Important freshman ethics lesson

From Colby College in Waterville, Maine, with an entering freshman class of 511 students, to such giant mega-universities as Ohio State, the University of Texas, and UCLA, an annual ritual will soon begin as recent high-school graduates move into dormitories to begin college life.

The new school year also brings another ritual: renewed appeals from colleges and universities for financial support.

Millions of Americans will re-spond. Last year, corporations, foundations and individuals donated $25.6 billion to U.S. colleges and universities, the Council for Aid to Education reported recently – a nearly 5 percent increase from the year before. Gifts from alumni – nearly 28 percent of the total – increased 6 percent. Non-alumni individuals donated an additional 20 percent, CAE reported.

According to Slate, the online magazine, last year’s largest gifts to higher education included Mesa Petroleum founder Boone Pickens’ $165 million gift to Oklahoma State University, his alma mater; eBay founder and Chairman Pierre Omidyar’s $103 million gift to his alma mater, Tufts University; the late Ford Motor Co. heiress Josephine Ford’s $50 million bequest to the College for Creative Studies in Detroit; the late Barbara Barrow Jacobs’ $40.6 million bequest to Indiana University; and Progressive insurance company Chairman Peter B. Lewis’ $21 million gift to Princeton University, his alma mater. It is there my lesson in freshman ethics begins.

In 1961, the year before the Cuban missile crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, my parents, Charles and Marie Robertson, donated $35 million in A&P supermarket stock (more than $225 million in current, inflation-adjusted dollars) to establish a new foundation. The foundation’s mission was to help the United States extend freedom throughout the world. The foundation would accomplish this goal by financing a program at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs to prepare top graduate students for federal government careers in international relations and foreign affairs. My father chose Princeton because it was his alma mater (Class of 1926). Since the initial gift, Princeton has charged the Robertson Foundation more than $330 million to support the program.

But the story doesn’t have a happy ending. To our great disappointment, Princeton administrators have diverted millions of dollars from the foundation into projects and activities that have little or nothing to do with the intent of my parents’ gift or the mission of the Robertson Foundation. Repeated inquiries and objections failed to resolve the situation. So as a last resort, my sisters and I were forced to sue Princeton to end its control of the foundation and its endowment, so we can see our parents’ wishes observed. The case is expected to go to trial in several months.

Our parents established the Robertson Foundation for the express purpose of preparing Wilson School graduate students for government careers in international affairs. Princeton understood this when it agreed to the arrangement. But it has failed to fulfill this mission. In one recent year, for example, the school placed only three of 63 program graduates in government jobs related to foreign affairs, a sorry record.

When people donate money to a college or university for a specific purpose – or to any nonprofit organization for that matter – and the gift is accepted for that purpose, that’s how the money should be used. It makes no difference whether the gift is $100, $100,000, or in the millions. The

principle is identical.

The American Association of Fund Raising Counsel, Association of Fundraising Professionals, Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, and Association for Healthcare Philanthropy have created a code of ethics known as the “Donor Bill of Rights.” This code is unequivocal: It says donors have the right “to be assured their gifts will be used for the purposes for which they were given.”

Americans are the most generous people on earth. Sadly, they can also be naive – and their charitable giving is sometimes abused. Let this story be an important first lesson

in ethics for the Class of 2010.

William Robertson is the lead plaintiff in Robertson v. Princeton, a lawsuit seeking to end the university’s control of the Robertson Foundation and its $750 million endowment. Readers can write to him at 501 Goodlette Road, Naples, Fla. 34102.