On an unusually warm spring day, Northeastern’s annual Giving Day transformed campus April 14, raising more than $4.4 million for student organizations, beating out last year’s total by over $800,000.
Student clubs, organizations, varsity sports and individual colleges across all of Northeastern’s campuses spent the 24-hour period campaigning for donations. With the final donor count reaching 15,749, participants gathered to play games for prizes, soak up the sun and support their favorite students.
“It’s just a lot of great energy. The music is great, and a lot of people are, you know, like different communities coming together, and it feels like a really special environment,” said Isabela Silvares, a third-year international business major raising money for Northeastern’s chapter of the Brazilian Student Association.
The Huntington News spoke to four clubs among the hundreds of organizations collecting donations during the event. Here’s how the donations will make a difference to their organizations.
Students for the Exploration and Development of Space
Students for the Exploration and Development of Space, or SEDS, an umbrella organization that offers students the opportunity to participate in and impact space exploration, raised money for its rigorous competition schedule.
Nicholas Rising, a fourth-year computer science and math combined major and vice president of projects for SEDS, explained that the club sends its NASA SUITS team, NASA Lunabotics team and Mars Rover Challenge team to four different competitions across North America this year.
“We’re trying to raise $25,000 to fully pay for the travel of the 75-plus students that are going to those four challenges,” Rising said.
The challenges are nationwide competitions that gather the best engineering students to compete for their schools and universities. Due to the high cost of travel, SEDS relies heavily on donations.
“Northeastern, they give us money for parts and computer supplies, but we don’t get money for the purposes of travel,” Rising said. “We don’t get a lot of money for the purposes of food and fun events, and so that kind of money is raised through Giving Day, through our generous alumni, families and students.”
SEDS raised $27,347.91 from 319 individual donors.
Baja Society of Automotive Engineers Northeastern
Baja Society of Automotive Engineers Northeastern, or Baja SAE, raised money for the annual university-level automotive race-car-building competitions. These competitions are hosted by Baja SAE International in various locations across the country.
“We design a new car from scratch every year, and we go to these competitions and we compete. We routinely place top 20%,” said Maddy Baryza, a third-year mechanical engineering major and co-captain of Baja SAE.
Beyond competitions, Baja SAE relies on donations to help cover the cost of materials.
“All that money goes to buying stock, material and tooling. We machine 90% of [our] car in-house, so we need the material and the tools to do that, and the donations allow us to,” Baryza said.
Baja SAE Northeastern raised $7,552.27 from 124 individual donors.
Brazilian Student Association
Northeastern’s chapter of the Brazilian Student Association, or BRASA, raised funds for the annual nationwide BRASA summit. This year, the organization will be traveling to the University of California, Berkeley to participate in the summit, which gathers BRASA chapters and communities together to discuss innovation and the importance of the Brazilian community.
“In 2025, we were really proud to bring the BRASA summit to Northeastern,” said Silvares, the president of Northeastern’s BRASA chapter. “It was held at the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Complex and EXP. It’s a summit that happens every year in one of the chapters. It brought over 600 people together. It felt like a really special moment for our chapter.”
The Giving Day donations they receive will also cover the costs of food and activities for their weekly events, Silvares said.
“It’s been really cool to see everyone and meet different Brazilians and different people that are interested in our culture today,” Silvares said.
BRASA raised $611 from 15 individual donors.
Northeastern Arboretum
Two co-ops from the Northeastern Arboretum’s plant record team raised money for their donor-funded co-op positions.
The Northeastern Arboretum is dedicated to “the planting and stewardship of plants grown for research, educational and ornamental purposes,” on campus and throughout the greater Boston area, according to the Northeastern Planning, Real Estate and Facilities website.
Because the co-op positions are donor-funded, the arboretum relies heavily on donations.
“We are in charge of maintaining and tagging all of the trees and woody shrubs on campus. If you see those little brown tags, that’s us,” said Lan Tsao, a second-year environmental and sustainability sciences and philosophy combined major and one of the current co-ops. “We actually help support a bunch of other local Boston [organizations]. We helped [Kevin W.] Fitzgerald Park in Mission Hill become an accredited arboretum.”
The Northeastern Arboretum raised $23,637.00 from 81 individual donors.
“I can say, anecdotally, today, compared to previous Giving Days, I feel like people are more generous,” Rising said. “I feel like I’m having much more success just kind of cold launching my pitch to people, and they’re just willing to donate that $1 that gets us those unique donors.”
