Despite
weak fund-raising across the University this year, the School of
Management has reported an increase in contributions to its Alumni Fund.
Donations
to SOM’s Alumni Fund rose 11 percent this year over last, totaling more
than $1.5 million for the 2008-’09 fiscal year. School officials
credited the increase to the loyalty of SOM alumni and administrators’
efforts to reach out to them.
“Our alumni have always been generous
to the school and have consistently risen to the occasion of our
increased needs,” Associate Dean for Development and Alumni Relations
Joel Getz said in an e-mail. “Dean Sharon Oster has spent significant
time on fundraising, and her personal appeals to our alumni have been
very effective.”
The Alumni Fund is one of several pools — others
include the school’s capital campaign — to which donors can give.
Donations to the Alumni Fund are spent directly, and donors can specify
whether they want their gifts to go toward financial aid, curriculum
development, faculty research, student loan forgiveness or the dean’s
discretionary fund.
About half of SOM graduates usually give to the
fund, Getz said. Over the past five years, that rate has varied from 44
percent to 49 percent, Getz said, which makes it the highest alumni
contribution rate of any school at Yale. It is also the second-highest
participation rate for alumni fund giving among business schools
nationwide, he added.
All members of the class of 2009 pledged to
contribute to the Alumni Fund when they graduated, said Susan Lennon
SOM ’85, who chaired the Alumni Fund until June.
The 2008-’09 fiscal
year marks at least the fourth straight year that donations to the
Alumni Fund have risen. Contributions to the fund have increased
dramatically since the 2004-’05 fiscal year, when donations stood at
about $770,000.
On the other hand, fundraising for the school’s $300
million capital campaign — which, among other things, will fund
construction of the school’s 246,000-square-foot campus — has largely
stalled. The fund took in just over $7 million this year, bringing the
fund’s holdings to $182 million. For fiscal year 2007-’08, the capital
campaign brought in $19 million. Getz said he was optimistic that
donations to the capital campaign will pick up again — which they must
if the campus is to open by spring 2013, the current projected
completion date.
“We started a number of new conversations that we
hope will be fruitful,” Getz said. “These new conversations may take
longer to mature than similar conversations in better economic cycles,
but we are confident of our future successes.”
But SOM’s concerns
about the capital campaign have not affected Alumni Fund giving. Alumni
Fund class agent Fi Cheng SOM ’05 said the recession has had little
impact on giving to the Alumni Fund in her alumni class.
“There were
two or three people who had lost their jobs and had written back to us
saying they couldn’t honor their pledges,” Cheng said. “But we have 82
percent participation in a class of 233.”
Class agent Dawn Alexander
SOM ’87 said Oster’s decision to donate $100,000 of her salary to an
internship fund, announced in January, also spurred alumni donations.
The average Alumni Fund gift size for this year was $635, Getz said.
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发表于 2009-10-1 00:50:00
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