Officials at Harvard University's Alumni Affairs and Development Office found about $5 million in stock donations that had been sitting in an account, with no information about the donors or the goals of the donations, the Boston Globe reports.

The stocks are not anonymous gifts. They are accounting mistakes that are part of Harvard's fundraising campaign that started in 1994 and has collected $2.3 billion.

Alumni Affairs spokesman Andy Tiedemann told the Globe the university has so far identified the donors of $2 million of the $5 million in stocks.

Such nameless gifts often have been part of Harvard's history. Past stock gifts have never amounted to more than $1 million, however. Nearly 200 donors who gave stocks since 1997 have forgotten to identify themselves or their causes.

Only the name of the brokerage firm that wired the shares are attached to the gifts, the Globe reports. Finding the original source of the shares is not easy, due to the decentralized system of 10 independent schools to which the stocks were donated. Those schools often compete with each other for gifts.

University officials have distributed a memo to department heads directing them to ask future donors to identify themselves, and find where they want their money to go.

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