I’d be ok with anonymous donations if they were truly anonymous both publicly and to the management of the institution receiving the money.
Maybe this is something that the government could facilitate - pool these resources, then help distribute them where they are needed. Almost like how taxes work.
Maintains uncomfortable eye contact with the camera
If anyone is aware of the source, it’s not anonymous, it’s undisclosed.
Agreed, literal anonymous, way cool. Undisclosed, much less so.
The tweet speaks of “dark money”. I like that term better. It feels worse
This exactly. If you really want to stay anonymous then use a middleman and do it anonymous to the recipient as well.
Everyone involved with the institution, students, parents who pay tuition, teachers, authorities who financially support the institution (…) have a right to know in whose pocket they are.
do like onion routing, use two middlemen, i guess you’d literally use locks, sorta like that encryption analogy
Just like they do social security? The government is terrible at the distribution of money. Edit: Damn, y’all really hate SSI
Elaborate?
You know they can’t
They seem to be pretty good at making sure the military has all the finding they need
Wait til you hear how much of that money is unaccounted for. https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2023/11/21/pentagon-fails-its-sixth-audit/
Simpsons did it!
“Well, frankly, test scores like Larry’s would call for a very generous contribution. For example, a score of 400 would require a donation of new football uniforms, 300, a new dormitory, and in Larry’s case, we would need an international airport.”
Um, if it’s anonymous can they influence anything?
Anonymous usually means that they don’t want their name to show up publicly.
There’s almost certainly knowledge of who that money is coming from at least with a couple of persons that received the funds.
More like they don’t want the wider public to know it was them that donated. Some folks that are extremely wealthy go to great lengths to keep their names out of people’s minds and stay out of the public eye as a matter of personal security.
The university knows who’s paying its bills and has agreed to keep it a secret.
A truly anonymous donation should be double-blind to the donor AND recipient. If you don’t want credit, don’t expect influence either.
I don’t know what you mean by
double-blind to the donor AND recipient
But to me that phrase kinda implies that the donor doesn’t know who they donated to. Which…no. It should be blind to the recipient. Entirely blind. But people donating can still choose where to donate to.
The recipient doesn’t know the donor, and the donor has no way to prove their identity to the recipient.
Ah I see. I’m not sure that’s technically possible, but if it were, that’d be great.
I think better would be simply outlawing any communication between a donor and recipient, if the donor wishes to officially remain anonymous. Not they “have no way” to prove their identity, but they’re not allowed to prove it—or even imply it.
the donor has no way to prove their identity to the recipient.
Bank statement from around the same time and of similar amount?
He might mean a certain specific group within the university. Ie the donor can donate to the University as a whole, but not say a specific branch of economics.
University of Chicago is the home of the federalist society.
Yeah was gonna say the same. U of C has some pretty balls-out political and economic priorities
Dafuq? If it’s anonymous, how is it exerting influence?
It’s only anonymous to the public. I imagine the donor and the university are in frequent direct contact.
Are they, or is it just your imagination?
Edit: ah, just your imagination.
Have you never donated to a “charitable” cause before? You can usually talk to them and ask to not have your name released. There’s no legal requirement for name disclosure so it’s up to the institution’s policy.
Yes, I’ve donated plenty, and typically anonymously, since I’m not trying to use others to advance a personal agenda.
Non-disclosure would be something quite different from anonymity.
“i’ll give you 100 million dollars on the condition that $X of it be spent on ______” is how it’s exerting influence
But if it’s actually anonymous, how is that communicated?
Edit: mad that you got no answer, eh?
lol there is one person in this whole thread who’s getting mad, but it’s not me
and yes, as someone else said, it’s no big deal for someone to contact the business office of an institution and offer money on the condition of anonymity and other conditions. and the business people say okay, forms are filled out and signed, and money is transferred. they want to be anonymous because they don’t want all the other institutions calling them asking for money too. and/or they don’t want the world to know they’re the ones influencing the school’s spending
no one wants donors to be able to influence whoever they’re donating to. but that’s how reality works
Yeah, Coldcell is having a real hissy fit.
If the identity is known, it’s not anonymous, it’s undisclosed. That would be an entirely different thing.
Are you really that braindead? An anonymous donation can mean the donor requested their name not be made public, it doesn’t necessarily stop the University from knowing where the money came from.
Then it’s not anonymous, it’s undisclosed. Do you not understand what “anonymous” means?
You’re the only person here failing to comprehend some very basic english.
Sure, Jan.
My only mistake was not assuming that the school was lying.
The definitions of the terms being used are quite clear.
It sounds like the university called it “anonymous donor” for PR reasons whilst it is in fact “undisclosed donor”.
Your point only makes sense if indeed the donor was genuinelly anonymous (I.e. even the University had no idea who they were) rather than merely described as anonymous by the University for the purpose of divulging it to the outside world.
So my only mistake was not assuming that the university was lying.
You didn’t made a mistake, IMHO.
Nobody made a mistake.
There was just a mistmatch between your unvoiced assumptions and those of other people posting here, so all of you were really just starting from different points and hence going in different directions.
I suppose many downvoters might have assumed you were purposefully taking a specifically literal interpretation of “anonymous” in this context for the purpose of defending the University whilst I myself just went with it being a perfectly valid explanation until proven otherwise that you’re just a more literal person than most.
This is why I went for writting a post which I believed would provide some clarity rather than downvoting your posts.
As I see it your points were valid for an interpretation that the University and the article used “anonymous” in the most honest of ways (meaning, “unknown to others”) and other posters pointers were valid for an interpretation that the University and the article used “anonymous” in a deceitful way that didn’t match the dictionary definition but instead meant “unknown to the general public”, something for which the correct word is “undisclosed”.
Not publicly supported enough though lol. *leers at 40k of student debt
Rookie numbers.
Gotta pump them up… but they’re a function of time?!
Student loans function as power laws.
Do you think the donation will somehow make the University of Chicago more conservative?
Just hold out the finger in the air for when there is a change in the intensity of propaganda
Should it? I get that political parties should report donors - but for nonprofits and other institutions I feel it’s not that necessary since they are directly investing that money in projects (that the donor may choose - but if that’s not the case then that investment isn’t happening) - for political parties and politicians it can be seen as a bribe as the things they invest in usually don’t have a direct return of investment.
And there should be rules and regulations making sure that that donation is not ending up in some kind of contract for the company of the donor but that whatever that investment is funding has a transparent process
Where do we draw the line? Should donors to libraries be made public even if that person wants to remain anonymous but fund an expansion? Should donors to non-profits be made public?
Agree in general. Ez fix: strings attached that it’s anonymous and unattached. A third party manages the exchange, and everyone is under oath. A step in the right direction at least
So if I donate to someone it’s “dark money”?
If it’s millions of dollars and done anonymously in a culture of prominent bribery with little to no “no strings attached” charity at that scale, it seems reasonable to suspect foul play and call it “dark money”.
