I hope those making the calls have no idea if the student/family they are calling is on FA or merit scholarship or working 10 jobs to afford the college. That information is not part of the call sheet.
My D was a student caller–she had no information about a family/student getting any type of aid. Groupings were by class and school (undergrad, med school, vet school, etc). She thought the hardest calls were to alums who told her they weren’t giving because their kids weren’t admitted. D said it happened fairly often.
If you want the calls to stop, all you need to do is to tell the caller to take your name off the list. They do it. If you don’task, they don’t do it and someone will call you again.
I had to laugh when I got a call to donate to the parents fundraising campaign at a university in my son’s name. He’s a sophomore IN HIGH SCHOOL. He took a course for dual enrollment credit that was taught by watching videotapes of the college lectures in a classroom hat is high school. In other words, he’s never even set foot on that college campus. They were fine taking my name off their list when they learned he wasn’t actually a student there!
After my son graduated and I got a call from a student at his former college (telethon). I told her to please take us off the list. Now that he has graduated, it’s his turn to start donating to his alma mater. I think it worked! They stopped bugging us!
Not that we don’t contribute to other schools. My husband and I got full tuition scholarships from the university we attended and we still give every year. We got an education and we met each other there so it’s meaningful to us.
My son’s college does not call but we get several requests by mail each year starting when he was a freshman. We have given a donation once a year since he graduated. S has also started giving.
We also give to my high school and son’s high school ( H hated his high school so doesn’t give to them,) H’s undergrad and both our graduate schools. I think my undergrad must have lost my info as never get anything from them.
We don’t give large amounts - usually just $50.
I’m the opposite. I’m happy to donate. Many of the things that make colleges and universities great are because they have these funds, and our kids benefit. The amount is personal and irrelevant, but I don’t understand why not just participate with a token gift once a year while our kids are there. After they graduate, it’s their turn.
I agree with twicearound. We gave small amounts when the kids were in school, but now that they have graduated it is up to them. The calls from D’s school (she graduated in 2012) and S’s school (he graduated in 2015) have stopped. Got a letter today asking us to participate in a senior parents’ gift for last one who graduates in May. I think I will give, we have loved the school and her experiences there.
“My kid attends a service academy. Imagine my surprise when we got hit up for the Margin of Excellence fund, the Superintendent’s fund, etc. They had me rollin’ on the floor – consider my tax dollars my donation. Click.”
Seems like a pretty reasonable request to me.
I’d suspect many academy parents would be donors. Since they (i) tend to be big supporters of the academy mission and (ii) know their kid is getting a fine and expensive education paid for by lots of taxpayers whose kids don’t get to take advantage of that government benefit.
I’m very lucky to have a kid that will be going to a top 20 school on a big merit scholarship, which saved me a ton of dough. I’m planning on being a donor to that school out of gratitude in the upcoming several years. Pay it forward…
“know their kid is getting a fine and expensive education paid for by lots of taxpayers whose kids don’t get to take advantage of that government benefit…”
I’m all in support of giving at least a token contribution but I think those military academy students are more than paying for their education through their 8 year service commitment, 5 of which must be active.
Agree that the kid is paying plenty. The snarky attitude taker parents, not really.
Academy grads do earn a salary for those five years and there is something to be said for 100% employment rate of graduates. And the associations do pay for many things that not paid for with appropriated funds (nor should they be).
As one Federal Academy graduate I knew described how they paid for their academy educations in the form of 5 years active duty as “Crapping it out one nickel at a time.”*
Also, keep in mind their undergraduate experience is much more restrictive in many ways due to the 24/7 military environment and degrees of micromanagement from TAC officers and upper-class cadets far greater in degree and length of time than what ROTC cadets face at mainstream civilian colleges.
- Yes, he was what his fellow academy classmates/alums would call a 5 and dive cadet after he found the occupation he was placed in to not very suited to his talents or choices(SWO and yes...that wasn't one of his top choices).
I can’t speak for the service academy parents or grads. No one disagrees that the SA’s are some of, if not, the best we can do in terms of post-secondary education. I don’t think the parent who was “snarky” about not giving to the SA’s was wrong though and I’ll tell you why.
First of all, it is his/her money. He/she can do what he wants with it. He/she earned it. But the real reason I can defend that point of view is because I don’t think anyone likes to give to organizations that are wasteful. It seems most universities in this country are turning the dorms into palaces to compete with off campus housing, have sports programs where the coaches make obscene salaries to coach games, the student athletes are mostly training for professional sports leagues and only athletes in the sense that family studies and majors like that get exploited, administrators are paid ridiculous salaries, customer service on things like the career center is a joke, etc., etc. so why reward bad behavior by giving to that? Can you not think of better ways to allocate resources?
I know I can.
It is the same reason why many people hate to pay taxes. They see the waste, the inefficiency, the ineptitude, and in many cases the anti-taxpayer attitude when it should be the other way around and absolutely hate having to pay in to that. We do pay taxes. Why can’t those taxes be used to support public things like education? If you live in a community where the K through 12 schools suck you probably also live in a community where there is wasteful government administration and that kind of makes my point.
There is also the tendency to “throw money” at everything instead of fixing it other ways. Just my $.02. I never give and probably never will. I do have two kids in college. I give that way. I was pricked to death one stab at a time when these boys were in high school for so many sports program related fundraisers that I still have nightmares. It might not have so bad if every parent had had an equitable or even equal share but you are from a different planet if you think that is what happened. Many parents did squat and other parents did ten times the work, organizing, standing out in the rain collecting money, etc.
If the high schools can’t afford to sponsor a sport don’t sponsor it! That isn’t the schools mission. If you need to make the parents pay for it then charge a fee to all parents. One or the other. Can I understand why some parents don’t give? Yes I can. Maybe they are tired of handing their money one way or the other to wasteful organizations.
My mom is still donating to the school I graduated from 40 years ago.
Our kids have graduated. We donate to their schools a couple of times per year, and did (more modestly) when they were enrolled. They’re great schools, we allocate money for charitable giving every year, our kids had great experiences and are doing well professionally, so for us it makes sense. If parents would rather donate elsewhere, if things are tight financially, if they just plain feel as if they’re giving the school enough money, if they disagree with how the school manages its resources, that makes sense, too.
A nonprofit needs to identify its stakeholders and ask them for financial support. For universities, that means alums of course, but also faculty and staff, businesses that recruit on campus, local businesses that consider the school a community asset, etc. You could make a case that parents are stakeholders, as well. It’s a sad fact of fundraising that you’re more likely to get support from previous donors than from non-donors, so that’s why they ask us all the time. Raising money is a tough gig.
My D1 is actually getting full tuition from college mostly by scholarships and some by grants, and yet we got the fund raising letter and phone call on a weekly to monthly basis. With my D2 getting ready for college application, I don’t think we are ready for making that kind of donation yet. I just let the answering machine taking care of that phone call as I can tell from the Caller ID. A better time to take that phone call would be at least after my D1 graduated from college.