<p>My child is in a BS and they suggest to donate 2500. It can be use whatever the school wishes. Can I donate the money to a specific department or project? What do you recommend?</p>
<p>Schools prefer unrestricted gifts, but that doesn’t mean you can’t specify how you’d like to see your money applied: teacher training, facilities, scholarships, etc. If there’s something you are passionate about seeing improved, by all means, let the school know about it!</p>
<p>I don’t think the donation check doesn’t control where the money goes. The school has an ultimate say in how to use it.</p>
<p>Ummm. No. You can designate how you want the funds allocated. Non-profits can’t tell you to give them money and then restrict your wishes for the use. The only thing you can’t do with a donation is designate it for the benefit of a specific person. </p>
<p>That would be like donating money for a building and the school decides to use it for salaries instead.</p>
<p>Also - Suggested donations are not “edicts.” But they’re marketed that way sometimes to push the average donation up. (psychological). You are free to give as much or as little as you choose. If a dollar is all you have, that’s all you should give.</p>
<p>^^
True, but the school will respect your wishes because they’ll want you to donate again in the future, and money you donate to restricted funds frees up money for other uses.</p>
<p>The exception would be if you wanted the money to go something the school doesn’t want or can’t support, such as the “Immersion’s Child Scholarship Fund” or the “Nazi Party History Chair”.</p>
<p>The main reason schools would prefer unrestricted giving is that it gives them flexibility. Few donors are willing to earmark money for unsexy things like buildings and grounds upkeep but those things still need financial support for the school to continue operation.</p>
<p>Yes, I donate to 3 different schools, & all have given options on how the money would be used. I think it still gives the school the flexibility it needs, while you get to see your contribution used the way you like (within reason - usually the choices are scholarships, salaries, specific areas like library or science lab, or a particular set of grades within the school, if they offer K-12). If a lot of people contribute specifically to, say, scholarship funds, then that frees up money within the school’s own resources to throw at mainenance or whatever.</p>
<p>All of which means, I suppose, that unless you’re giving millions, it doesn’t really matter whether you designate your money for a specific purpose or not: if you designate it for the science lab, the school now has the $2000 formerly budgeted for labs, to put toward lawn mowing.</p>
<p>Unless the school is trying to build an endowment, or expand its outreach through FA - in which case it doesn’t free up anything on the budget.</p>
<p>I am aware of such situations where donations are/were designated to private schools in such a way to prevent those “budget reshuffles”.</p>
<p>Here in town, United Way used to be a major example of the opposite (may still be). When I designated a charity (through employer contributions, for instance) they then reducde the amount of their budgeted funds allocated to compensate. So the charity essentially saw no “bump” from my efforts. Which is why I now donate to charities directly.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone and I think that I know what to do. I hope that the school use the fund donated appropriately.</p>
<p>That must have been YEARS ago about the United Way. the majority of them now give the designated dollars above and beyond what the agency would have gotten otherwise.</p>
<p>On another note, in response to this:</p>
<p>
The school is legally bound to use the money as a donor restricts. As someone mentioned, unless it is something they don’t want / have / find offensive, etc. In that case, they will contact the donor and get permission to use it for another purpose, or they will return it.</p>
<p>The usual “ask” in the schools is for the annual fund. If you choose to donate money to something else, still give something (even$ 25) to the annual fund, since its important for the parent participation numbers, which wont show if you give a “restricted” donation. Also keep in mind that the “suggested” donation is either the same number that came to everyone and represents the “gap” or a number the development director came up with, based on your family’s stats. If the later is the case, they generally make it higher than a person would normally contribute.</p>