Binghamton University has received the largest donation from an individual in its history — $6 million — but like at least nine other schools who received similar donations, it has no one to thank.

In the past few weeks, at least 10 universities, including BU, have received gifts that total over $50 million, all with the same caveat: the beneficiary make no attempt to uncover the giver’s identity. Usually in the case of anonymous donations, universities are at least permitted to know the gift’s source, as long as they don’t release that information to the public.

Another common thread is that gift recipients were public colleges headed by female presidents.

“To get a completely anonymous gift where we don’t know who they are at all is very unprecedented for any situation,” said Marcia Craner, BU’s vice president for external affairs.

According to Craner, the donation is timely for BU, which prior to the donation had raised about $5 million for this fiscal year, ending June 30. Last year the University totaled $10 million in gifts, a mark it will now surpass.

Craner also serves as the executive director of the Binghamton University Foundation, through which the University receives donations. The Foundation and its 22-person board of directors, made up predominantly of alumni, friends of the University and top administrators, including BU President Lois DeFleur, will determine how the funds are allocated. The affected departments will be involved in the process as well.

Craner’s recommendation, which she believes DeFleur will agree with, is to have the gift managed as part of the University’s endowment, spending only part of the interest it accrues annually. Two-thirds of the gift is designated to financial aid and scholarships for women and minorities, while the other $2 million is unrestricted support, Craner said. The University’s endowment is at about $50 million, which is down from its high mark of $72 million a year ago because of the struggling economy.

“We’re just about the same as everybody else,” Craner said of the University’s financial standing amongst peer institutions.

The board plans to finalize the allotment by the end of the current fiscal year, Craner said. Students could see the benefits of the funds through a wide range of implementations, including scholarships, at the start of the fall semester.

Craner said she thinks the anonymous donation might be connected to the ones seen at other schools.

Those gifts ranged from $8 million at Purdue University to $1.5 million donated to the University of North Carolina at Asheville to $5.5 million at Penn State Harrisburg. It’s not clear whether the gifts came from an individual, an organization or a group of people with similar interests. In every case, the donor or donors dealt with the universities through lawyers or other middlemen.

All the schools, some in writing, had to agree not to investigate the identity of the giver.

“They were very clear, the individuals that dealt with us, that we cannot pursue [the identity of the donor] at all,” Craner said. “They went to great lengths to make that happen.”

Craner said all the donations seem to be connected and share two similarities, to her knowledge: they’re given to public schools that are headed by a female president.

One school went so far as to check with the IRS and the Department of Homeland Security just to make sure a $1.5 million gift didn’t come from illegal sources.

“There may be an ethical problem if you knowingly accept funds from ill-gotten gains,” Tom Hutton, spokesman at the University of Colorado at University Springs, told The Associated Press. The school received a $5.5 million gift.

The $6 million donated to the University of Southern Mississippi was the largest single gift it had ever received, as well.

Previously, the largest gift BU had received from an individual was $2 million, according to Craner. The University also once received a $10 million gift in kind, which is a gift of goods or services instead of a monetary amount. That donation was for computer software. Both donations were within the last five years.

BU received word of the donation on April 2 and released the news on Monday. All seemingly connected donations were made on March 1 and beyond.