Back in February, in speaking to the Faculty Senate, Provost Fuchs remarked: So on top of the 30 percent decline in the endowment, the University has also seen a decline in annual giving from one individual equal to 1-2 percent of Ithaca's budget.The way I think of it from the Provost’s perspective, and you probably have not heard this before is there have been, for 25 years, philanthropic gifts in particular from one special friend of the university. These gifts have represented $25-50M per year. Much of that has been at the discretion of the Provost, and so for about 25 years we have had a process where we have had a mechanism to fund initiatives that we have created, and we have all benefited. The beneficiaries ranged from students, to faculty, to departments, to colleges. But those gifts are no longer here.
They ended a few years ago and we no longer have $25-50M discretionary funds in the Provost’s Office that we used to have. I had lunch with Mel Nesheim, and he said that when he was Provost many years ago he always dreaded the time in the Provost Office when those funds would go away. Well, they’re gone, and we have to adjust our expectations in our budgeting around the loss of those funds.
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