Total contributions and grants to GW dropped roughly 26 percent in fiscal year 2024, with non-governmental donations falling 41 percent, coinciding with activist-led campaigns to withhold funding at the onset of the war in Gaza.
Contributions and grants totaled $74 million in FY2024, down from $99.6 million the previous fiscal year, according to GW’s tax filings for July 2023 through June 2024. The form also reveals that GW’s non-governmental donations — which include gifts from families, alumni and faculty and are reported on the form as fundraising events, noncash contributions and all other contributions, gifts and grants — fell just over 41 percent, from $88.7 to $51.9 million.
The drop in non-governmental donations coincided with an academic year defined by calls from both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel community members for the University to better address campus activism following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, along with alumni threats to withhold donations if officials failed to respond adequately.
The drop also concurred with the 13-day pro-Palestinian encampment protesters staged in University Yard in April 2024, where demonstrators called on GW to disclose and divest from companies with ties to Israel, drop prior disciplinary charges against student demonstrators and to protect free speech on campus.
University spokesperson Shannon McClendon declined to comment on whether officials attributed the drop in contributions and gifts to calls from pro-Palestinian protesters urging community members and graduates to withhold donations, as well as threats from Jewish and pro-Israel alumni to pull or withhold gifts.
GW’s Form 990, which annually reports the University’s revenues and expenses, reveals School of Medicine & Health Sciences Dean Barbara Bass was the highest compensated employee at the University from January 2023 to December 2023 and received the second-highest bonus out of any University employee in the past 10 years. The form also shows that two former officials — former School of Nursing Dean Mei Fu, who resigned after two months at the University, and former Chief Financial Officer Mark Diaz, who left in June 2022 — received over $700,000 in severance payments.
The University shared GW’s FY2024 Form 990 with The Hatchet after the paper requested it under a policy requiring tax-exempt organizations to provide copies digitally upon request before they’re posted online. The form is not yet publicly available on sites like ProPublica, which displays Form 990s after Internal Revenue Service processing.
GW’s status as a nonprofit institution requires officials to report its revenues and expenses to the IRS using the Form 990 each fiscal year, which begins July 1 and ends June 30, and includes the compensation of up to 20 current employees who make more than $150,000 a year from GW and “related organizations.” Officials’ compensation on the form is reported by calendar year from January to December, unlike the form, which is reported based on the fiscal year.
Here is a breakdown of the University’s latest public financial disclosure:
Contributions and gifts declined by 26 percent, coinciding with calls to withhold donations
Community donations fell by $36.8 million from FY2023 to FY2024 — from $88.7 million to $51.9 million — according to the form. During the same period, government grants rose by $11.1 million.
GW received its lowest level of donations since FY2019 in FY2024, according to the University’s previous Form 990s. Since FY2020, annual donations have ranged from just over $80 million in FY2021 to nearly $100 million in FY2023, GW’s tax forms show.
McClendon said changes in enrollment, investments, funding and grants can cause fluctuations in figures reported on the form. She said contributions and gifts can fluctuate for a “variety of factors” but did not specify those reasons.
In October 2023, pro-Palestinian students projected anti-Israel and anti-GW messages onto Gelman Library — including phrases like “Divestment from Zionist genocide now” and “Your tuition is funding genocide in Gaza” — to call on the University to divest from companies tied to Israel, demands echoed during the U-Yard encampment six months later. Over a thousand alumni swiftly responded to the projections by calling on University President Ellen Granberg to formulate a plan for combating antisemitism, also threatening to cease donations and refusing to hire GW students until the University did so.
At the tail end of FY2024, officials raised $1.7 million during the University’s annual Giving Day in April 2024 — a record-high for the event in its then-four-year history — despite activist campaigns to boycott donations.
The University during FY2024 tripled its professional fundraising expenses, which totaled $969,873 — up from $290,287 in FY2023. The University’s total fundraising expenses also saw a roughly 15 percent increase during FY2024, totaling $22.4 million, up from $19.5 million in FY2023.
Granberg in late 2023 embarked on a national tour three months into her tenure that spanned September 2023 to March 2024 to meet with alumni and donors to form goals for the University’s future, which likely contributed to the boost in fundraising expenses.
Granberg makes more than $800,000 in first 6 months of presidency
Officials paid Granberg $815,103 from July 2023 to December 2023, her first six months in office: $684,746 in base compensation, $31,745 in other reportable compensation, $45,500 in retirement and other deferred compensation and $53,112 in nontaxable benefits, per the form.
GW similarly compensated former University President Thomas LeBlanc $797,662 for his first five months in office, which began in August 2017. LeBlanc saw a significant pay hike during his subsequent three years in the role and made at least $1.1 million per year, GW’s tax forms reported at the time.
Granberg previously served as provost at the Rochester Institute of Technology from 2018 until she came to GW in August 2023, where she made $577,338 during her last full year in office from January 2022 and December 2022, according to RIT’s FY2023 tax forms.
Top five highest-compensated officials make more than $900,000
GW’s five highest-paid officials each earned more than $900,000 from January to December 2023, including several deans, former Provost Chris Bracey and a professor.
Bass saw a $344,174 bonus in 2023, earning a total of $1.78 million in 2023 compared to $1.4 million in 2022. Bass was the highest-paid employee at the University and saw the largest pay bump in 2023, per the form.
Bass’ pay hike in 2023 was the second-largest bonus the University has given an employee in the last 10 years, according to a Hatchet analysis of GW’s Form 990s. Diaz secured the highest bonus of any University employee since 2015, when GW doled out a $874,000 bonus in 2022.
Officials paid Bracey $1.03 million in 2023, a $64,574 hike from 2022. Bracey resigned as provost in June after serving four years in the role, declining to comment at the time on what factors contributed to his decision to step down.
Professor and Director of GW Online Engineering Programs Shahram Sarkani earned a total compensation of $1.4 million, a $134,454 raise from 2022. Sarkani has held the spot of the highest-paid professor at the University for more than a decade, according to the forms.
Officials paid GW Cancer Center Director Julie Bauman $976,308 in 2023. Bauman did not appear on the prior year’s tax form, though her tenure at GW began in March 2022.
The form shows LeBlanc in 2023 received a total of $309,133 in compensation, retirement and other deferred compensation and nontaxable benefits, compared to the $2.6 million he received in 2022, which included $1.17 million in severance pay and $1.4 million in other compensation. McClendon declined to comment on why officials compensated LeBlanc in 2023.
McClendon said compensation and the terms of senior administrators’ contracts, like when service is concluded, are determined by factors including market benchmarks, experience and qualifications they bring to the role.
Two former officials receive over $700,000 in severance pay
The form shows that during 2023 Diaz and Fu, who is listed on the form as Mei Qiu, received severance payments of $976,440 and $708,333, respectively. Diaz’s and Fu’s total compensation from January 2023 to December 2023 was $1.36 million and $966,308, respectively, making them the third and sixth-highest paid University employees during 2023.
Diaz, who left the University in June 2022, also received a severance payment of $976,440 in 2022, totaling roughly $1.95 million in severance pay in 2022 and 2023. Officials previously declined to comment on how the University determined severance payments when GW’s FY2023 tax form revealed Diaz received over $900,000 in severance in 2022.
Diaz also received an additional $390,000 in base compensation from the University in 2023, per the form. McClendon said officials retained Diaz in July 2022 to “maintain continuity” after officials in May 2022 announced plans to restructure the agreement between the Medical Faculty Associates and Universal Health Services — the owner and operator of GW Hospital — after GW sold its 20 percent stake in the Hospital to UHS.
She said retaining officials is a “common practice” after high-level departures at large institutions.
Before Diaz’s exit from the University in 2022, faculty scrutinized the former CFO over his involvement in LeBlanc’s 20/30 plan, which proposed decreasing the undergraduate population by nearly 20 percent and increasing the proportion of STEM students to about 30 percent of GW’s population, due to faculty concerns that the move would force GW to take on more debt to account for lost revenue. At the time, the University’s debt totaled $1.66 billion.
Fu began her role as the dean of the nursing school in January 2023 and resigned from the position less than two months later, though it’s not clear why Fu stepped down as officials remained tight-lipped about her departure.
McClendon declined to comment on how officials determined Diaz and Fu’s severance payments and how long they will receive severance.
LeBlanc, former Men’s Basketball Head Coach Jamion Christian and former General Counsel Beth Nolan were also among those to receive severance payments from GW in 2022. Neither Christian nor Nolan received any compensation from the University in 2023, the form indicates.
GW pays top five independent contractors roughly $108 million
GW is also required to report its top five highest-paid independent contractors on the form, with the MFA being its highest-paid contractor in FY2024. The University reported that it paid the MFA $44.1 million for teaching and research, up $500,000 from the year prior.
Other top contractor payments included $35.7 million to dining service Chartwells Higher Education, $31.4 million to building maintenance and facility services company ABM Industries, Inc., $18.5 million to educational online program management company 2U, Inc. and $10.5 million to Shawmut Design and Construction, a construction management firm that made renovations to the Smith Center.
In total, officials dispersed $108.2 million to its top five contractors in FY2024, down from the $140.1 million the University doled out during FY2023.
Officials in FY2024 compensated Chartwells almost double what it did the previous fiscal year, at $17 million. GW entered into a partnership with Chartwells to operate the University’s dining halls in 2021, reviving campus dining facilities after officials had previously phased them out and shifted to partnerships with local restaurants.
Legal fees
The University’s outside legal fees dropped about 50 percent during FY2024, falling from $11.6 million to $5.8 million, the lowest since FY2019. GW closed at least five cases between July 2023 to June 2024, including two cases that dealt with alleged unjust firings by the University. The University also faced ongoing lawsuits from July 2023 to June 2024, including cases over an alleged breach of contract, welfare employee benefits and alleged disability discrimination against a medical school student.
An Ngo and Kellen Hoard contributed reporting.
