My Richmond Experience

Spiders05
Sun, 29 Jul 2007 12:00:13 +0000

otis, I think you’ll find, if you know anything about the school, that the alumni (myself included), stopped giving to the school as a way to show their displeasure with the former administration. Prior to Dr. Cooper becoming president at UR in '98, alumni giving was in the high 30’s, low 40’s. In fact, the almuni put enough pressure on Dr. Cooper for many of his actions while president, that he elected to resign and on July 1, Dr. Ayers became UR’s president. I think you’ll see alumni donations steadily increase with him at the helm. Additionally, UR has never been very good at soliciting donations from alumni, primarily because they’ve been able to rely on just a few wealthy families to sustain the school. Over the past 10 years or so, they’ve realized how beneficial it is to have more alumni give, even if it’s only a few dollars a year. This year’s senior class had a giving rate of over 70%. The previous year’s class had over 60%. The senior gift program is a new initiative to get the students in the practice of giving back and I think you’ll see this also increase the number of donors. If you want to take a look at a superficial level, yes, UR’s rate is poor, but if dig a little deeper, you’ll see there are great reasons for it and many of those have been changed, so UR will get back to its peer institutions and hopefully the young alumni can be an example for the older alums.