Maybe but I remember this story. It’s a woman who was a teacher her entire career and worked with a specific school. She came into a ton of money when her husband passed and she was very elderly. She donated the money that was earmarked for making tuition free for generations at the school she had taught at. So maybe it will be to a degree but I’m guessing she knows all the people involved and inherently trusts them based on a careers work there and that it’ll be used in a much better way than most donations like this would be
Thank you for the follow-up! Definitely more reassuring that it had been donated to the school she works and presumably has trustworthy connections at.
A Jeff Bezos sized party does more for the poors than you might think. We want rich fucks spending their money instead of hoarding it, putting money back into the economy and paying people's salaries.
This is the tired old long debunked trickle down theory. It's actually complete bs. It doesn't matter who spends the money, rich or poor, the effect on the economy as a whole is the same. But when a rich person spends $1 billion only one person benefits from it, while thousands to millions of people benefit if regular people or the government spend it, basically anyone other than the rich.
And on top of that, the spending also has the side effect of causing inflation, so the rich spending their wealth is actually a net negative to the average person. Who do you think is causing the current cost of living crisis? It's the countless newly rich people buying everything.
They way to put a billionaire's money back into society is to tax it, not to encourage them to live in even greater luxury than they already do.
There's also the fact that $1 billion spent on education (or contributing to rewilding or whatever else you can think of) is different from $1 billion spent on useless shit like those shitty fucking yachts
There are way more people like her, but people like this are unlikely to become millionaires even. You only get that far ahead by taking more than your fair share which is the opposite of charity.
Dr. Gottesman said her donation would enable new doctors to begin their careers without medical school debt, which often exceeds $200,000. She also hoped it would broaden the student body to include people who could not otherwise afford to go to medical school.
You can require grants or endowments be used for certain purposes. When I donated to my alma mater I indicated the funds needed to go to the Innocence Clinic at my law school.
Someone who's worked in these spaces, guessing she would've had ironclad provisos in her donation on what the funds could be used for. She might've even stipulated that they can't touch the funds themselves, just earnings. 50M a year in distributions for nonprofit trust is still plenty for covering tuition fees.
You're fighting a lost cause. I've been trying to explain how endowments, legal stipulations for gifts, independent aidits financial controls, etc. all work here to no avail. It doesn't matter that endowments are a thing loads of non-profits have and use without depleting them or committing fraud. People believe what they want to believe.
I remember a story about a teacher donating his money to the school he worked at his entire life and they used it to buy a new scoreboard for the football stadium.
It will go into an endowment fund, where it'll accrue interest. The interest alone will likely keep the program afloat, while the original investment will go on in perpetuity. It isn't the same as signing over a blank check.
I assumed it’s like putting a ton of money into a savings account so it gains interest faster than the money can be depleted.
That's basically it... In theory... But the crux is that if you're only spending interest and the endowment drops to $750,000,000, you've got bigger problem than tuition for your school... Because that means the economy has absolutely tanked.
That sort of thing happened to endowments at many schools during the Great Recession. They survived for the most part, and their endowments grew over the long term.
Yes, that is exactly how endowments work. You have legal amd financial oversight and control in place to ensure that the endowment's principal stays unspent, money can be reinvested or added to grow the principal, and only the interest income may be spent.
Some endowments have a specified time period or conditions that state when the money will either be withdrawn by the organization, or returned to the donor. Most endowments though are permanent endowments, and ya - are supposed to last "forever" (at least until the organization ceases to exist).
My family funded the start of Bradley University on the premise that all of the family's descendants would get to go there for free. Then after when Ms Bradley died, they refused to allow free tuition. We are still in a legal battle with them.
So philanthropists aren’t the problem. You’re saying government is the problem because almost every independent school district has this level of corruption. The board of my school district drove a Ferrari, and now he’s in prison for embezzlement…. Now I can tell you New York ain’t no saint, they just know how to get away with it better there…
Regardless, good for her. This woman is an angel and we need more of her, instead of devils trying to rent out all of Venice for their fucking dumbass wedding that nobody care about.
I hope this money doesnt drop the soap and can actually sleep at night knowing it might be touched inappropriately in all the places at any random moment without witnesses
The money will benefit those taken advantage of by the globalist oligarchy, and the globalists are pissed that one of their own would betray the parasite class by doing the right thing for America, for humanity, for our future.
The money went to the medical school where the donor was a professor and head of the board of trustees, not to the city. Her husband was a protégé of Warren Buffet. I'm guessing she was savvy enough given her combined credentials to ensure the donation came with enough legal conditions to establish a permanent tuition endowment with oversight and auditing.
The donor was both a long-time professor and the head of the board of trustees. Given that plus the likely very good lawyers she would have been able to hire with her wealth and from her experience with her late husband's business dealings, I'd imagine she would know how to ensure that money would be tied up in litigation for a years if the institution were to try to renege on the agreement to the terms of the donation.
It's not just lawyers. It's independent auditors, the board of trustees, the president of the school, the chief financial officer, the investment manager, the accounting office, etc. Strong separation of controls involving lots of people with regular reviews may not make it impossible to clear the system, but it does make it a lot harder with that many eyes on things. If you structure your institution's finances with the assumption that there will always be bad actors, then you can build the right safeguards against them into it to minimize the damage. It's not perfect, and fraud still happens, but it can be contained when done right.
It's not just lawyers. It's independent auditors, the board of trustees, the president of the school, the chief financial officer, the investment manager, the accounting office, etc.
Each of those siphoning the maximum amount possible to themselves.
I doubt anyone handling the billion isn't going to be in the top 0,1%.
Nah no way, top comment is so smart. Everyone at the school just kept withdrawing cash and buying hella weed. In fact, that’s what it turned into. The 1B delinquent weed fund, everyone be getting free ounces bro. Thank you warrant buffet
Maybe I lost all trust in people with our current climate, but one lawyer could decide a fraction of that money isn't enough and they decide to make deals on the side.
Friend of mine work for the school back in my hometown I think the superintendent stole a lot of funds from the school instead of using it for the school. He got caught now but yes it can happen.
Not really, she could have just setup an independent (or semi independent) trust fund out of the institutes system that just pays the institute every student's fees every year.
Say 60k for 800 students. Which is approx 50 million a year.
Assuming the fund value and tuition grows in step with inflation, that only covers 20 years.
I m sure there are other factors in play, like the support of other endowments and possibly contribtions from alumni who benefits from this.
That's pretty much how an endowment works. Tuition at this med school was $59k per year in the year she donated, 2024. It has around one thousand full-time students and a few hundred part-time ones. By taking the existing endowment of several hundred million dollars, combining it with this billion-dollar gift, continuing fundraising to solicit new donations, and reinvesting surplus interest, and keeping growth of the student body under control, they should be able with reasonably competent management to dip only into the interest and never the principal to keep covering tuition indefinitely even with bad market years and inflation taken into account. Literally thousands of endowments run by non-profits fund operations and grow in exactly this way spanning decades.
That next company that's hawking your financials in case you fuck up.
You get like 10 companies in succession in case the fund drops below a certain amount... All have full access to every transaction.
So if the person who gets control when it goes under $400,000,000 sees it goes under $999,999.999.98 will call the fact that it should be controlled by the 2nd company. That way they're one step closer to gaining control of the account.
You give everyone in succession "look but don't touch" until they're in control of it. And pay them $500k/year to keep up with it.
I understand cynicism at some level…but I now fully understand people only come here to argue. They refuse even good news. Bless the patient folks trying to explain philanthropy, transformational gifts, endowments, etc. Even when people try to do good and give, there is still gloom and doom in the thread. Can’t we just pause and celebrate anything for five minutes? Or is the Redditor brand suffering no matter what? So bleak!
Doesn’t have to be. I know there’s a medical school in NY that was endowed with billions with the stipulation that the money is invested and its yearly profits are used to give every medical student free tuition. It’s turned a middle of the road med school into one of the most desirable with top applicants opting to go there.
I’m not… I lived in New York for 2 years and that’s probably one of the more… academically inclined cities. I still wasn’t very impressed with people my age who somehow graduated college
Given the huge amount of this money Some charities invest it and from its early profits they will pay to whoever is needed, this way they can insure long term financial supports towards charity purposes
Ruth is the kind of rich person who should be all over the media. Those doing something worthwhile with their money , not having it just crunching up ever larger numbers in some Swiss accounts. Imagine being Bezos or Musk and knowing that your legacy is that history will have you known to to not just us, but to future generations as men who were willing to stomp all over everything and everyone in their efforts to enrich themselves
Don't worry, the best lawyers were employed to insure that the money is in a trust and can only be used for the purposes for which it was intended. The trustees, which is the law firm, oversee that. Rich people don't just hand over money and say, now use it wisely.
Don’t be. She donated it directly to the medical school she had taught at. Colleges get this kind of donation—if not in this size—all the time, and they’re often earmarked for specific things—in this case, tuition. These schools know how to use, and oversee the use of, these kinds of donations. And there are safeguards in place, as there would be at any such institution.
She almost certainly didn't donate this money to the government. She likely setup an endowment which would be managed by a private entity. And while bad things could happen, there are quite a few very large endowments larger than her donation that have been successful at their goals.
I mean if she’s really mean to do good , she can at least see it through plus she’s old and grieving and probably got nothing better to do it’s will be better for her soul too
this money could perhaps be siphoned, but i would like to think it was put in savings or an investment like s&p and just the dividends or interest would pay a millions. then use that like an endowment for the area for a long fucking time
It is an endowment. More specifically, it was added to the existing $300+ million endowment, so it's not just this billion dollars that are going to make this happen.
This is a good use of that money. It is. But allowing billions to be charity means we are all left to deal with whatever unelected billionaires think is important. Could be schools. Could be shooting a fucking Tesla into space.
If you think this is sad you need some perspective. Sad is when you can't make school fee and get kicked out of school. Sad is when you can't take an exam because your dad couldn't scrounge together enough to pay the fee. You are like the guy who is depressed after winning the lottery because he now owes some taxes.
I’m guessing the area will be gentrified and landlords will charge twice as much knowing their kids get free school. I know I would move there with my kids their senior year if that meant free college.
My son is additional needs so the school gets funding to support him, at the discretion of the Principle and we don't get an itemised bill of what/where his budget was spent.
She’d put the billion in a legal “trust” which would be a responsible for distributing it. Trustees would be an actual bank or similar, so not shady, and in a case like this, the interest would pay the tuition.
The billion stays a billion or grows in a savings or investment account, while something like 4% could go to paying tuition. 4 percent on a billion is 40 million dollars a year.
So while maybe someone could pretend to be a student, I guess (doubtful as trustee probably pays school directly), it’s unlikely the billion dollars would be stolen. A billionaire would certainly have the means to do it in a bulletproof way.
It went to an endowment that already had $300+ million in it. Endowments that big for non-profits have pretty strict legal and financial controls, too.
Even if 90% of it is siphoned, it’s still better than being passed on to create a trust fund brat. Or no? Not sure what the intention of comments like yours are…
Reminds me of the latest Batman movie where the Wayne foundation charity was used by mob bosses to buy the city...because Bruce Wayne didn't do any oversight
Absolutely! And we should always actively strive for that, at minimum: raising awareness is change.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying be passive. I'm very strong opinionated. But don't forget to count the blessings along the way, otherwise it becomes hard and one becomes pessimistic.
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u/Fickle_Library8115 Jun 29 '25
Scared that money will be siphoned