In the efforts of institutions to raise money I came across this article in the chronicle referencing donors. This is an area of higher education that I honestly spend little time thinking about. However, this article gave rise to the idea that I should be. I often do not wonder what it takes to get donations and naively think donors are folks that are alumni and we just spend money wining and dining them for dollars or real estate or whatever it may be. To some extent I risk looking uninformed here but I will own that.
The article discusses how a wealthy alumna contacted an institution wanting to endow a faculty position. Which turns out it meant a gift of about $2million dollars but only if the faculty member hired was devoted to teaching and doing research on psychoanalysis. The university ultimately turned it down stating it felt it was to specialized of an offer. I applaud the ability of the institution to turn down such an offer. Then I thought, how many of these offers are made to institutions and how often are they turned down? If they are not turned down, how are they affecting our institutions as a whole? The article goes on to state that not all colleges would reject such a gift for a variety of reasons. Which leads me to a research topic - what are the underlying effects on education due to donors and the way they wish their money to be used?
The fund raising article goes on to explain the two camps...first, the fundraisers who want engagement. They want engagement for their donors and feel donations follow a circle model of "engagement, communication, and gifting." On the other hand many provosts and professors, according to the article, see donations as a one way road. The donor, donates and moves on. Edward J. Kvet, Provost of Loyola University in New Orleans states in the article, "on the academic side, we just want them to be there in name only." The fundraiser or in the case of this article, Thomas W. Young, Vice President for Institutional Advancement at Gustavus Adolphus College, recognizes that sometimes donors can cross the line from engagement to interference. This is the difficult dance - how to engage donors to feel involved in how their donation is being used yet limit their involvement since the money is donated and to some extent under institutional control.
This article brought back a rather interesting and funny re-run episode called the benefactor factor episode from The Big Bang Theory show. Basically, this episode covers a similar idea of the chronicle article. A character in the episode is unsure if he should sleep with a prospective donor of the institution to ensure his department gets the money. As I type this it does not seem that it would give you a laugh or get you thinking but if you have the time I recommend watching it and see what your reaction is.
I think this article and episode really show how the dance with donors to donate cane be quite challenging. In addition the article shows how difficult it can be to turn down donations and to balance the two camps each who feel they have leadership over the donation.
An additional point of interest is one of the donors from this article is now a board member for the institution - engagement or interference?
I can not imagine any institution turning money away, especially that much money, in times like this. There has to be fine lines to "dance" around what to do with donors who are ready, willing and able to spend money on their institution. I think an interesting topic to dive into would be how many times institutions turn money away and for what purpose? Can beggers be choosers? If there are those who want to give and go, does that money ever get turned away? I don't know much about this topic, but it definitely has given me something to think about and want to read more about. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAt risk of sounding a little "disturbed"...I have often had a fantasy about having a lot of money someday and making a significant donation to my alma mater, but I would insist that the institution fire/remove a certain paerson in a specific position. I realize this may be harsh, but I do wonder how much money must a donor pay to have a say in a staffing decision like that.
ReplyDeleteI know firsthand that donors often feel as though their gift should entitle them to having various family members admitted to a college that the student is not academically qualified to get into on their own. I have seen this situation a handful of times in my position. The sad thing is that more often than not, I see my office give in to such demands.
I think regardless of the industry and regardless of the amount of money a donor may contribute, there is going to be a sense of ownership on the organization. We see this all the time in the private sector of big business.
After reading the article, I too am surprised that the School declined the gift. I would think a creative administrator with an even more creative business manager could come up with a way to accept the money, yet find a way to make it look like it was being used for one thing, when in actuality is was used for something different entirely.
Important topic! I too have a lot to learn in this area, so appreciate you bringing the issue to the blogosphere here. I laughed (out loud) at Michelle’s comments… suffice it to say that I have a similarly warped fantasy about my own alma mater and a particular office… ;) It is a good thing that I’ll likely never be rich enough to fund the ‘get rid of ___ endowment’! I also am nodding vigorously to her final comment re. the savvy administrator finding a way to put a twist on the donation to enable it to be used—while appearing that it was for a psychoanalyzing prof.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I wanted to mention that although clearly the examples in the article cited in the post are on a larger scale, and involve millions of dollars, the ‘donor dance’ is felt at all levels of the institution. The week before last I was involved in hosting a large public community event on campus. This caught the attention of several local companies, wanting to donate (either to be listed as a sponsor, or to provide goods/services… not all of which were items that we’d necessarily want associated with the event). Just as one example, a certain brewery. See Jill’s earlier post entitled ‘Official Pub Crawl? Seriously!?’ for a discussion of the myriad of reasons that I would not want a brewery as a sponsor. Yet different institutions have different moves in the ‘Donor Dance’. Case in point: The Coors Fitness Center at DU (and countless other alcohol themed buildings, events, and related university projects at institutions across the country…). As we consider more creative funding sources in student affairs (and fundraising is definitely an ‘up and coming’ area for student affairs—if evidenced only by the number of webinar invites I’ve gotten in the last few months re. how to raise money for student affairs…), we will all need to be more adept at the Donor Dance, and at considering how our personal values intersect with our institutional philosophies in this area.
Karla, I really enjoyed your post and like you, can also admit some ignorance when it comes to this topic. Michele & Braelin - hilarious!! I think you're going to need different careers than Student Affairs to get your dream though. ;-)
ReplyDeleteBased on this situation I am surprised the institution turned down the money. Michele had a good point about creatively taking the money. However, the donor obviously had some motive for wanting research done on pyschoanalysis. In this situation, I wonder if the institution had a program that could've benefited from this, why didn't they just jump on it?
While I think that if a donor is going to donate money, there shouldn't necessarily be strings attached (especially like some of the ones mentioned - favors to family members, research that is not overall beneficial, staffing change control, etc.), I do think that there may be some gray area; IF there isn't harm to anyone or any social injustice occurring, what is wrong with a little alterior motive?
For example, if my mom had alzheimers and I was loaded, I'd love to give a research institution money to research the disease. I'd be using my money to promote something that mattered to me, may help society as a whole and could bring recognition to the institution. Is there harm in that?