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Are they a reliable narrator on the matter? I can certainly imagine a bunch of constraints on how endowment money is used, but it also seems true that there's just always going to be a lot of pressure to just acquire more no matter how rich they already are.
In any case, I still think it's super weird that middle-class people give even a penny to their schools. I understand if you have enough money to get your name on a building or an endowed professorship or can swing the politics of a department, but I genuinely don't get what someone gets out of giving a few hundred bucks to a school.
I wondered about that, and I've lost the link long ago, but they claimed to be on the accountancy or financial management or whatever of Harvard, and that the perception of "you've got a huge endowment, you must be swimming in money" was not correct. All kinds of baked-in running expenses and loan repayments and the like meant that they can't just get their hands on the endowment as it is and use it up, and that the income generated is not keeping up with the demands on it.
As you say, this may well be motivated reasoning and not reliable, but it was someone trying to explain why Harvard couldn't just give $$$$$ to disadvantaged students etc.
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Sports, mostly.
What the hell does someone get out of giving a couple hundred (or thousand) bucks to a school with a Big Ten Network contract pulling in tens of millions? I just don't get it. I get spending money to go to a football game, but I have no idea why someone picks up a call from their alumni org and replies that they'd be happy to cut a small check.
Often, some (often overstated)level of influence over minor traditions that may be important to them, personally- this was how the same UTA was previously talked out of getting rid of its fight song 'the eyes of Texas are upon you' at least once. Alternatively, frequently better opportunities for either networking or a notionally better chance at getting sporting tickets or something like that.
Realistically, most alumni don't donate, and a good chunk of those who do are donating to specific organizations affiliated with the school(eg the marching band) or have too much money to know what to do with anyways.
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