MBA friends Magazine MBA friends Magazine 1 issue | Seite 5
completed an MBA at UCLA, but at Harvard. Nevertheless he completed his
undergraduate studies at UCLA.
In Europe, the recorder is LBS (London Business School) with an recent donation from
September 2013, done by and Israeli billionaire Ofer Idan, who donated to the school £
25 million pounds ($ 41 million)4. For that he would "get" two buildings named after his
father. When he was asked why he donated this amount of money, Mr Ofer said that
LBS is the best school in which future generations of Israeli entrepreneurs can educate
themselves in order to better confront the new global challenges. Interestingly, Israeli
donate to British schools, for the benefit of Israel.
Anyone from these donors had some good reason or at least so it was presented in
their statements to the media. If we return to the question: why in Croatia there is no
such habit of donating, maybe the answer can be found in the fact that if we already
have state-funded education, most people perceive that already through paying taxes,
they finance those schools. In U.S. there are also schools that are funded by the state.
Nevertheless there exists the perception of additional donations. UCLA’s Dean, Judy
Olian, said that most people who attend UCLA are from California, and therefore
assume that they are already taxpayers to the state, which finances the school. But
anyway, if we look at Table 1, we can see that 20% of UCLA alumni, despite the
funding provided by the taxes, consider donating to the school. John Anderson also
didn’t consider that the state financing is an obstacle. His reason for making the
donation was: That to me is an institution headed in the right direction" (71 years
ago). He completed UCLA in 1940, and he made the last donation of $ 25 million dollars
in April 2011 (he died in July of the same year). Could the reason for donation be an
individual’s excessive wealth? Does the following statement hold "all these people are
already too rich, so it is fair, that they their money to the school"?
Maybe, but if we look back at Table 1, we can see that the average value of donations,
at some schools amounted to $ 100. Therefore it is not necessary that the donations
have to be in millions. Does the amount of $ 100 dollars a year sound a lot for the
standards of Croatian managers and MBA alumni? Also, some of these donors in U.S and
UK donated an extremely large proportion of their total assets. David Booth's total
assets are estimated at $ 5 billion. He made a donation of $ 300 million, which is about
6% of his total assets. That is not an insignificant percentage. Certainly there are
benefactors who have given all their wealth (e.g. Charles Feeney who throughout Cornell
University gave nearly a billion dollars)5. Then if we assume that a Croatian manager
(MBA alumni), who owns a property i.e. 50,000 Euros (an apartment or something like
that), according to the percentage of Mr. Booth, then would make a yearly donation of
300 Euros, is more understandable?
But again, when we draw the line behind these examples and assumptions, there is still
no answer why Croats would or would not donate to schools? Maybe this is a subject of
a future research among MBA’s. In the end, is it even necessary to seek an answer to
the question "why give, why donate, what for, what is my benefit from it"? Isn’t that
giving and donating is one of the basic human values that makes us human, noble and
good, that at the end differs us from other species?
4
5
Financial Times, September 26th 2013 "Idan Ofer gives 25 million pounds to the London Business School"
The donation didn't go only to the business school