Why should Media Organizations Donate to Small Colleges

Gifts to colleges are increasing this year, as can be see in this CNN article, but that does not mean there is a lot of money available for small colleges who teach in rural or urban blue-collar areas, or for those who do not have large football teams. Most college donation money goes to just 10 colleges in the United States. After that, money normally chases affluent colleges with research agendas. Very little money actually remains to be donated for educational purposes to smaller colleges.

There are a lot of advantages though to giving equipment or money to a smaller college's communication program. The first is that smaller programs generally do not have as many institutional roadblocks to making sure your equipment and money gets into the hands of the students. At one state college I worked at, all donations had to be first negotiated with a University wide donations office, who would try to convince the person to give cash instead of equipment, or to give to research foundations instead of undergraduate education. Once over that hurdle the doner came face-to-face with the reality that even the nicest equipment was only a drop in the university's budget, and the university often had plenty of money, but chose not to invest it in equipment for undergraduates. Finally, once donated, there was no guarantee that even the newest equipment would ever be used by students. I saw repeated cases of excellent equipment going to waste because faculty did not have the training to use it.

Hilbert College goes out of its way to spend as much as it can on technology for student use. And although we do not have the money to maintain older analog equipment, most modern digital equipment can find a home in our facility. Although we understand that there is a tax incentive for donating equipment, the bigger reason to donate is that a single camera of VTR represents an important resource to a college where 30 students share two broadcast quality camera units. The best reason to donate to a small college like Hilbert is that your donation means a lot to use. For example, a full-size ENG broadcast camera will likely always be out of Hilbert's financial reach. Your donation of a camera that has become surplus, or that you simply want to donate because it is the right thing to do will assure that several hundred students over the cameras remaining life get access to the same technology your company uses itself. That means a lot to our students.

No matter what you can give, it is appreciated.

Steve Jackson, Professor of Communication Studies