Colleges planning fund-raising campaigns may need to throw the old 80/20 rule out the window in favor of a new 50/10 rule, meaning that 50 percent of the money they seek to raise will probably come from their 10 biggest donations.

During the first day of the annual meeting of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, a professional organization for higher-education fund raisers that is known as CASE, attendees got a sneak peek at preliminary data that the organization is compiling, with help from Alexander Haas Martin & Partners, a consulting firm. The project is analyzing the role that the top 10 gifts play in the success of higher-education fund-raising campaigns.

So far, the researchers have discovered that at least for campaigns of up to $100-million, the 10 biggest donations account for a median of 46.7-percent of the total funds raised. Moving to fund-raising efforts of $1-billion or more, however, they account for only 22 percent of the total.

But the data are far from perfect. Representatives from the consulting firm say that many institutions do not file end-of-campaign reports with CASE, making it difficult to work with complete information. Also, when asked for information about the giving trends of trustees, many colleges choose not to answer the questions.

The conference continues through Tuesday. —Erin Strout