Alumni Giving: Do Colleges Push Too Hard and Too Often? American Healthcare

Alumni Giving: Do Colleges Push Too Hard and Too Often?

October 28th, 2011 by Abby Hitchcock |

I don’t know about you but my alma mater frequently asks me for money. This not only comes from various mailings but also from phone calls to both home and work from current students. Upon reflection, there seems to be a variety of ethical issues that these strategies invoke.

As a college professor I am well aware of the need for alumni giving to make a university run and both grow and prosper. Most universities across the land have building after building named for wealthy donors who have given generously to their alma mater. Scholarships to needy students and athletic fields also benefit from rich donors. My life as a professor at Santa Clara University is so much better (as is the lives of so many of our students, faculty, and staff) due to these generous souls. I am very grateful to them for sure.

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However, when I’m frequently asked to support my alma mater (Brown University) I have to admit that I bristle. Now, don’t get me wrong, I loved my undergraduate experience and have nothing but extremely high praise for Brown both while I was there and now many years later as well. I’m proud and pleased that I went there. It’s wonderful. So, why do I bristle?

First, there is an expectation that alumni should be donating money to their alma mater. It seems that all schools expect this and often report the percentage of alumni that are donors aiming for 100% participation. This is especially true during big reunion years (I have one this year). Why is there an expectation that alumni should become donors? Certainly not all alumni are wealthy and those who pursue careers in non-profit areas (such as higher education as I have) are hardly rich. Plus, if you paid the full rate for college why should you keep on paying for the rest of your life when your college experience is in the distant past?

Second, using current students to ask alumni for donations may be a smart business strategy (it is certainly much more difficult to say “no” to a charming and enthusiastic 19-year-old student sitting in a call center on campus rather than to an adult staff member or outsourced person calling from a call center somewhere overseas) but might it be ethically questionable and perhaps exploitive of these young people?

Finally, I for one, want my donations to go to the most vulnerable, poor, and marginalized of society. For me organizations like Oxfam, Catholic Relief Services, the Red Cross, and so forth focus on the most vulnerable. I don’t know if I want my dollars to support already highly privileged and often wealthy students get their degree in art history, classics, or business.

So, if you have graduated from college how does your alma mater handle requests for donations? What are their expectations? How do you respond? What ethical issue do you see in these requests? Where do you want your charitable dollars to go? What do you think?

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