Fact Sheet

Other Prominent Controversies Involving Donor Intent:

• Buck Trust Case, Marin County, CA (1984): The Buck Trust case involved an effort by the San Francisco Foundation, which Mrs. Buck had appointed as distribution trustee of the charitable trust she created in her will, to break the geographical restrictions contained in her will. The Foundation argued that the size of the Buck Trust, some $435 million at the time of trial, made it inequitable to spend all Trust income in Marin County, when the needs of the surrounding Bay Area counties in which the Foundation operated were much greater than those of Marin. After six months of trial, the court rejected the Foundation’s claims and replaced the Foundation as trustee.



• Yale University, New Haven, CT (1995): The University returned a $20 million gift from Lee Bass because administrators refused to allow Bass to approve the nomination of professors being hired with money from the donation.



• Boston University, Boston, MA (2002): The University returned a $3 million donation to build a library from alumnus David Mugar after Mugar questioned how fast the money was being used.



• St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, New York, NY ( 2002): The New York Attorney General’s Office ordered the hospital to return $5 million of a $10 million endowment set up by R. Brinkley Smithers, saying the hospital had diverted funds from the intended purpose of financing alcoholism treatment.



• Harvard University Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA (2003): The University agreed to return a $12.5 million donation to actress Jane Fonda after she protested the University’s sluggishness in hiring professors for the gender studies program she sought to establish.



•    Metropolitan Opera, New York, NY (2003): Relatives of the late oil millionaire Sybil Harrington sued the Metropolitan Opera requesting the return of a $5 million gift, saying the Met didn’t use the funds for the production of traditional opera, as Harrington requested.



• University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (2004): The University settled a $1.6 million lawsuit initiated by donor Paul F Glenn alleging his donation, which was to be spent funding a professor in Cellular and Molecular Gerontology, was not being used as directed and that USC had concealed how it was spent.



• UCLA, Los Angeles, CA: (2005): The California Court of Appeals ruled that a donor has standing to sue UCLA for misuse of its donation. The donor alleges that UCLA failed to employ a professor in Cardiothoracic surgery meeting the terms of its $1 million gift.  The donor requests that, pursuant to the gift agreement, the gift should be withdrawn from UCLA and transferred to another university.



• Tulane University, New Orleans, LA (2006): In 2006, Tulane University dissolved its highly ranked coordinate women’s college, Newcomb College, and diverted Newcomb's $45 million endowment. Descendants of Josephine Louise Newcomb, who in the late 1800s had endowed the college with gifts exceeding $3 million, believe Tulane has violated the terms of Mrs. Newcomb’s gifts and have asked the Louisiana courts to stop Tulane’s actions. The case is making its way through the courts.

• Jenna Dodge, et. al. v. The Trustees of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, Lynchburg, VA (2006): After successfully completing a $100 million capital campaign, the trustees of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, Lynchburg, Virginia (now called Randolph College) voted in 2006 to make the 115-year-old school coeducational. A group of students, alumnae and donors brought suit under charitable trust law maintaining that the money donated during the capital campaign, other funds in the school’s $142 million endowment, the college’s $100 million-plus art collection, and other charitable assets donated under the original mission – providing women with a quality liberal arts education – could not be used for a coeducational college unless the college could prove that it was impossible to continue as a women’s college. The state Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.