Comment by polishdude20
3 years ago
I find the notion donating to your alma mater kind of odd. You don't donate money to the local McDonald's that made a burger for you do you? I mean, you could but that's not something that's regularly done.
The service was provided and paid for and now there's some expectation to give more money after the fact?
In reality people also build relationships and emotional attachments. It’s also somewhat more mission driven, via research, medical centers, etc.
Those are reasons, whether they're good or not depends on perspective.
I don’t know how representative this is, but when I talked to one of my school’s donation people, it sounded like most people don’t donate to the unrestricted fund, which the school can do whatever with it’s usually earmarked/restricted for a specific use, like a building, a specific department, whatever. The school really really wants unrestricted funds.
Personally, I donate to my old dorm’s social/making stuff fund, the students get way more out of those dollars a lot further than I do, and I always appreciated that we had that budget.
With McDonald's and the Krocs they were the ones making the donations after they had more money than anyone would ever need:
https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/2017/1/10/joan-krocs...
The mission of the university, from the university's perspective, is to advance the world's fundamental knowledge first and teach students second. (Some may see this as 1a and 1b, mind you, and smaller liberal arts colleges and colleges that do not award doctoral degrees will reduce the fundamental knowledge mission.)
The students, in large part, pay for the educational piece (alongside funding) but significant funding is needed for advancing the world's knowledge.