Some 24 Australian and one NZ university cracked $600m in gifts last year.
Group of Eight universities secured eight times the philanthropic funds in 2017 scored by 16 other unis participating in a Council for Advancement and Support of Education survey.
There were 63 $1m donations to the Group of Eight, although other unis improved their performance in big grants, with 24 per cent more $1m gifts than in 2016.
Go8 institutions spent 16c to raise $1 in new funds, compared to 28c per $1 by the others.
Overall fundraising returns on investment are nine times staff costs per head for the Go8 and five times for the others.
Across all institution there were 519 FTE working in fundraising and 290 in alumni relations.