WHY WE RESTRICT THE ALUMNI FUND TO UNRESTRICTED GIFTS

The most valuable gifts to Williams are unrestricted gifts. Why are unrestricted gifts so valuable? The answer is simple. If alumni were able to restrict their gifts for that part of Williams closer to their hearts than any other, some programs might be over-supported while other worthwhile programs would be starved for cash. The unrestricted gifts of the Alumni Fund gifts go to work immediately in core programs to support students and faculty as well as the academic and residential facilities that are inherently part of the Williams experience. They help pay for scholarships, faculty salaries, new books, and upkeep of facilities. In fact, the Provost’s office, in building the budget, counts on Alumni Fund gifts to cover 6-8% of all operating expenditures every year.

Other gifts are important, but they do not count in the Alumni Fund. Alumni are encouraged to make their first gift each year to the Alumni Fund, and then, if so inclined, to consider other areas for support. The College is grateful for all gifts, but to stress the importance of giving for current-year expenditures, which is so vital to the College’s annual planning, unrestricted gifts are the only gifts that count for the Alumni Fund. A classmate who gave Williams $1.5 million dollars last year to endow a professorship without making an additional gift to the Alumni Fund would not be counted as a donor to the Alumni Fund.

The purpose of the Alumni Fund is to raise unrestricted dollars that can be spent in the current fiscal year. During The Williams Campaign, Alumni Fund donors may indicate their support, through their Alumni Fund gift, of one of the four major goals of the Campaign: Williams’ most important priorities this year, student financial aid, Williams professors or enriched student life. This is different from making a restricted gift (see P. 18 for a definition of Restricted Gift). If someone wants to make a restricted gift, ask him or her to make a gift to the Alumni Fund first. Then, if they are able and so inclined, they can work with a development officer to make additional gifts for restricted or endowed purposes.

The Alumni Fund is at the very center of The Williams Campaign. While the Alumni Fund’s role in the daily life of the College has always been crucial, its importance today cannot be underestimated. All alumni, including the Campaign’s lead donors for capital and endowment gifts, will be asked to support the Alumni Fund at heightened levels. The College expects that 95 percent of all Campaign donors will give their gifts exclusively through the Alumni Fund.

Alumni Fund gifts support all the essentials of a Williams education and touch every aspect of the strategic plan that The Williams Campaign supports. Realizing that plan will be expensive and inevitably increase operating costs. The steady stream of unrestricted money received over the course of the Campaign will allow the Alumni Fund to sustain its six to eight percent annual share of the current expenditures budget – and to grow, as it must, to accommodate the myriad costs associated with implementing the plan’s exciting array of initiatives.

Williams’ renewed, costly commitment to need-blind admission and financial aid, thirty new faculty positions, improvements in the quality of students’ extracurricular lives, the maintenance

Besides increasing maintenance expenses, the three major building projects – including the new student center – will also raise programming costs as faculty and students discover new ways to use these wonderful facilities. An expanded faculty will increase expenses for everything from lab equipment to rental housing. All these new costs have in common a certain degree of unpredictability. That’s where Alumni Fund gifts serve an invaluable purpose. By providing Williams with a steady stream of discretionary monies, the Alumni Fund enables the College to seize educational opportunities and to address unforeseen problems as they arise.

A steady inflow of unrestricted dollars every year allows Williams to preserve its endowment. One dollar raised through the Alumni Fund for current unrestricted purposes provides the same available income as generated by approximately 20 dollars in endowment. Achieving the Alumni Fund’s ambitious goal of average annual increases of eight percent through Fiscal Year 2008 – which would bring the Fund to more than $10 million annually – is the equivalent of the income generated by an additional $200 million in endowment funds. Put another way, the Alumni Fund’s Campaign goal is worth an additional 50 percent over and above the Campaign’s entire $400 million goal.

Knowing the distinction between restricted and unrestricted gifts is why the best associate agents study the Profile Report of the classmate they are about to call. Keep in mind that your classmate may be giving to Williams, but not to the Alumni Fund. If this is the case, thank them for supporting that specific program and invite them to support the Alumni Fund as well.

How Reunions differ from usual Alumni Fund giving. The 25th and 50th Reunion classes establish separate funds to celebrate these milestone reunion years. These two classes are specially honored at the Society of Alumni Annual Meeting held on Saturday morning of Reunion Weekend where they present their class gift, a combination of their specially designated reunion fund and their Alumni Fund gifts. All gifts, including Alumni Fund gifts, made in the five years before the 25th and the ten years before the 50th are included in the reunion gift total.

For most alumni celebrating their quinquennial reunions, their reunion will be their “Campaign moment.” In that year, they may be asked to consider making a Campaign commitment to the Alumni Fund that may be a larger-than-ever single-year gift or in some classes, an increased gift payable over five years.