Background
About once a month, I receive a letter or e-mail from my alma mater, asking me to make a contribution to the annual giving fund. But each time I receive these solicitations, I find myself reluctant to donate.
The main cause of my hesitancy has been that giving to a college provides little transparency as to where donations are spent. Like most alumni, I value some aspects of my college experience more than others, but it is unlikely that the university can apply more than a small fraction of my donation towards those aspects in which I take a particular interest.
Perhaps more important is my motivation for donating to education in the first place. I care most about helping individual students have as much of an opportunity to succeed as I did. But why should people like me donate to institutions, if we are most interested in helping individual students? And if giving back to a college does not directly support individuals in need, what other means exist to help students pay for their educational expenses?