Have you never donated to a "charitable" cause before? You can usually talk to them and ask to not have your name released. There's no legal requirement for name disclosure so it's up to the institution's policy.

Letter, fax, pager, smoke signal, Morse code, tin cans with string, eye blinking code, using the first letter of each word in a New York times obituary, carrier pigeon, skywriting... hmm... wait couldn't they just say it out loud to each other? In person?

lol there is one person in this whole thread who's getting mad, but it's not me

and yes, as someone else said, it's no big deal for someone to contact the business office of an institution and offer money on the condition of anonymity and other conditions. and the business people say okay, forms are filled out and signed, and money is transferred. they want to be anonymous because they don't want all the other institutions calling them asking for money too. and/or they don't want the world to know they're the ones influencing the school's spending

no one wants donors to be able to influence whoever they're donating to. but that's how reality works

It sounds like the university called it "anonymous donor" for PR reasons whilst it is in fact "undisclosed donor".

Your point only makes sense if indeed the donor was genuinelly anonymous (I.e. even the University had no idea who they were) rather than merely described as anonymous by the University for the purpose of divulging it to the outside world.

Are you really that braindead? An anonymous donation can mean the donor requested their name not be made public, it doesn’t necessarily stop the University from knowing where the money came from.