Admin Explains Goals, Usage of Alumni Gifts

As Columbia’s capital campaign moves forward and efforts to solicit alumni donations continue, donors may be curious about where their money is going and how much of a difference their dollars can make.

The $4 billion fund-raising campaign, launched in fall 2006 to improve academic programs and increase financial aid, among other goals, is the most ambitious effort ever by an American university. When the campaign was initially announced, Executive Director of Communications for the Office of University Development and Alumni Relations Jerry Kisslinger told Spectator, “It really matters that we build a broader base of people who see that as meaningful, because it really changes the definition of what the Columbia community and its alumni are about.”

The question of where the money is actually applied, as anyone dealing with large amounts of money, is complex and multileveled, mostly due to the variety of sums that alumni can choose between to give. Whereas the larger donations in the six- and seven-figure range are widely publicized and often designated for a specific cause, smaller donations trickle down to the Columbia College Annual Fund.

Gifts toward the annual fund are considered “unrestricted,” meaning that the University determines how to best spend that money.

“If someone gives a gift to the annual fund, they know they are supporting financial aid, facilities programming, and faculty. It is understood that the college will determine where that money goes,” said Dan Baker, CC ’76, executive director of the Office of Stewardship at UDAR.

Steve Shapiro, CC ’79, cites his fond memories at Columbia as his motive for donating to the college fund. “I didn’t have a great high school learning experience. College is where I felt I learned,” Shapiro said.

Yet small donors can still specify a “preference” of where they want their gift to go. Whether in extracurricular or scholarship funds, for instance, the destination of donations may change based on the size.

“Organizations always like money to be unrestricted, but there is very little of that around,” Baker said.

If a donor contributes a large amount, they can place restrictions on it with more flexibility, according to Baker. Such sums, for example, often enable the creation of a new fund.

Administrators defend the system, describing it as responsible for the recent growth in the University’s endowment.

But restrictions placed upon gifts are the reason that “we have a seven billion dollar endowment, and not seven billion to spend,” Kisslinger said.

The accumulation of a large endowment, however, seems to discourage some alumni. When donating money, “I would rather them not put it into the endowment. It is obscene to have billions of dollars endowment just sit there,” Shapiro said.

But with universities such as Harvard and Yale boasting endowments of $34.9 billion and $22.5 billion respectively , Columbia is in a crunch to increase its $7 billion endowment.

“I think it’s just inevitable. [Columbia] wants to compete with the best universities that are much better endowed than Columbia. The Harvard’s, the Yale’s, and the Stanford’s. And to do that it has to expand and ask for money,” Shapiro said.

keren.daskin@columbiaspectator.com