Giving to Colleges, Universities Regains 2006 Level, Survey Finds

"We're still not out of the woods," said Ann E. Kaplan, director of the VSE survey. "Charitable contributions to education are recovering very slowly. Still, historical patters show that the pace of recovery in charitable giving usually reflects overall economic recovery. As long as the economy continues to improve, we can expect further improvement in giving, even if incremental at first."

As an advocate for the pursuit of Education, especially growing excellence in public education, it is clear to me that a glaring opportunity is out in the domain for those higher learning sites that take an interest in “investing” in the growth of the rural and urban neighborhoods across this land.

The growing separation by greed, wealth, class and race has America over the cliff. The plowing back of knowledge to help make ALL our people, all our families, work together in meeting the challenges that our country is facing is the best way to increase contributions.

Assisting the neighborhood-level businesses and residential base grow in state-of-the-art knowledge should be part of the core values. It allows so many byproducts to escape that pollinate the environments in higher learning training and research – it justifies the “giving”.

The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics. The Huffington Post – 12-10.

Since the wellness of a nation is often judged by the barometer of excellence of coming generations along with present accomplishments, our higher education sites in the U.S.A have to re-boot and focus on how they meet the challenges in the plunging economy with access to education and technology attainment of the citizenry – especially African American, other People of Color and the Work-challenged (un-, under-employed and re-entry – especially those going to, in and returning from incarceration). For these are the populations, in critical mass, that have been deliberately left out of the American dream. More importantly, they are a hidden “talent pool” – a missing link.

My congrats to Stanford (1), Harvard (2) and Johns Hopkins(3) for leading the charge in raising capital contributions. They are also in rank order, Stanford (4), Harvard (1) and Johns Hopkins (13) in the 2010 World University Ranking. My question is: Are they on par with refueling our “concentrated poverty” urban and rural areas with early childhood, youth, young adult, working adults and senior life-long learning for long-term sustainability and cost-cutting of our debt. For balance, everyone will not be or should be the scientists, doctors, engineers, economists and mathematicians. However, all of America’s citizens should have access and literacy to broaden the possibility for “global competitiveness”.
In fact, I feel that the “citation impact” for colleges and universities should first and foremost grow the People around them while they seek solutions in other areas. And, their“academic publishing” for notoriety reflects éclat at the neighborhood-level.

Lastly, right now, with the recent Startup America Partnerships, ARRA-American Recovery Reinvestment Act and other connected funding; not to mention that universities should partner to maximize the common pot of funding, the interest at the federal government level is at an all-time high. However, I encourage everyone who steps up to the pot maximize their funds by connecting with neighborhood-organizing and the BOTTOM-UP Recovery. Keep in mind that the charitable gain is based on the “sum gain” (USA) with ALL Hands on Deck, WE, Not Me thinking.

For the article in Philanthropy News Digest, go to:
http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/news/story.jhtml?id=324900005