“The speculation is that people are carrying less cash,” Borgen said. A rise in online donations wasn’t enough to offset the drop in walk-up revenue, she said.

Meanwhile, eight of the 10 largest donations in the world in 2014 came from American philanthropists, according to a Dec. 10 report from Wealth-X, a Singapore-based research and prospecting firm focused on individuals with net worth of $30 million or more. Warren Buffett gave the most, $2.1 billion of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. stock, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Nicholas Woodman, chief executive officer of GoPro Inc., came in second, with a $498 million gift to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a DAF favored by Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.

And all those holiday house-calls and e-mail blasts from alma maters may have paid off. Eight of the top 10 donations went to U.S. universities.

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