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Bill Dietrich gives CMU $250,000,000

cmu.edu

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Re: Bill Dietrich gives CMU $250,000,000

#11

Post by cschmidt »

ahi wrote: post #6

According to Wikipedia, CMU currently has an endowment of $815m so rather huge donation. I was actually surprised by this. For some reason I thought CMU had one of those endowments where $250m gets a urinal named after you.

I'm a CMU alum, and I asked about that once when they were mentioning "space naming opportunities". Very roughly and unofficially speaking, $50,000 gets you a classroom, $1,000,000 gets you a floor or wing, and $20 million gets you a department. Apparently $265 million gets you a college.

Re: Bill Dietrich gives CMU $250,000,000

#12

Post by hullo »

suking wrote: post #4
cleverjake wrote: post #3

It starts after his death? Why might that be

I think (and I may be wrong) - he gets to write off the donation now (probably amortized) to help his tax basis even though the $ doesn't go anywhere until he's gone...

From the language I'd guess they might be setting up a charitable lead trust or gift annuity, where he'd actually be giving he money now but will continue to draw an income from it over the rest of his life. I'm fairly far removed at this point from a former career in university advancement though - that would certainly be much much larger than any I'd heard of before. There's probably also a fair chance he's already set up or is now setting up an independent foundation or trust that the money will reside in.

It's (I'd guess) fairly unlikely this is a standard bequest, though, given both the revokability and uncertain future tax status of that option. I imagine it would also take multiple years for an estate of that size to close and the funds to become available to CMU.

In terms of "why" of now, well, he gets to live for however much longer seeing his mom's name on a school that obviously means something to him, and as CMU is doing a big campaign, he gets to be a linchpin of that.

Re: Bill Dietrich gives CMU $250,000,000

#13

Post by flavoredpork »

ahi wrote: post #6

According to Wikipedia, CMU currently has an endowment of $815m so rather huge donation. I was actually surprised by this. For some reason I thought CMU had one of those endowments where $250m gets a urinal named after you.

CMU has an extraordinarily low endowment. They were not hit as bad during the economic collapse and resulting recession.

Re: Bill Dietrich gives CMU $250,000,000

#14

Post by testcock1 »

pitdesi wrote: post #7

Always amazes me that there are people out there who have $265mil to give that you can barely find anything about on Google. (Bill likely has a lot more too, as he is expected to give a very large gift to the University of Pittsburgh). More details on him here: http://www.postgazette.com/pg/11250/1172681-455-0.stm

What surprised me even more was that it was only the 14th largest donation in history made to higher education. Here's the list if anyone else was wondering: http://chronicle.com/stats/big_gifts.htm

Re: Bill Dietrich gives CMU $250,000,000

#16

Post by sb »

I wondered what the other biggest gifts were, but could not find a canonical list. A good starter is the following:

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2000/neurogifts.html

I guess that its top 3 still hold. In addition, I found the following:

- $1b endowment to found Vedanta University from Anil Agarwal Foundation (2006)

- $454.5m to National Taiwan University from Terry Gou (2007)

- $400m to Columbia from John Kluge (4th largest in 2007)

- $360m to RPI from an anonymous donor (page mentions largest in US history in 2001)

I could not easily find the official list all of these pages refer to, anybody has an idea?

Re: Bill Dietrich gives CMU $250,000,000

#17

Post by dmm »

0x12 wrote: post #10
bluekeybox wrote: post #5

Wow, just looked at his book, "In the Shadow of the Rising Sun: The Political Roots of American Economic Decline" (published in 1991, at the time when Japan was today's China...), and this guy is about as far away from my libertarian worldview as you can imagine. He believed that America's problem at the time was that it didn't have enough bureaucracy (which is especially ironic given how bureaucratic gerontocracy to…

> And this guy is about as far away from my libertarian worldview as you can imagine. There is something really funny about a guy with a 'not so libertarian' worldview donating 265 million to a university and a guy with a libertarian worldview that probably will never be in a position to do so commenting on that.

"If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?"

Re: Bill Dietrich gives CMU $250,000,000

#18

Post by hullo »

sb wrote: post #16

I wondered what the other biggest gifts were, but could not find a canonical list. A good starter is the following: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2000/neurogifts.html I guess that its top 3 still hold. In addition, I found the following: - $1b endowment to found Vedanta University from Anil Agarwal Foundation (2006) - $454.5m to National Taiwan University from Terry Gou (2007) - $400m to Columbia from John Kluge (…

I don't know about 'official', but it's highly likely that the Chronicle of Higher Ed/Chronicle of Philanthropy are the most referred to. Here's a list from 2008:

http://chronicle.com/stats/big_gifts.htm

And here's a searchable database:

http://philanthropy.com/stats/topdonors/index.php

Re: Bill Dietrich gives CMU $250,000,000

#20

Post by sb »

hullo wrote: post #18
sb wrote: post #16

I wondered what the other biggest gifts were, but could not find a canonical list. A good starter is the following: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2000/neurogifts.html I guess that its top 3 still hold. In addition, I found the following: - $1b endowment to found Vedanta University from Anil Agarwal Foundation (2006) - $454.5m to National Taiwan University from Terry Gou (2007) - $400m to Columbia from John Kluge (…

I don't know about 'official', but it's highly likely that the Chronicle of Higher Ed/Chronicle of Philanthropy are the most referred to. Here's a list from 2008: http://chronicle.com/stats/big_gifts.htm And here's a searchable database: http://philanthropy.com/stats/topdonors/index.php

Thanks for that list, it seems to me that this is the list all of the articles refer to.
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