? That’s what I’ll dive into this week.
Pour a drink. Get comfortable. Let’s get into it.
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Big Money
How much is a $400 million donation? I could find about a dozen different donations across all of higher education over the last 25 years that were bigger. The attributed numbers fluctuate on the data source and adjustments according to inflation, but the
Quick Takeaways:
Outside of Phil Knight and Oregon, this Michigan State donation is the largest athletics specific gift in history.
Kansas just received $300 million for athletics a few months ago from David Booth, but no other major donations come close.
Most schools with Division I FBS programs aren’t on the list. Stanford, Oregon, Western Michigan, and Northwestern are the only other ones.
Analyst’s Desk
This list was just a quick Google search. I’m not guaranteeing the numbers are 100% correct - I tried to corroborate across different websites. Some accounted for inflation, others didn’t. Some of the donations (Phil Knight and Oregon specifically) get broken up/combined in different news articles - I did my best to combine them here.
Regular Gifting Helps, Too
So Michigan State had a historic, athletics specific donation given to them this week. There’s still a bit of missing context here. First, how much alumni money is Michigan State getting normally and, second, where does this single big donation put them in relation to everyone else?
For that answer, let’s look at the data visualization:
Quick Takeaways:
Michigan State reported generating $35 million in alumni donations for FY 2024, the latest reporting year. That’s about 1/11 of this bigtime, $400 million donation.
The biggest hauls in donations that year were $137 million in the SEC (Texas), $76 million in the B1G (Nebraska), $70 million in the ACC (Clemson), and $63 million in the Big 12 (Oklahoma State). This one donation is bigger than all four combined!
The entire ACC drove $310 million in donations which is still less than this one gift for Michigan State. All the G6 schools reporting here earned $349 million combined - still less than this one big donation.
Analyst’s Desk
Data comes from the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database. They just make it so easy. Also a convenient time to plug they have a webinar today, 12/11/2025, at 2pm if you’re interested. It’s free!
🔉 What I’m Listening To 🔉
I’m always on the lookout for anyone breaking down college sports and especially the business side of the industry. Here’s this week’s best listens:
NIL Clubhouse - the guys review the latest NIL news, but notably, Dave Meluni referenced NILnomics! You never expect to hear yourself mentioned in a podcast, but here we are.
Sporticast - I love this podcast for how it covers sports business, but this week’s episode in particular focused on Lane Kiffin and what that situation says about the sport.
Trustees and Presidents - a bit of an older episode, but just catching up and hearing some great insights here about data rights in college athletics. Not something anybody probably thinks about, but maybe should.
JohnWallStreet - a great interview with Wake Forests’ AD, specifically around mixed real estate development and what they’re building on their campus.
Higher Ed Athletics - an interview with Central Michigan’s AD, where she says the quiet part about college sports out loud (hint: it has to do with how much is too much money)
Final Thoughts
Thanks for reading this week’s issue.
I knew when I heard about this donation that it was a lot of money. I’m glad I was able to show just how big it really is. If you enjoyed this week’s issue, let me know by email. Thanks again for your time. Now finish your beverage 😀
Until next time,
Greg Chick, PhD
Data Analyst
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NILnomics is an independent data-driven newsletter uncovering the real numbers behind college sports finances with sharp insights, clear visuals, and exclusive datasets. Please send any thoughts, questions, or feedback to me at [email protected] and please follow me on X @NILnomics. Don’t forget all our data is available on Kaggle, code on GitHub, and FOIA documents on GoogleDrive. See you next week!