'Anonymous donor makes $70M in gifts to women-run colleges and universities'
Okay, first of all, how awesome is this? Recently, 13 schools have received gifts totalled to nearly $70 million by an unknown philanthropist.
Included in this bunch are
- Montclair State [NJ]
- University of North Carolina at Asheville [NC]
- Purdue [IN]
- Michigan State [MI]
- Binghamton University [NY]
So ,what do all of these places have in common? Well, they all boast female presidents! Some have questioned whether the gracious anonymous donor is Oprah (who opened a school for girls in Africa and obviously values womens' education), while others have questioned Leona Helmsley, a real estate baronness who has given millions to hospitals, the homeless, and other causes. But, both of these womens' publicists deny any involvement.
As far as unsolved mysteries go, this one ranks way higher on my list than those on the TV show by the same name (which always creeped me out to no end!). And does it even matter who the mysterious donor is? She or he (let's just say 'she' for the heck of it) obviously doesn't want a new library constructed with her last name engraved in the granite. This is philanthropy at its finest--doing good for good's sake rather than for more selfish, narcissistc purposes.
Briarn O'Rourke of Clemson University [SC] believes that the donor might be a group of women who just want to leave a positive legacy:
My gut tells me it's a group of people sitting around saying,
'Let's just make a huge difference.'
Let's just hope that university adminstrator's use this money wisely and don't take advice from any friends on Wall Street who might suggest an all-expenses paid trip to Europe to wait out the economic crisis.
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