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"Data point: Harvard's endowment has over 14,000 individual funds and the majority of them are restricted" Maybe they should stop allowing donors to put restri
by rqtwteye 3y ago
"Data point: Harvard's endowment has over 14,000 individual funds and the majority of them are restricted"
Maybe they should stop allowing donors to put restrictions on how to use the money?
- dgfitz 3y agoIf you pull on that thread, the reaction would probably be: fine, not giving you any more of my money. I doubt that is a tenable option for the owner/curator(s) of the endowment fund.
- NovemberWhiskey 3y agoa.k.a "we'll take your money, but only on our terms" ... that's just not even polite!
- rqtwteye 3y agoThat’s how it works with most donations people give. I don’t get a say how the local animal shelter uses my donations.
- thechao 3y agoMalcolm Gladwell has a podcast in Revisionist History where he likens museums to dragons (hoarding art); I think that's wonderfully apt. Whenever I see institutions, like Harvard, endlessly accumulating wealth above-and-beyond what they "need", I always think of them as "another kind of dragon". I think this interacts with Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy[1]. [1] https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html
- NovemberWhiskey 3y agoBTW Gladwell is one of the people who does know better about university endowments and still leads with the anger-inducing high school arithmetic view of the situation (in his podcast, in this case). ref. https://philanthropydaily.com/what-malcolm-gladwell-gets-wrong-and-right-about-university-endowments/ https://philanthropydaily.com/what-malcolm-gladwell-gets-wro...