Philanthropy with a Powerful Impact

When my alma mater, Tulane University, recently went through some budget cuts (the prudent thing to do), I was concerned about how the cuts would affect the morale of the faculty. I believe, as I would assume most university presidents do, that the faculty is key to the success of a university. At Tulane, we had weathered Hurricane Katrina, which, of course, hit the university and the City of New Orleans incredibly hard.

Now we were going through a transition of leadership and I wanted to do something positive to help while, at the same time, being hugely supportive of the need for budget cuts. So I gave a gift of significance to be used over the next five years for faculty grants. From each year’s grant pool, grants for up to fifteen thousand dollars would be decided upon by a group of deans, professors, and the university president. During this time when everyone was tightening their belts (a lot), faculty members would still have the opportunity to get funding for projects they were pursuing.

This act of philanthropy was a powerfully positive statement to the greatest assets in the university. At Alberto Culver we had a saying: “Companies don’t succeed; people do.͟ It seemed to me that made sense for the university too. The gift was welcomed and fully supported by the leadership at Tulane and would help us get through the work that needed to be done with a more positive feeling from all.