Dive Brief:
- Colleges and universities have noticed corporate and philanthropic giving becoming more strategic, in some cases with more conditions, forcing a balancing act between institutional mission and the desires of donors.
- University Business reports Drake University in Des Moines, IA separates transactional opportunities, in which donors get a number of perks in return, and more traditional donations, while the University of Houston has made those perks standard in a new corporate giving program called Cougar Corporate Partners.
- Many universities have found that donor requests can be folded into existing programmatic goals in one corner of the institution or another, and sometimes, the donations can give life to programs that were not possible otherwise.
Dive Insight:
Campus activists have surged around opposition to Charles and David Koch's giving, which comes with expectations the activists oppose. The wealthy philanthropists spent more than $19 million on 210 colleges in 2013, a steep increase from the year before, according to a report from Al Jazeera America. UnKoch My Campus provides students with resources to pressure schools to sever ties from these two donors, specifically.
There is always a risk when it comes to the optics of giving, especially when colleges offer anything in return. NYU is dealing with backlash following a name change at its engineering school that followed a $100 million donation.