NEW YORK - Columbia Athletics had yet another successful Columbia Giving Day as the department raised over $3.18 million from a total of 4,836 gifts, Campbell Family Director of Intercollegiate Athletics Peter Pilling announced Thursday.

The figure was recorded over the 24-hour-event on Wednesday, October 28, 2020. Columbia University as a whole raised a record-breaking total of over $24 million.

"We continue to be overwhelmed by the support of our Columbia Athletics community," said Pilling. "Thank you to everyone who donated and is rallying behind the OneROAR initiative. Your generosity allows us to provide our student-athletes the best holistic experience possible, helping them succeed athletically and academically."

"The buy-in from all of our coaches and staff has been tremendous since we launched the OneROAR Fund," Erich Ely, Director of Development for Athletics, stated. "We could not have accomplished what we did on Giving Day without their hard work and dedication. Our success yesterday puts us in a great position to achieve our campaign goals this fiscal year."

Here are a few interesting facts and achievements from Wednesday's Giving Day:
* The $3.18 million raised surpassed last year's total of $2.97 million and is the second highest on record for the athletics program
* Athletics represented 25-percent of the total gifts to the University
* Columbia Athletics finished in second place in dollars raised among University schools, finishing only behind Columbia College
* Columbia Athletics won five challenges including the Most Overall Donors during three time periods (10-11 a.m., 3-4 p.m. and 8-9 p.m.), most faculty/staff gifts between 12-1 p.m. and for receiving the 1,754th gift of the day
* There was a 35-percent increase in young alumni gifts over last year
* #ColumbiaGivingDay was trending on twitter for a period of time and Columbia Athletics leveraged a theme of #ROARasONE to drive the effort

For more information, please visit: https://givingday.columbia.edu/pages/athletics, or, to make a gift to the OneROAR fund, click here.