Charity
I saw this in the news about a university I went to for three years before deciding I could grow up more cheaply outside of college:
PROVIDENCE, R.I.
A legal battle continues over the naming rights and funding for the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University.
Rhode Island philanthropist Alan Shawn Feinstein filed a lawsuit in 2003 in the U.S. District Court alleging the center's director, J. Larry Brown, breached a contract by denying him the right to put his name on the center....
Feinstein told The Providence Journal it was important to have his name on the facility because anonymous donations encourage no one to follow suit.
"If you make a donation and a name is not connected with it, people are not going to be moved to give a donation, but if it's someone they know and like who gave money, then they may be moved to give money, too," Feinstein said. "So modesty does not always work well when it comes to charity."
Personally, I couldn't disagree more. Here are two instances of anonymous charity which are not even remotely dulled by the fact that they are anonymous.
- Last year's donation of $100 million to Yale's Music School. According to ABC News, this donation will make advanced music education (at Yale) free beginning in 06-07.
- "The Kalamazoo Promise". This is a program which will provide four year tuition scholarships to students from the Kalamazoo public school system who will attend any public university or college in Michigan. According to the Kalamazoo entry at Wikipedia, the program is sponsored by private donations from several anonymous individuals.
Mr. Feinstien knocked "modesty" in defending his lawsuit against the people he once thought worthy of his money. To me, that modesty is a very large part of what made the Yale and Kalamazoo donations so fucking amazing.
Then again, I don't have a zillion dollars. I don't know what it's like to have friends who have a zillion and one dollars and who, because they made more named charitable donations than I did this month, get to dock most of their yatchs in the best places at the marina and jeer at me over the buffet at the country club. That could be really difficult to deal with.
2 comments:
If you have that kind of money, don't you already have enough fame? Aren't you already surrounded by enough sycophants? Why do you need to stick your name on your donation?
K,
Well, you'd think so, right? I always think of our friend at cjblue when I encounter the word "sycophant" because hers was the most memorable use I've ever heard, in relation to Barney (as in the big purple thing who is followed around my singing sycophants).
Post a Comment