Gee, perhaps the folks at some snooty ivy league schools will realize that there is a cost to ignoring the wishes of people who give them money. Princeton has seen a precipitous drop in donations in the past year.
Contributions to Princeton University fell by about $100 million -- or 45 percent -- in 2004 while overall giving to U.S. colleges and universities rose 3.4 percent, according to a national survey.
Princeton tries to come up with some face-saving excuses.
One reason the drop in donations was so steep, university officials told the Trenton (N.J.) Times, was that income from private gifts had risen by more than $40 million the previous year to reach a school record. Princeton spokesman Eric R. Quinones also noted that the university has "fewer alumni than its peer institutions and does not have professional schools that are generally sources of substantial giving." What's more, Mr. Quinones said, many schools that "ranked highly" in CAE's 2004 survey have major capital campaigns, while Princeton does not.
But you gotta wonder if the bad publicity from this story.
Heirs to the A&P supermarket fortune, who are plaintiffs in a lawsuit that says Princeton misused millions of dollars of foundation money, suggest the "financial free fall" could be related to publicity about their litigation. Princeton denies misusing cash that the late Charles and Marie Robertson provided. In 1961, they donated 700,000 shares of A&P stock, then valued at $35 million, to establish a foundation to help prepare graduate students for careers in government diplomacy. But the "plaintiffs charge Princeton with ignoring the donors' intent, improperly spending more than $100 million on nongermane programs," said Herb Berkowitz, a spokesman for the Robertson family.
It's not nice to solicit all this money from donors and then ignore how they want the money spent. And I can well imagine that the big donors who may want to have a targeted gift to a university to have second thoughts.
UPDATE: Sorry for forgetting the link. I've been trying to fix it all day, but Blogger has been recalcitrant. posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:26 AM
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Gee, perhaps the folks at some snooty ivy league schools will realize that there is a cost to ignoring the wishes of people who give them money. Princeton has seen a precipitous drop in donations in the past year.
Contributions to Princeton University fell by about $100 million -- or 45 percent -- in 2004 while overall giving to U.S. colleges and universities rose 3.4 percent, according to a national survey.
Princeton tries to come up with some face-saving excuses.
One reason the drop in donations was so steep, university officials told the Trenton (N.J.) Times, was that income from private gifts had risen by more than $40 million the previous year to reach a school record. Princeton spokesman Eric R. Quinones also noted that the university has "fewer alumni than its peer institutions and does not have professional schools that are generally sources of substantial giving." What's more, Mr. Quinones said, many schools that "ranked highly" in CAE's 2004 survey have major capital campaigns, while Princeton does not.
But you gotta wonder if the bad publicity from this story.
Heirs to the A&P supermarket fortune, who are plaintiffs in a lawsuit that says Princeton misused millions of dollars of foundation money, suggest the "financial free fall" could be related to publicity about their litigation. Princeton denies misusing cash that the late Charles and Marie Robertson provided. In 1961, they donated 700,000 shares of A&P stock, then valued at $35 million, to establish a foundation to help prepare graduate students for careers in government diplomacy. But the "plaintiffs charge Princeton with ignoring the donors' intent, improperly spending more than $100 million on nongermane programs," said Herb Berkowitz, a spokesman for the Robertson family.
It's not nice to solicit all this money from donors and then ignore how they want the money spent. And I can well imagine that the big donors who may want to have a targeted gift to a university to have second thoughts.
UPDATE: Sorry for forgetting the link. I've been trying to fix it all day, but Blogger has been recalcitrant. posted by Betsy Newmark permalink 6:26 AM
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