Yale fundraised the third-highest amount of money during the 2012 fiscal year, receiving a total of $543,905,260, according to the Council for Aid to Education’s annual fundraising survey.

Donations fell slightly from last year’s total of $580 million. Stanford set a fundraising record by becoming the first college to surpass $1 billion in donations with a total of $1.03 billion, and Harvard raised the second-highest amount with a total of $650 million.

Altogether, about 3,500 U.S. colleges and universities raised $31 billion, marking a 2.3 percent increase from the 2011 fiscal year — a significantly lower change than the 8.2 percent increase in all giving from 2010 to 2011.