3mo ago

Donors

107 comments

I'd be ok with anonymous donations if they were truly anonymous both publicly and to the management of the institution receiving the money.
Maybe this is something that the government could facilitate - pool these resources, then help distribute them where they are needed. Almost like how taxes work.
Maintains uncomfortable eye contact with the camera
- If anyone is aware of the source, it's not anonymous, it's undisclosed.
  
  Agreed, literal anonymous, way cool. Undisclosed, much less so.
  
  The tweet speaks of "dark money". I like that term better. It feels worse
  
  I work for a nonprofit and “anonymous donor” definitely means “c-suite folks know who it came from”
- This exactly. If you really want to stay anonymous then use a middleman and do it anonymous to the recipient as well.
  Everyone involved with the institution, students, parents who pay tuition, teachers, authorities who financially support the institution (...) have a right to know in whose pocket they are.
  
  do like onion routing, use two middlemen, i guess you'd literally use locks, sorta like that encryption analogy
- Just like they do social security? The government is terrible at the distribution of money. Edit: Damn, y'all really hate SSI
  
  Elaborate?
  
  They seem to be pretty good at making sure the military has all the finding they need
  
  The program that lifted millions of seniors out of poverty. That money.

It's not a donation if they get to dictate what the organization does - it's a bribe.
- There was a librarian who saved his whole life and when he passed donated I think 1 million dollars to his old university. That university then spent the money on a new score board for the football field. I bet if he saw that he would have wished he put some stipulations on his donation.
  
  I have a similar line of thinking. I'm a musician, so if I was filthy rich I might want to donate money to a school's music department. If the school is one fiscal entity, I would have to put that as a stipulation to ensure they gave the money to that department, not divert it to something overfunded or just padding the board's pocket as bonuses for "a job well done"
  
  https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/15/494134464/-1-million-of-frugal-librarians-bequest-to-n-h-school-goes-to-football-scoreboar
  The only association between the librarian and the football program that was mentioned by the university was the observation that Morin had spent the past 15 months of his life in an assisted living center — and that there, "he started watching football games on television, mastering the rules and names of the players and teams."
  Yeah that sounds like a load of bull from the administrators to justify an extravagant purchase 🙄
  
  That was such a weird story! On one hand, he has been a big supporter of the football program at the school and the scoreboard didn't seem totally unreasonable. But as a former university librarian, the salary is generally under $60k for non-mangers, so saving that $1 million was an amazing feat of savings and the scoreboard seemed like a weird choice by the school.
- Literally every donation to any organization anywhere comes with strings attached. Nobody just gives money blindly and says "Here, somebody else use this."
  You drop money in the collection plate, it's because you want your faith to be shared and your church to prosper. You drop your change in the box at the convenience store, it's because you don't want to be walking around with three pounds of garbage money jingling in your pockets like Santa's nutsack. There's always a motive for giving.
  
  I donate regularly to a charity and don’t try to dictate how they spend that money, because I have faith that they’ll responsibly use my donations.
  
  I gave someone from high-school I hadn't spoken too in 15 years 2 grand so she didn't get evicted from her apartment and end up homeless. Never told her. Sometimes people just do nice things bcz it's the right thing to do.
  Nobody should be homeless over hospital bills.
  
  Removing these biases is the whole point of public funding for things. Everyone shares the same resources and people who have more wealth give more. The fact that major institutions that perform public functions rely on private donations is the problem.
- So someone donates money to their city's library with the specific purpose that they can expand their building to have more space that's a bribe?
  
  Maybe that person hates books and likes seeing them locked away in book prison?
  
  It's the giving a public institution money only if they do a certain thing that can be compared to a bribe, the morality of said "thing" being irrelevant.
  I think it boils down to who has the power: if they start a collection for money to expand their building to have more space and you chose to participate then it's not you dictating what they do with the money, as all you did was see a cause that you found worthy and contribute to it - the power was entirelly in their hands since they could've chosen to collect for a different purpose and you were just a passive agent - whilst if you give them money with the proviso that you get to dictate how it gets used, then the power is in your hands not theirs: the former is more akin to charity and the latter to bribing.
  That said, "bribe" is indeed an imperfect metaphor.
- The question is; does this give the anonymous donor that ability? Being anonymous implies not.
  
  I'm fairly certain it is only anonymous "on paper". Behind closed doors, they know where it came from and what is expected in return.

Simpsons did it!
"Well, frankly, test scores like Larry's would call for a very generous contribution. For example, a score of 400 would require a donation of new football uniforms, 300, a new dormitory, and in Larry's case, we would need an international airport."

Important additional context that didn’t make it into this tweet, this donation was explicitly directed toward promoting “free inquiry and expression” at UChicago. Decades ago that was a legit strength of UChicago that really was pretty ideologically neutral, and that history gives them a phenomenal tool for spinning dog whistles and ultra conservative policies as part of “the life of the mind.”
Here’s the announcement email from the University’s president yesterday.
Worth noting that Eman Abdelhadi is faculty at UChicago, speaking out against her own employer alongside hundreds of other faculty. Eman is particularly adept at making sure every time they use “free inquiry and expression” as a conservative dog whistle it gets thrown back in their faces. (She’s also just kind of a badass.)
UChicago admin work very hard to promote this image of the school as a bastion for “sane conservatives” by taking stances diametrically opposed to the what the students and faculty actually stand behind. The real UChicago is anti-genocide, pro-union, and knows that promoting free speech doesn’t mean tolerating hate speech.
- Ah, so basically "The Department of Just Asking Questions." 🤢
  
  JAQing off.
- I only have two words "Chicago Boys". This shit has been going on there for a long time.
  
  Oh 100% absolutely. I mean the gentrification of Hyde Park and Woodlawn with active, deliberate harm to the black community started at the University’s inception in 1898 (1895? 92? They keep changing the “established in” date on all their merch and propaganda, it’s hard to keep up) and continues to this day with no signs of slowing.
  I also should have specified that if we’re talking about student/faculty attitudes the “real” UChicago community does not or at least should include Booth and the psychopathic econ department. That’s where all the money comes from (because it’s evil) but everyone except admin hates them. Also I’m pretty sure they would argue “community” means communism and community of any kind should be abolished in favor of a social free market or some shit, whatever garbage they are peddling these days.
- Thanks for the context. I know this is a meme community but I wish some more context was posted a long with it.

Um, if it's anonymous can they influence anything?
- Anonymous usually means that they don't want their name to show up publicly.
  There's almost certainly knowledge of who that money is coming from at least with a couple of persons that received the funds.
  
  More like they don't want the wider public to know it was them that donated. Some folks that are extremely wealthy go to great lengths to keep their names out of people's minds and stay out of the public eye as a matter of personal security.
- The university knows who’s paying its bills and has agreed to keep it a secret.
  A truly anonymous donation should be double-blind to the donor AND recipient. If you don’t want credit, don’t expect influence either.
  
  I don't know what you mean by
  double-blind to the donor AND recipient
  But to me that phrase kinda implies that the donor doesn't know who they donated to. Which…no. It should be blind to the recipient. Entirely blind. But people donating can still choose where to donate to.

It sounds like the donor had requirements. From The Tribune:
The University of Chicago has received a $100 million gift from an anonymous donor to support free expression, marking what may be the largest-ever single donation to support such values in higher education, the university announced Thursday.
And:
Discussions surrounding the donation have been ongoing for over a year, according to a university spokesperson.
From https://chicago.suntimes.com/education/2024/09/26/university-chicago-donation-free-speech-expression-forum :
The gift was ridiculed by advocates involved in the encampment that highlighted abuses against Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas War and torn down by the university in the spring.
“It’s truly a slap in the face,” said Yousseff Hasweh, a U of C grad who’s diploma was withheld by the university for two months, allegedly for his involvement in the protest.

Do you think the donation will somehow make the University of Chicago more conservative?
- Just hold out the finger in the air for when there is a change in the intensity of propaganda

Not publicly supported enough though lol. *leers at 40k of student debt
- Rookie numbers.
  
  Gotta pump them up... but they're a function of time?!

Agree in general. Ez fix: strings attached that it's anonymous and unattached. A third party manages the exchange, and everyone is under oath. A step in the right direction at least

Should it? I get that political parties should report donors - but for nonprofits and other institutions I feel it's not that necessary since they are directly investing that money in projects (that the donor may choose - but if that's not the case then that investment isn't happening) - for political parties and politicians it can be seen as a bribe as the things they invest in usually don't have a direct return of investment.
And there should be rules and regulations making sure that that donation is not ending up in some kind of contract for the company of the donor but that whatever that investment is funding has a transparent process
Where do we draw the line? Should donors to libraries be made public even if that person wants to remain anonymous but fund an expansion? Should donors to non-profits be made public?

Dafuq? If it's anonymous, how is it exerting influence?
- It's only anonymous to the public. I imagine the donor and the university are in frequent direct contact.
  
  Are they, or is it just your imagination?
  Edit: ah, just your imagination.
- Is it hard to conceive of agreeing to something behind closed doors and donating anonymously to hide the tracks?
  
  Is it hard to suggest that in a less condescending manner?
- "i'll give you 100 million dollars on the condition that $X of it be spent on ______" is how it's exerting influence
  
  But if it's actually anonymous, how is that communicated?
  Edit: mad that you got no answer, eh?

So if I donate to someone it's "dark money"?
- If it's millions of dollars and done anonymously in a culture of prominent bribery with little to no "no strings attached" charity at that scale, it seems reasonable to suspect foul play and call it "dark money".

Can you get through a working day without a burning unneeded desire to regulate yet another thing that shouldn't be regulated?
The amount of stuff governments are already regulating is, like, 5000% of what actually should be regulated. The remaining stuff can get by with the 20% of the existing regulation. And don't even begin to play the game of regulating private education into shape when what you need is a working public one.
- You're so right!! Remember in the early 80's when they deregulated the Savings and Loan Banks, expanding their authority to make loans and reducing regulatory oversight? What a great idea, that was. Getting rid of those unnecessary regulations really stimulated greedy white collar and political criminals, they stole everything they could until the whole system crashed, and that deregulation ended up costing taxpayers a 160 to 175 billion bailout in today's dollars.
  What a deal, right? What a boon to the economy, what a next level brain you're working with. You know, every time we hear someone cry about the need to deregulate, it's either a pirateer looking to steal more money from the taxpayers, or a useful idiot who drank their kool-aid.
  
  I was in Finance when the first part of the outcome of that shit hit in 2008 and subsequent years (and I say "first part" because we're still living it and it looks a lot like there are still more 3rd and further order consequences of it unfolding for people) and damn, that shit really forced me to realize just how evil and hypocrite neoliberalism and neoliberals really are.
  By the way, I absolutely counted as an "useful idiot" up to then.
- I would call myself an Anarchist. You're the stupid person people think of when they hear the word, and it's sad. Government regulation is absolutely required to protect people from losing power. Power structures are generally bad, which is why we need government to prevent them from forming in the background. When this doesn't happen then people lose power because their options are removed so others can profit off of them easier.
- I think that's a poor take. What governments? There's a million things that are poorly regulated because of corporate interests in any country
- Depends where you are. If youre of the 90% of US americans here in Lemmy, you regulate too less and too reactionary.
  
  Let's just say my home country is transitioning away from authoritarian and into dictatorship.
- You won't win this one here. Lemmy is disappointingly facebook-like in terms of their seemingly endless desire to be told what to do every step of their lives.
  I realise the numbers are sort of made up, but in general I fully agree. I do sometimes think that politicians regulate for the sake of it, as if justifying their existence.
  
  Here's the issue. Lemmy users are very against people losing control of their lives in general, contrary to what you imply. Most people here are against people losing control. The issue is, it's not only the government that can do this. Corporations, businesses, and other entities can take it away too. We need the government to regulate these things to protect people. I don't care to protect businesses. People should be free to do damn near anything they want as long as it doesn't hurt others. A company/their employer should not be able to prevent them from doing what they want.
  You don't want freedom. You want another kind of control over you.
  
  Lemmy is disappointingly facebook-like in terms of their seemingly endless desire to be told what to do every step of their lives.
  I would be surprised if that was actually the case. most of the visitors are here because they got fed up with reddit's decisions.
  What makes you think that way?

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