SALISBURY, N.C. – What started as a proposal on paper has turned into multimillion-dollar reality at Livingstone College.
Dr. Anthony Davis, president of Livingstone College, announced on Tuesday to a crowd gathered at Aggrey Student Union that an anonymous donor made another $10 million gift.
“Investments like this are why Livingstone will move into the ranks of the top 20 HBCUs in the nation,” Davis said. “Transformational gifts are just one way that our supporters demonstrate their belief in our future. Our college is poised to impact our region, our country and our nation in an unbelievable way.”
Davis has secured more than $56 million since being installed as the college’s president in 2022. His $30 million capital improvement plan – which he calls the “Miracle on Monroe Street” – is designed to rehabilitate student housing, the dining hall, administration buildings and other “crumbling infrastructure” on campus.
The announcement comes at a time when federal funding for higher education is being impacted – both at the institutional and individual levels – but charitable giving to education saw an increase of 13.2% according to the 2024 Giving USA Annual Report on Philanthropy.
Davis’s announcement marks the third gift of its size to Livingstone, a rare occurrence at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
In 2020, Filmore Thomas, the former editor-in-chief of online publication We Are HBCUs, wrote a piece exploring the rare philanthropic “megagift” – a donation of $10 million or more – that HBCUs receive from private donors: “HBCUs have a rich history that spans almost two centuries but of the 107 HBCUs, only twelve schools, or 11% of HBCUs, have ever received a donation of $10 million or more,” Thomas wrote. “That number dwindles to 10, or 9% of HBCUs if we exclude a $30 million debt cancellation to Cheyney University and a $20.5 million building donation to Jackson State University.”
Thomas went on to write that the “only HBCUs to receive multiple $10 million+ gifts are Morehouse and Spelman College”. That was five years ago before Livingstone began receiving eight-figure private gifts from the donor: the first $10 million donation arrived in July 2024 and the second in February of 2025.
Davis announced the latest gift on the same day that he cut the ribbon on a redesigned campus dining hall, part of a new food service contract with Thompon Hospitality Services, the largest minority owned food and facilities management services company in the country, a renovation funded by some of the anonymous donor’s prior giving.
Last academic year the college experienced transformations in student recruitment and retention, along with student academic achievement. “No other HBCU has doubled freshman enrollment, from 200 to 441,” Davis said. “It wasn’t too long ago when we had a freshman retention rate between 47% and 53%; right now, we have a 75% retention rate. And when you look at upperclassmen, 92% of those who are eligible return to the college. Students want to be at Livingstone. And we have changed the academic profile of Livingstone College. We went from a freshman average GPA of 2.4 to 3.26. We made a jump from 14 presidential scholars to 108 to, this year, 131. All of this is happening in less than three years.”
“If we’re going to sustain our wins, we can’t stop working,” Davis said. “When you’re in a race you can’t slow down…We have to keep moving.”
