One of the tasks administrators, including department chairs, often undertake is donor relations. I don’t mean donors who bring checks but rather donors who bring “things.” I have heard story after story about the strange and diverse things that had come into departmental offices: collections of National Geographic, blurry snapshots of grandma’s vacation in England’s Lake District, Uncle Jack’s butterfly collection, Aunt Junie’s hand-painted china, or even a group of random books purchased online.
A few donations are helpful or even valuable; when such lightning strikes, it is exciting and noteworthy. Most, however, are just really not that useful. Online archives have replaced many of the magazine and photo needs, most amateur specimen collections are of limited pedagogical use, and other donations are sort of a different form of the Christmas fruitcake swap. In the worst-case scenario, some donations are expensive to maintain; a gift of a valuable art collection is wonderful but without the money necessary to maintain it, and its very specific space needs, rigorous environmental controls, and even security, such a gift can be very costly.
Any accepted donation must be taken seriously, however, which means time spent by someone in the institution, for some sort of evaluation (for tax reasons), some sort of inventory process, and so forth. Outright rejection of the donation is rarely an option, so if the word gets out locally that a charitable donation receipt can be earned through such gifts, the effect can snowball into a significant time commitment for someone on the campus.
Do you have any experience with such white-elephant gifts? What were the strangest ones you have seen? What were the best?
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9 Responses to White-Elephant Gifts
blueberrycrunch - February 16, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Just curious…what does this blog entry have to do with academic hiring?
vernaye - February 17, 2010 at 8:51 am
Centenary College (NJ):1. A brand-new wrestling room, when the school is crying out for classroom space and library improvements.2. A massive new student center, which is bringing the college to the very brink of bankruptcy (if not pushing it over).
dr_redrum - February 17, 2010 at 9:04 am
Response to #1: because they need to hire a wrangler for the pale elephas maximus?
wmu78 - February 17, 2010 at 9:31 am
At a former school, we received an outdated executive aircraft. Had to pay to hangar it until it was sold.
11181786 - February 17, 2010 at 11:34 am
Hollins University’s creative writing program designated the chicken as its “totemic animal” (a phrase coined by longtime professor R.H.W. Dillard), based on a long, involved story concerning Alfred Hitchcock movies and the theory that there is a chicken or a chicken reference to be found in every film. In the 1980s, Hollins alum and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Henry Taylor presented the program with a stuffed chicken – it was subsequently enshrined in a glass case with a brass plaque and is proudly displayed in Swannanoa Hall, the creative writing program’s home.
rosmerta - February 17, 2010 at 5:45 pm
The totemic chicken! I like it.We have a neighborhood resident who seems to have some developmental or perhaps personality challenges. He decided to give the university a collection of cheaply-framed paintings, most of which were OK, but then some very ugly ones no one wanted. He progressed to treating us like a jumble sale, bringing in cheap figurines and stray arrangements of artificial flowers. Thankfully his donations have stopped.
lukekeys38 - February 18, 2010 at 12:00 pm
We had an alum who wanted to insure his funds didn’t go to the “wrong source,” so he went ahead and purchased a 6-figure golf simulator that he subsequently presented to us as a gift. It’s not taking up residence in the rec center in a raquetball court. Go figure.
pamelaalderman - February 18, 2010 at 2:43 pm
An ambulance with 4 flat tires, missing battery, and broken windshield that was given to our Paramedic program.
gpkerr - February 19, 2010 at 1:32 pm
The strangest was when an elderly woman came to donate her body. Well, perhaps donation is not the correct word…she wanted us to pay a small fee for it, with some unnamed delivery date. It was actually quite sad. We did not accept the gift.