Ways to Decrease Donations
by Mr JugglesI gave money to my alma mater — against my better judgment since this money could have been spent at Marquee instead — and received an emailed thank you note a few days later.
The Annual Fund helped [an] assistant professor of mathematics host a program aimed at eliminating gender inequities in math and science. It helped the studio art department rent a downtown gallery space for student, faculty and visiting artist shows. It helped the women and gender studies department host an essay contest for undergraduate and graduate students. And it helped an associate professor of sociology, organize a conference on memory and trauma. It helped.
So apparently my money went towards helping girls who aren’t good at math, renting a studio in the most expensive part of town so that hippies can paint, and holding an essay contest in the women’s studies dept!?! Since when does it cost money to hold an essay contest!? Incredible. Reading that makes me wish there was a money-back guarantee. I thought the money would go towards scholarships for poor kids or research in the sciences.
Recommendation: Short my university’s fund-raising efforts. Judging by my sample (n=1), 0% of this year’s donors plan to donate again next year.
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Jeez dude, what were you thinking!? Never, ever just send a check at random to the lefties running your Alma Mater.
If you want to do more than just set your money on fire, let one of the Development Officers (otherwise known as fundraisers) buy you a nice dinner and set up a scholarship or endowment in your name with very rigid terms about supporting what YOU think is a worthy cause!
My alma mater makes you pick a specific program, specific sports team, or building etc. That I know my $25 is helping out the over-funded basketball team.
Lee D. is 100% right, while I support my alma matter, my money will only be given out on MY terms. No hippy studies project will ever see a dime. Of course to have that level of control you need to give out a little more than a couple grand. Another (cheaper) alternative is to sponsor a single event, like inviting Nassim Taleb to speak about his new book, or giving the student body chair enough cash for 6 kegs and a DJ.
I’m not sure that helps, Lee D. Technically, I earmarked my donation for the Economics department. But I’m pretty sure they set the budgets of entities like Economics (or Basketball) independent of your donation. If you gave $X, they just take $X from the existing budget of the cause you support and re-purpose it for their nefarious lefty causes.
BSD’s idea is probably better…support something completely new like a speech, activity, or building. That way, they can’t take the money out of any existing budget.
Slightly non-sequitur, there was something weird about my last job’s 401k matching program. One of the Senior Managering Directors (the firm had at the very least 30,000 employees)said that any money we put into our 401k over 6% went into some weird firm account, and basically people were losing ouy.
Who knows. I don’t work there anymore.
the liberal paid add on the left is incredible. stupid teachers bought argentinian debt and are mad they lost money. luckily argentinian women are SMOKIN!
That’s pretty funny. I wonder what the keywords were that put that one up? ‘aren’t good at math’ & ‘faculty’?
If you earmarked your donation to the economics department, that is bullshit. Maybe they just sent you a generic email everyone got who donated money. I was contemplating donating money to the tutoring / learning center at my alma mater but then I learned they eliminated tutoring for economics and business courses and added tutoring for history and women’s studies. How many fucking morons need tutoring on how to write essays about women’s breasts?
“the liberal paid add on the left is incredible. stupid teachers bought argentinian debt and are mad they lost money. luckily argentinian women are SMOKIN!”
That ad is almost definitely from a right wing activist group. Preventing foreign nations from meeting their debt obligations is much more of a right wing issue in this country. The left fully supports debt forgiving and the idea that the US has deliberately saddled the third world with debt to control them (I know Arg is not third world).
yeah i guess if you’re focused on the debt part. im focused on the teacher’s part. the right hates teachers. argentina probably offered to pay back their debt and then the right realized they were just going to pay a bunch of whiny teachers and so they were like “eh, don’t worry about it”
The ad talks about teachers to get moderates angry, but is definitely from a right wing group. Should have either embargoed the country or nuked Buenos Aires in retaliation. Idiotic liberals taht won’t let us retaliate for nationalisations and other crap.
Oddly enough, I got a really aggravating phone call from a fundraiser at my alma mater this weekend.
http://businessopinions.blogspot.com/2007/04/universities-might-want-to-revisit.html
Oh, and about Argentina. Private citizens who default on their debts get their stuff repossessed. I think we should take Argentina’s cows as a down payment.