Word: alumni
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...from hunger because they cannot afford both books and food. While African universities operate in crumbling buildings and lack sufficient computers, Harvard’s endowment now stands at nearly $30 billion, even after the recent financial downturn. Yet Harvard’s well-staffed development office still solicits alumni for dollars as if it were starving for cash: In fiscal year 2008, Harvard netted $651 million from alumni and friends...
...nearly one-fourth of my 25th reunion class formed Harvard Alumni for Social Action (HASA) to try to make improving education for the world’s poorest students part of Harvard’s development approach. We lobbied Harvard to allow our class to set up an alternate gift, in Harvard’s honor, which would build the institutional capacity of a university in sub-Saharan Africa with which Harvard already has academic collaborations. In view of the devastating impact of AIDS on African academics and the dilapidated state of their institutions, we felt that a class donation...
Despite the current financial crisis, Harvard is hardly lacking in monetary resources. According to Inside Higher Education, Harvard ranked second among U.S. universities in alumni giving in both 2006 and 2007. A recently announced gift of $100 million from David Rockefeller ’36 indicates that 2008 will be another banner year in terms of alumni donations. If the current trend in giving persists, and presuming the economy recovers in the next few years, Harvard’s endowment could reach a whopping $80 billion within a decade...
...current model of endowment development, which is highly dependent on alumni-giving, further widens the gap between richer and poorer institutions, because wealthy universities tend to engender wealthier alumni who can give a bigger pay-back. As non-profits, universities are unbridled forces on the stock market. With no obligation to plow resources back into federal and local services, or even to spend a fixed percentage of earnings, these universities vacuum up philanthropic impulses without creating widespread good...
Hence, strengthening alumni bonds through alternative giving should become part of a new development paradigm for the wealthiest universities. But this is easier said than done. For example, getting Harvard to support HASA has been a challenge. After considerable pressure, the university agreed to authorize a fund to provide scholarships for graduate students from Africa, because those dollars would flow directly to Harvard’s coffers. While the decision in itself is a victory, Harvard still fails to recognize the serious need of African universities for basic infrastructure, nor does it embrace this need as a legitimate...