CONVINCING REASONS TO SUPPORT WILLIAMS

Why the Alumni Fund is important to Williams College. In our personal lives, we have immediate priorities and expenses as well as long-term investments that secure our future. The same is true for Williams College. Unrestricted gifts to the Alumni Fund provide immediately expendable income that is used during each fiscal year to support the core programs of the College – students, faculty, financial aid, and academic and residential facilities. Unlike Alumni Fund gifts, donations to the endowment exist in perpetuity to provide security for the College for the future. And remember, it takes 20 endowment dollars to generate the equivalent of one Alumni Fund dollar.

Every gift to the Alumni Fund supports The Williams Campaign. The Williams Campaign is about Williams students and their lives both inside and outside the classroom. Its $400 million funding objectives include:

• a model curriculum with expanded interdisciplinary and experiential teaching and Williams’ signature tutorial program, supported by the addition of 30 new faculty positions
• expanded theatre and dance programs situated in a new performing arts center
• enhanced social sciences research, faculty and student space through the renovation of the Stetson/Sawyer Libraries and faculty office annex
• increased commitment to need-blind admissions and full-need scholarship support that now includes international students
• improved student life opportunities based in a new student center.

In 2000, the Board of Trustees elected to freeze tuition for one year at the previous year’s level and have kept subsequent increases among the lowest of any peer institutions. They have been able to do so because of the ongoing generosity of Williams alumni. Tuition, room, board, and student fees continue to cover about HALF the College’s actual expenditures per student. In 2005-06, tuition, room, board and student fees are $40,310. A combination of Alumni Fund dollars and income from the endowment makes up the difference between what Williams charges in tuition and fees and the true cost of a Williams education.

The Alumni Fund provides six to eight percent of the College’s current expenditures budget every year. Without the Alumni Fund, maintaining current program levels would require a significant tuition increase or the College’s endowment spending rate would have to rise. By allowing the College to rely less on endowment income for such expenses, unrestricted gifts to the Alumni Fund ensure that enough endowment income will still be available in the future.

The Alumni Fund sustains the long tradition of alumni taking direct responsibility for Williams’ continued success. Williams has always been a privately funded institution that relies on the continuing generosity and loyalty of alumni to keep it strong. All alumni should know that their Williams experience was made possible in part by the generosity of those who came before them. E liberalitate E. Williams armigeri.

Alumni Fund gifts are an investment in today’s Williams students. It is our turn to support a new generation of Williams students. Alumni Fund giving, at any amount, expresses support in such an investment and an enduring commitment that binds the Williams family from one generation to the next. The Alumni Fund encourages continued alumni involvement with Williams and, most importantly, continued investment in the education of today’s students.

Williams is among the handful of colleges that admit the best students without taking into consideration their ability to pay tuition. Forty-two percent of the Class of 2008 receives needbased financial aid from Williams. Fifty-eight percent of the student body receives some form of financial aid, with funding from Williams, scholarships, job and loans now averaging $30,500. Williams funding accounts for over 90 percent of all need-based scholarship and grant dollars. Sixty percent is from scholarship endowment income and 40 percent comes from current operating funds, directly supported by the Alumni Fund.

A gift to the Alumni Fund benefits some of the top students in the country. In the last 12 graduating classes, 34 percent of the 137 National Fellowship recipients were Williams aid recipients. These included: three Rhodes, two Marshall, 12 National Science Foundation, one Javits, two Mellons, 12 Watsons, 14 Fulbrights, three Rockefeller Brothers, one Truman, one Winston Churchill Foundation, and one Rotary.