<p>I believe JHU’s numbers are especially high because of its medical/health science divisions, which are among the largest in the nation. Donations to medical units are frequently spent immediately rather than invested (the health sciences are very expensive to support, so there’s less money to throw around at the end of the day). </p>
<p>I’m guessing Princeton’s raw fundraising numbers tend to trail its peers for two reasons: one, it doesn’t have the typical cash-cow professional schools (which attract many non-alum donations, and which produce alumni who go on to earn big bucks), and two, its alumni base is small compared to its peers. It has 80k alumni, vs. 190k at Stanford, 320k at Harvard, 170k at Yale, and 125k at MIT. It does well on a per-capita basis though, as does Duke, which has been in the “>300 million” (a significant benchmark) category 7 of the past 9 years.</p>