Universities have collected over $300,000,000 in donations for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) funds since 2021, a report released Tuesday found.
The report, conducted by Defending Education (DE) and first shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation, found that many schools are creating donation funds to funnel money towards DEI scholarships and programs such as a “George Floyd Memorial Scholarship” and an “Anti-Racism Fund.” In response to the Trump administration’s crackdown on DEI initiatives, some of these efforts have simply been rebranded to no longer explicitly say DEI, the report claims.
DE’s report found at least 128 schools from 44 states plus Washington, D.C. have together created over 270 DEI funds, collecting roughly $336,271,100 in donations mostly between 2021 and 2025. The organization used “Day of Giving” campaign websites, university announcements, webpages and reports to calculate the total sum of the donations.
The report found that the University of Nebraska Lincoln (UNL) was one of several schools that renamed its “Office of Diversity and Inclusion Fund” to the “Community and Belonging Support Fund.” Similarly, Louisiana State University (LSU) appears to have rebranded its “Diversity, Equity and Media Grant” to the “Manship School’s Izard and Scripps Pilot Grant,” stating its purpose is to “support research projects that analyze the dialogue and action that combat racism, institutional discrimination and systematic oppression,” according to the report.
“Sparked by the murder of George Floyd by police, the country has seen unprecedented protests against police brutality and systemic racism targeting Black Americans,” LSU’s website reads. “The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted racial and ethnic minorities, drawing further attention to the dangerous racial disparities in health care. The unfolding of these events reinforces our mission to advance important conversations through research findings in the fields of journalism and mass communication.”
UNL and LSU did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
The University of Michigan (UM) also hosts a “Anti-Racism Fund” which seeks to “support individual student projects for anti-racism work, with a specific focus on confronting anti-Blackness, racism against Indigenous peoples, and confronting white supremacy.”
Prior to 2021, UM also released a DEI report covering fiscal years 2016 through 2021 titled “Infrastructure Item: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Fundraising,” which stated the school “raised over $98,665,269 for a wide range of DEI initiatives and funds” and included items such as a “George Floyd Memorial Scholarship,” DE found. The UM report has since been removed from its website.
“American universities, especially in the wake of George Floyd and Black Lives Matter, have established funds that focus on the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) inside the institutions,” DE’s report reads. “While President Trump’s Executive Orders have incentivized universities to take down webpages and halt DEI related programmings, it does not mean that these institutions are necessarily ending these practices permanently.”
Over 3,000 donors contributed to the University of Connecticut’s (UConn) UCONN Foundation fund in 2022 amounting to $23 million to “support important DEI factors, such as diversity of race, socioeconomics, and gender and sexual identity” at the school, DE’s report found.
Some schools, such as the University of Southern California (USC), even created a “National DEI Defense Fund” with the school’s Race and Equity Center in an effort to fight back against efforts to halt DEI, DE stated.
“Establishing the National DEI Defense Fund is one of many ways the USC Race and Equity Center is countering politicized efforts to ban books, eliminate diversity and inclusion educational programs, and suppress the teaching of truths about America’s racial past and present,” the school’s website reads. “Politicized attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion pose serious threats to democracy. Please join us in protecting the rights of students, parents, and educators by making a tax-deductible gift today.”
Since returning to office, Trump has worked to root out DEI initiatives and race-based programs from schools and federal agencies, signing several executive orders banning the use of federal funding to support such topics, such as the day one order “ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.” Several schools and entire states have signaled their intentions to not comply with the administration’s request that they terminate all DEI initiatives, denying that DEI violates civil rights laws.
The administration has sent many warnings about its demands to end the programs and has been swift to threaten federal funding cuts for those who may still be following race-exclusionary practices.
UM, UConn and USC did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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