March 22, 2016 6:12 AM

Dear Alumni Office: This is why I never take your fundraising calls

Last year was a record one for donations to colleges and universities: more than $40 billion was given, much of it to a tiny group of wealthy, elite schools. Stop that…. Are you bereft of ideas about what to do with the millions of dollars you want to donate? Here is a list of the world’s most effective charities. Give it to them. It’s nice that Stanford and Harvard will have nice new libraries and labs and things. Meanwhile, the amount of money donated to Stanford last year has the potential to save the lives of 488,000 people who would otherwise die from disease. Stanford is a nice school. Is its endowment worth more than the lives of 488,000 people? No it is not.

In many respects, I consider myself to be an incredibly fortunate person. I have many, many good things in my life I’m grateful for. One of those things is an excellent education. Through a fortunate sequence of events clearly beyond my meager means at the time, I was able to attend and graduate from Macalester College in St. Paul, MN, a fairly exclusive liberal arts college with an excellent academic reputation. Those four(plus) years had and continue to have an outsized impact on my life, and I am whom I am today in large part because of those years.

Given my pride in my alma mater, you’d think I’d have already donated significant amounts of money to Macalester. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I’ve never donated a penny, and it has nothing to do with my feelings about my alma mater, which I revere. It has everything to do with the reality that Macalester is a wealthy, financially stable school blessed with a sizable endowment. When I look at donating my money to a good cause, a place where it will have the most impact, I have a difficult time donating to an educational institution that’s home to the progeny of senators and captains of industry. Not that Macalester isn’t worthy of support; I just happen to believe that my money can serve a far greater purpose. Why would I choose to donate to an already well-endowed college when my money could feed, educate, and/or clothe children? Helping victims of war, famine, domestic violence, and more seems to me a much better and much bigger bang for my buck.

Macalester College will manage to raise funds sufficient to the challenge of building new dorms, athletic facilities, or chemistry labs. That’s what a development office does. They don’t need my money to ensure the biology lab is stocked with Bunsen burners or Petri dishes. As grateful as I am for the higher education I received (with assistance from a substantial financial aid package), I’ve always believed there are better, more effective uses my money might be put to. This is why I agree with the author of this piece- it really makes no sense to donate to already-rich colleges and universities. Find a homeless shelter, an LGBT youth program, or some other worthy cause that strikes a chord or speaks to your heart and legitimately needs your financial support. The money you donate should make a notable difference. Give wisely and with purpose.

I’m grateful for my B.A.; I was the first in my family going back several generation to get a college degree. If there’s anything I learned during the process of reaching that goal, it was to look at the world around me and do what I feel the right thing to be. Macalester’s endowment won’t crumble because I haven’t sent a check to the alumni office; plenty of former students will decide their money is best spent in support of their alma mater…and that’s great. It means people, some of them my peers, are doing what they feel to be the right thing. That’s as it should be. That I’ve made a different decision is apropos only of my own criteria.

I simply choose to make a difference…differently. I suspect I’ll never see my name attached to a dorm or academic hall, and that’s OK. My mark, my significance, will be achieved in other ways. That’s how I’ve decided to give wisely and with purpose.

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on March 22, 2016 6:12 AM.

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