The mystery surrounding the top-secret donations to colleges led by women shows no signs of abating, with more gifts announced this week and a new report suggesting that the donor may have started distributing the multimillion-dollar checks as early as the beginning of 2008.

Temple University may have been the first college to receive one of the anonymous donations, which are earmarked for scholarships for female and minority students and come through an intermediary such as a bank, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported this morning.

In Temple’s case, two checks — $1-million for the general fund, $4-million for scholarships — came from a bank in Arizona, arriving unannounced in January 2008 by regular mail, the newspaper reported. (In some of the more-recent cases, different banks have called fund-raising offices to check addresses and say a “significant” gift would be arriving soon.)

“The person opening the mail had quite a shock,” said Ann Weaver Hart, president of Temple. The money is being used for an endowment that has financed about 20 scholarships this year and has helped student performance groups.

At least 18 state-related colleges now appear to have been recipients of the mystery gifts, which stretch from Alaska to Alabama and total at least $90-million. All have female presidents or chancellors.

The University of Alabama at Birmingham announced this week that it had recently received $5-million from an anonymous donor, consisting of $4-million for scholarships for female and minority students, and $1-million for unrestricted use. —Kathryn Masterson