Questions About the Alumni Fund – and Suggested Answers

What is the Alumni Fund?

The Alumni Fund is a vital component of a Williams education – and of the College’s budget. Because of the success and growth of the Fund, the College can do more for students each year. The unrestricted gifts made by alumni to the Alumni Fund give Williams a critical edge in providing an exemplary liberal arts education.

I want to make a gift for The Williams Campaign – will it count for the Alumni Fund?

Yes, a gift to the Alumni Fund is a gift to The Williams Campaign. Alumni Fund gifts support all of the Campaign’s objectives. However, not all Campaign gifts count for the Alumni Fund; only gifts made directly to the Alumni Fund count as Alumni Fund gifts and receive class participation credit.

How will Williams use my gift?

Your Alumni Fund gift is the most valuable money a college can have – unrestricted dollars. Your contribution will be spent for financial aid, faculty salaries, library acquisitions, laboratory and classroom equipment, special academic programs and seminars, career and health services, intramural athletic programs, student activities and much more. The unrestricted nature of the Alumni Fund allows the College to put your gift where it is needed most.

Realizing the College’s strategic 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 strategic 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 of a reconfigured Stetson-Sawyer complex, a new student center, and the new ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance – all will require steadily increasing, long-term support from the Alumni Fund.

Programming costs will also rise as faculty and students discover new ways to use these wonderful facilities. An expanded faculty will increase expenses on 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.

Why should I contribute, even if I’d like to, when my family paid my full tuition?

Full tuition and fees actually pay less than two-thirds of the actual annual cost to educate a Williams student. The gap between what is paid and the real cost has always been subsidized by the College and made up through annual gifts from alumni, parents and friends, as well as earnings from endowment gifts. The people who came before us subsidized our education and now it’s our turn to do our part. Your participation is a great way to show gratitude for the education you received and to show support for the faculty and the students who have followed you.

The Campaign goal is $400 million. Why should I give a small, meaningless gift?

We need you! No matter the size, every gift is meaningful, every gift has value. And through our gifts, we inspire others to give. Each dollar given to the Alumni Fund is the equivalent of $20 in endowment – that is, the College would need 20 additional endowment dollars to earn the resources each Alumni Fund dollar provides. Equally important, the Alumni Fund depends on large as well as small gifts. Alumni gave over $8 million last year. It came from over 14,000 individual gifts. The Campaign goal for the Alumni Fund is $56 million. Together, Alumni Fund donors will make the single largest gift to The Williams Campaign!

Williams has a large endowment; why not use that instead of asking me?

Williams’ plan for the future will be very expensive to implement, and the College’s traditional attention to cost-effective solutions deeply informed its analysis of each Campaign initiative. By combining savings from unspent growth on prior endowment gifts with new philanthropic investments, Williams can afford its ambitious strategic plan and advance its legacy.

While continuing to be mindful of costs, Williams is equally concerned that its commitment to the strategic plan’s initiatives is sufficient to ensure their success. Very few colleges or universities in the world are in a position to accept or achieve such a challenge. But Williams can – and must – as long as it provides an education equal to the remarkable potential of its students and equal to the challenges the world will present to them as Williams graduates.

Why doesn’t the College just tighten its belt?

Williams always strives to control its expenditures, but financing an educational enterprise is not the same as managing a business. Since each student’s education is highly subsidized by the College and costs half again what is charged in tuition and fees, belt-tightening can only help at the margins. At all times, the imperative is to keep Williams fiscally sound for today and the future without compromising standards for excellence.

Because the College was such a prudent manager of all of its resources in the late ’90s, it is now in a position to use some of its savings, in partnership with alumni gifts to The Williams Campaign, to move forward boldly with its strategic plan.

The College has embarked on a course that focuses on Williams’ students, and their experiences both inside and outside the classroom. That course envisions a bold and ambitious future for Williams – a future that positions the College at the forefront of liberal arts education.

Why should I give money to Williams when there are so many other pressing needs in the world and in my own community?

Many organizations need and deserve your ongoing support. Most Williams alumni don’t see this as an either/or situation – they give to both. A gift to Williams College will not feed the hungry, house the homeless, or find a cure for AIDS. But it will continue to educate smart people who will help solve these and other problems of society. Visit http://www.williams.edu/admin/ news/releases.php to learn about the ephcomplishments of many of our fellow alumni. If nothing else, Williams will continue to produce people like you who stay concerned about these issues.

As alumni, we are all the heirs and beneficiaries of thousands of alumni who came before us. These alumni believed in Williams and in us and contributed so that Williams could continue as one the best liberal arts colleges in the world. If we believe that institutions like Williams are valuable and essential to creating better citizens who will help to make our world a better place, it’s vital that we sustain our long and valued tradition of stewardship for our alma mater. Williams will be here 100 years from now, we hope, as strong a leader in education as it is today.

Be aware, too, that unlike gifts to some other causes, gifts to Williams are very efficient since fund-raising costs are only about seven percent of the amount raised each year. Few charities can match that.