My daughter’s college calls home at least twice a year, plus sends a few pieces of mail during the year requesting donations. She is finishing her degree, and I would have thought we would get crossed off the list after a year or more with no response. I have zero interest in donating to my daughter’s school. If I were to make school donations the money would go to my own alma mater.
Do other schools hit up the parents regularly for donations? I feel like our timely tuition payments should let me off the hook for donating. :-<
I think all schools do. Most schools rely on funding from the endowment and annual funds to cover the real cost of running the school which is beyond tuition charges.
Feel free to ignore it if you don’t want to give. Perhaps consider a small token donation. The schools do care about participation rates.
We did end up donating to my daughter’s sports team as they were trying to get 100% participation. But we are going to forgo donating to the school itself, at least until I find a job.
Our older daughter graduated last year and we get calls and mailings on a regular basis ( maybe twice a year). We made one donation so far- a small one. Our younger D is still in college and we get mailings every few months but no phone calls yet. We have not donated but once she graduates we will be more than happy to donate to the out of state student association. It would make me very happy to help provide a student with the same opportunities that D had access to.
I just don’t answer the phone. What really annoys me is when H takes the call from his alma mater and spends 30 minutes on the phone with some kid, regaling them with tales of his undergrad days. I am not sure if I am more upset when he makes a donation or when he doesn’t! I would never donate to my college. As for my law school, it once published in the journal that I had donated $10K. I forced it to publish a retraction. I would give money to my college sooner than to my law school.
They called me a couple times and I was polite because they were clearly students as @thumper1 noted. But after the second call I blocked the number. D is full pay OOS so in my mind I’m already funding two instate students.
I once picked up a call by mistake from a very sweet student begging for donations to D’s school. It was the day the monthly bill was due. No thank you. If the “meets full need” school’s definition of need were anywhere close to our FAFSA EFC we might consider it.
We are happy to donate to both our alma maters (Reed College and the University of Wisconsin) and our children’s alma maters (University of Chicago and Rhode Island School of Design). We do so every year, in appreciation of the quality of education these colleges provided and continue to provide. We sometimes earmark donations for specific causes or activities at the colleges.
In the first 10-15 years after we graduated, we did not contribute to our alma maters. We barely had any extra resources. Similarly, in the first few years after our kids graduated, we felt that the colleges had received plenty of our money. But over time our appreciation of the quality of the colleges grew, as our own resources also grew. And we began to donate.
We do not consider it to be annoying that the colleges solicit our support.
@thumper1 - The fact that they are student workers and not volunteers is part of the reason why my H’s chattiness annoys me. Let them get on to people who can afford to give.
Parents/students receive donation requests while they’re still undergrads? Even before senior year?
I thought it was bad enough when I started receiving donation requests from my LAC right before the start of my final semester of undergrad as I’m of the view colleges should wait until the students have graduated at the very least.
Especially considering I was on a near-full ride FA/scholarship package so I didn’t exactly have spare cash to donate anyways.
Yes! We have been receiving requests since my daughter’s freshman year, and my daughter started getting requests during her senior year while hanging around the dorm. The requesters at school said they were most interested in participation, so she made a tiny donation in order to “participate.”
We got our first ask when our daughter was a freshman. It was her second month of school, and all the full pay parents were invited to a function to join some high level donor club. We declined to attend the function, but I can’t blame them for asking. Even full pay students don’t cover everything with their tuition, etc.
We were full pay for D so we do not feel obligated to donate. Maybe if D is ever able to hold a full time job we will consider it. Both kids did like their U. I have no idea whether S contributes to his U, as he received generous merit awards.
I donated once to my alma mater (nominal amount), on the condition they never contact me. They have added me to their list and now call me but we never answer.
Full pay parent here at $70k+ a year. Got hit up at first parents weekend and couldn’t believe it. Now that DS is in the homestretch of freshman year, I have made a substantial donation already and committed to more long term. I’m so blown away by the service, the attention to the kids, the advice, the counseling, etc… We feel so fortunate that he has these opportunities.
Sorry but we’re the reason they are calling you guys. There are just enough suckers out there like us to make it worthwhile.