I helped fix a mower?
The college I went to is having a big fund raising drive all of a sudden… they’re trying to get the total alumni giving rate up to 20% (i.e., 20% of the alumni donating some amount of money). Oh, and they want it for this previous fiscal year, which happens to end two weeks after the letter was dated. (I guess they don’t spent much time planning ahead.)
Since I just gave them a few bucks a month or two back, I wasn’t feeling very inclined to send more. After all, I’ve already done all I can to help on the percentage of alumni who donate. Went on and read it anyway, to find out the fascinating uses they might’ve had for my money:
“A gift of $8 can help purchase a dozen baseballs. $18 can help maintain the mowers that work to keep the campus trimmed.”
That’s right… good ole KC has a couple extra baseballs and maybe a repaired lawnmower. And here I was hoping they’d use it for something a bit more academic. Not that maintenance isn’t important too (I’m undecided about baseballs), but as far as motivations to donate go…. *lawnmowers*???
2 Responses to “I helped fix a mower?”
Meerkat on 23 May 2006 at 8:32 pm #
Well, you know, must keep the lawn maintained, because a well-maintained lawn attracts more applicants because they thing the college looks pretty. And more applicants means more students. And more students means more money for the college. So they can fix more lawnmowers.
Very, very important *nod*
Tigger on 23 May 2006 at 10:13 pm #
perhaps they expect most of their alumni to be yuppies who will care lots about making sure their own property looks wonderful and lush, so they should have no problem with helping the school to aim for that.
I s’pose you could reply to the money-grubbing with some lightly sarcastic comment about how you’d rather not give them more money if they’re simply going to use it for postage on letters that beg for money to buy more baseballs.
oddly, I’m still seeing only money-grubbing letters from the Jupiter campus of FAU, and nothing from the honors college. That campus won’t ever see a penny of the few pennies I have to spare, though the college might, if they could prove none of it would benefit the university at all. oh well.