The Giving Gap

The Giving Gap: Canadians Generally Balk at Giving Money to Universities, Unlike Americans

Richard Tomlinson's record-breaking $64 million gift to McGill University should set new standards in Canadian philanthropy. Not only is it orders of magnitude ahead of the pack, but this donor is as wise as he is generous. The $64 million will endow professorships, fellowships, and scholarships; money is earmarked for library funds, teaching funds, and research funds. In eschewing the "edifice complex" that compels many donors to invest in bricks and mortar that can be named after them, Mr. Tomlinson has invested in McGill University's greatest assets: its faculty and its students. This donation recognizes that one of the greatest gifts you can give someone is the gift of education.

Unfortunately, a more sobering reality is buried beneath all this good news. Not only is Tomlison's the largest bequest ever made to a Canadian university, it is almost thirty percent larger than the $50 million McGill University raised from all other private sources this year. This gap dramatically illustrates the failure of Canada's private sector to fulfill its obligation to higher education in general. It also reflects the failure of the McGill alumni community and the Montreal business community to support one of the world's leading universities that continues to thrive right here in our own backyard.

By contrast, Harvard University just raised $2.6 billion. The president of Harvard, Neil Rudenstine, just announced his retirement having raised an average of over a million dollars a day during the past six years. True, while McGill often boasts about being the Harvard of Canada, Canada is not the United States. For all kinds of reasons the good times are not rolling north of the border as flamboyantly as they are south of the border.

Nevertheless, the huge gap between what Canadians give to their universities and what Americans give to theirs is not merely a reflection of different GNPs and salaries; it reflects different philosophies. Too many Canadians view support of the university as the government's job and not theirs. This despite the fact that, especially in Quebec, government funding is increasingly inadequate. The problem is compounded here because, to keep the university accessible to all, many also resist tuition increases. With government support dwindling, with tuition rates absurdly frozen in the 1960s, and with the private sector asleep at the switch, universities risk being strangled.

By contrast, in the United States, especially among the elite, there is a culture of giving built up around the universities. Many graduating students celebrate commencement with a "senior gift" - a small amount that combined with most other graduating seniors' contribution ends up making a reasonably big impact. University fund-raisers view those early gifts, even if they are token amounts, as critical -- they sustain the graduates' ties to the school, and pave the way for more generous gifts in the future. Alumni associations also spend a lot of time on "friend-raising," not just fundraising -- fostering pride in the alma mater and a broad sense of community. Even many publicly funded state universities and city colleges have healthy endowments and supportive alumni. These Americans understand that higher education is too important to be left to the politicians.

Many American alumni also realize that in a university, small donations can have a huge impact on the quality of life, especially in the humanities. You don't have to be a dotcom zillionaire to be a big man -- or woman -- alum on campus. A thousand dollars a year can keep a financially pressed student in school. Three thousand dollars can fund an entire book project for some humanities scholars. Five thousand dollars can lure a graduate student to McGill rather than elsewhere. Ten thousand dollars can fill the library with dozens of books and journals.

The American culture of giving encourages all donations, no matter how small. By contrast, just the other day, a prosperous Montreal businessman who loves the study of history said to me, "There's nothing I could do to help, I'm no millionaire." The most impressive statistic emerging from the Harvard campaign is not the number of multi-million dollars gifts contributed. Rather, it is the fact that 175,000 people donated to the university. And this occurred while many other universities were also running record-breaking, billion-dollar efforts.

Too many other sectors in society also suffer from this characteristically Canadian combination of passivity and humility - relying too much on the government and not feeling that your gift matters. In fact, one feeds on the other. Who can compete with the $200 million or so the province pumps into McGill? Moreover, Canadians have gotten too used to complaining about funding crises in health, in education, in welfare, without helping to solve the problems. The time has come for check-writing not hand-wringing. Few can match Tomlinson -- but all can meet his challenge to support these jewels in the crown of our civilization, these knowledge factories, these investments in our minds, in our souls, in our children, in our future.

Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University. He is the author of "Mr. and Mrs. President" from the Trumans to the Clintons.