@melvin123 and then again in the spring, and then again in the fall. Sorry. Two times a year is not an annual fund. I understand fiscal years but the annual fund should be run at the same time each year. I’ve gone further back in the records and they call twice a year. Our fault for not catching it sooner. But it won’t happen again.
A few years back one of my alma maters had a campaign to increase class participation and one of my classmates decided he was personally going to make our class hit the target. In a few weeks span I had numerous phone calls from this individual alternately begging me to contribute or trying to shame me into doing so. I do not respond well to harassment and did not contribute at all. I haven’t contributed since even though up until that point I had been a regular contributor.
I got a phone call last night from the school my D currently attends trying to get a contribution. I declined, seeing as in how the spring tuition bill will be due in about a month and I will be making a very heavy contribution through that avenue.
at least your SCHOOL called you. I got a call “on behave” of mine from an outside telemarketing service
How much of my money would have gone to them? 
@TomSrOfBoston
“Sounds like your phone number is showing on your daughter’s alumni profile. She can log in to it and remove it or call the alumni office and they will remove it.”
I think it shows up through our past dealings with the financial aid office, LOL. We just ignore the calls… daughter gets her own calls on her phone.
Since most of the time the person calling is pretty clearly a student, I do my best to adopt my Fed-ex commercial fast-talking voice where I thank them for the call, and let me explain please very quickly that since we are currently paying tuition, R&B, etc. and we are grateful for the tremendous FA we are receiving, thanks in large part to people like them calling to assist, we are not in a financial position to make a contribution at this time, and since we have experience being in their shoes, calling to request assistance wherever possible, I am sure they will appreciate me hanging up quickly to allow them to get to the next person on their list, thanks again very much and I wish them the very best of luck. Usually I am able to spit all of this out in 20 seconds or so.
I went to the same school for undergrad and grad school. While in grad school, I was asked to give money. I sent them a copy of my fee statement for that semester. They haven’t asked me for money since.
I joined some kind of parent’s association at DD’s school so I could participate in parents weekend. Within days I received a “thank you” call for joining that verified all my information, asked how my daughter was doing, and quickly morphed into, “So can I put you down to make a $500 donation to [the] fund?” The shock on my face had to have come across the phone. “Uh, no. I am not going to donate that kind of money.” “Well, how about just $250?” I practically hung up on the caller when he went for a third amount.
Just saying, research does show asking for a higher target number yields a higher contribution. And they likely know your history, when they make that new suggestion. Eg, $100 last year? Ramp it to an ask for $250. It works enough to be continued.
I’ll tell you why each in our family makes a contribution, it’s the participation rate, mentioned above. That reflects a level of satisfaction that matters, down the road, to the corporations and foundations (C&F) that donate more than we ever could. Our amount is less important. That’s how I see that.
And we are grateful for the finaid at a great college. I always ask that our donations be earmarked for the FA pool.
But yeah, all annoying. The kid calling from my alma mater once asked what I had enjoyed most, during my time there. Not really thinking, I blurted: weekends at (a larger U nearby.) Not what they hoped to hear.
We happily donate to my 3 different schools (wife’s grad school, D1 and my alma mater and D2s current school).
I had a great chat with kids making the calls last week because she knows my D through an shared extra-curricular.
IF I decide to donate, I want to give anonymously and NOT have calls begging for more. My kids did enjoy their years at their U and I did enjoy mine at my Us and H enjoyed his at his U. I am already contributing majorly to the nonprofit I keep running to help others.
Many years ago, one caller from my alma mater once kept applying pressure, and then asked where my husband had gone to college. She proceeded to bash his college (apparently under the false impression that we must be donating more money to his college). I had not yet heard there was such a thing as legacy admissions (which I learned when I started reading College Confidential), or I might have given a more polite response than I gave her…
My daughter’s college called and asked (very nicely) if I would consider donating $10. I was caught off guard by the low amount and decided to donate $50.
My neighbor attended Columbia and Yale Law School. He made generous donations annually, which the schools accepted without much hoopla.
His father had attended Cooper Union, for free, which allowed him to quit his job as a waiter, get an office job, and put his sons through college. My neighbor made a modest donation to Cooper Union, and was impressed with their gratitude.
He decided that, while his Ivy League schools had been great for him, he was going to succeed regardless of whether it was Columbia, or Yale, or Princeton, etc., but his father’s life was profoundly changed by Cooper Union. So, he now donates to Cooper Union, and, as he says, Columbia and Yale Law will do just fine without him.
Every time we get a call from the mega wealthy colleges in our family, I send a hundred dollars to a low endowment college in Iowa. They do great work with first generation students which comprise almost half their enrollment. My daughter’s classmate ended up there and they have been terrific to her.
We have no affiliation with them except that I toured it once. They must be baffled.
It’s unfortunate that OP’s alma mater used such pressure tactics. I have two kids in college, but have always enjoyed the annual call from a student at my alma mater. I was a first generation college student and would not have been able to attend without the generous full tuition merit scholarship they awarded me (H also attended on a partial Honors scholarship).
No matter how tight things have been in different years, I’ve always sent some money, earmarked for scholarships. Most other donations I do anonymously, but I’m proud to show I support my school. We’re even working with our financial planner to set up some kind of scholarship eventually. It may not be able to provide more than book money - but that can make all the difference for a student of limited means.
Now, the “near-Ivy” school where H earned his PhD - we don’t send them much money. They’ve got donors with far deeper pockets that we have. However, our little private undergrad school with not much more than 2,000 students - even a small amount can make a difference there.
We’ve always had interesting and engaging students make the call. It’s hard to ask for money, and I’m sure they would have taken a different job if they could have.
@Snowball City - I love your story!
I have gotten calls over the years and always like to give a small amount ($100.00 or so). My alma mater is not a school with a huge endowment and I like to think it’s going for a good cause.
The students who call are friendly and chat for a bit before the donation request.I once caught a student off guard when she asked what my favorite memory of “Xyz University” was and I told her I did not have a favorite memory There was a few seconds of silence before I explained that it was because I loved every moment that I spent there.
The best fund raisers are usually the schools that need it least. This past year I upped my annual contribution somewhat and received a hand written note from the university secretary on the gift acknowledgment that said “Thank you, and the increase from prior years is gratefully noted.” That makes me a lot more likely to stay at that level than someone telling me what I need to do.
I have long since stopped donating to my alma mater, because I don’t agree with their funding priorities.
I have occasionally taken the student calls from my undergrad as I enjoy talking to the students and I Chitty chat with them, ask about their area of study, and then proceed to tell them that I will donate separately and not to put me down for any amount. In recent years I somehow got on a list from my graduate school’s healthcare school/division where they seem to think I have some bottomless pit of large quantities of money and think I’m going to endow something. It’s pretty funny actually. I was curious when I first got a call from the administrative assistant of the head of the school wanting to talk to me.The head of this division was going to be in my town and wanted to take me to lunch or dinner. As I was going to be out of town then, they put the head on the phone and after some conversation it became clear that they were looking for extraordinarily large donations with a lot of zeros in it. I bit my lip and told them delicately that they probably needed to be reaching out to other alumni. I recently got another call from that same department and this time I was smart enough not to return the call.
The hierarchy of our college giving: most to the small schools (Reed, RISD), next to the medium-sized university (UChicago), and sometimes to our graduate alma maters (UWisconsin). All of these colleges provided great opportunities to either us or our kids. I stopped donating to the general fund of my former university employer after a very disappointing incident in which they destroyed some books that I had donated b/c the librarian-bibliographer didn’t want the work. I then turned to my graduate alma mater, Wisconsin, where the bibliographer gladly accepted more than 2,000 books from my specialized collection – the vast majority of which (85%) were NOT in the current collection.