to find it ODD that my old university thinks I have money to give IT ( not vice versa)

[SetSquare]

in its HUGE cmapus and masses of property...and sends me endless begging letters

Almost all universities are in financial trouble now, except for those very old ones with loads of property, bequests and, um, active alumni who fondly remember the best years of their lives.

lol at £2.50 Ham

I bet you're right Doggie. Both those things would work for me.

DH and I went to Edinburgh - old, rich, Russell Group etc ... and we got begging letters for years, till we stopped ignoring them and just asked them to remove our names from the mailing list as we felt it was more important to give money to starving children in Africa (dh wrote the letter - he was having a stroppy day!)

Funny enough we have not heard from them since!

As I understand it the women's colleges have been doing quite well recently because the early graduates who are dying at the moment often didn't marry so they left ££££ to their old uni. This source is going to dry up as the graduates who die become more likely to have had kids as well as careers and hence they will have other people to leave their money to.

I had never heard the term Russell group till I came on here

We talk about this at home quite a bit as we often get asked for money.

I will not give money unless I know where it is going. No school/university that I attended (or that DP attended) is going to get a cent of a euro from us unless we know exactly what it is to be spent on. General fundraising is not a good money earner.

Do people feel it is wrong for your universities to ask for money then? You know that, on the whole, even now the full cost of a university education is nowhere near borne by the recipient?

Anna I agree. Our unrestricted fund is really struggling, which is a shame, because it's very useful to have flexibilty in where to direct funds.

To give to a general fund you would need to have 100% blind trust in the institution.

DH and I get often get letters from the Alumni Relations manager of our respective universities. DH was most upset at the questionnaire once sent out where you were asked to tick a box showing your salary level. His salary (and mine) was covered by the second to lowest box of eight. We reckon if they feel they need to differentiate between people earning over £500k and those earning over £750k, they really don't need our meagre donations.

Agree absolutely Anna.

When the women's college I went to kicked off its serious fundraising campaign it was very clear about how the purpose of the campaign was to set up enough bursaries to ensure that no student who was academically able to study there should be prevented through not having enough money. You can't say fairer than that can you?

The thing is, the US universities from whom we copied our loans system tend to have much bigger endowments than the British ones and their graduates tend to donate much more generously, so as a result they have much better financial aid available for poorer students. Although I would rather the govt provided this funding, given that they don't, I think it is entirely reasonable to fundraise from alumni. But only if the money is actually going to go to students, not the the Senior Common Room wine cellar.

It must be the time of year for it. I recycled a begging letter from my old university this morning.

Funnily enough I got a glossy newsletter yesterday, with pictures of the just built new building in it.

That's really poor communication Lilymaid.

When we used to do this, we only had 3 levels, with the top one being £100k plus. Like you say, why would they need to differentiate above that?

We also had a sentence in big letters about how we would understand if people didn't want to fill that bit in

Oh we got a glossy magazine through this week too. I only read the obituaries.

IotasCat - I bet part of the building was paid for with donations, or something else was in order to free up the budget

How do institutions manage to keep up the level of investment in new facilities without seeking funds from all sources available?

Ledodgy I LOLed at the recent graduate news: "I got married to X who was in the year above" , " I had a baby"

I'm very happy to donate (small amounts) to my old college, and I've always got nice letters back. In fact I got invited to a special garden party for donating about £10, which I then felt hideously embarrassed by.

Kathy - agree.

We had a problem a few years back when one of our volunteer advisory boards wanted to put a new clock on the library with money raised from alumni. How hard it was trying to explain why this was not a great idea. Luckily it didn't happen.

Apparently, universities have also targeted the parents of current/recent students. This means that we may end up with half a dozen universities after our cash.

Have just spent the last half hour wondering what the acronym ODD stands for.

Penny has just dropped that it isn't an acronym.

And yes. I get them too. Ancient and venerable institution, would have thought they had kerjillions. Have never given them a sou. Though if I were rolling in money (hahahaha) I would consider it.

The other thing with the rich pompous college that would make me gouge out my eyeballs rather than give them any money was that there were a number of scholarships at the college which had been set up centuries ago to give money to poor scholars. At some point they'd reallocated these to reward academic merit. Trouble was, that since they were awarded on the basis of first year exams, they tended to go the people who were already furthest ahead when they came rather than the brightest necessarily (though of course some were). Which meant, in effect, the people who'd been to the best schools.... who were frequently the richest

[actually very bitter and twisted]

Doggie I don't mind getting begging letters - if I were rich I might even make a donation, but I am a newly reformed SAHM earning a pittance in a p/t job.

I would definitly be ticking box 1 on the income scale

They should have a box that says 'I would like to donate but can't afford to right now - ask me again in 10/20/40/70 [delete as appropriate] years time'.

Kathy - my DH also gets annoyed that the exhibitions/scholarships now only seem to be given to people from Eton and similar schools rather than those from Anytown High. It really does send the wrong message out.

Lilymaid I thought I was the only person in the world who was bothered about this. Good!

I don't have a problem with them having made it academic rather than needs-based at a time when there were full grants and no fees, but I rather think it's time to change them back now....