Manners & Misdemeanors - They Will Not Be Ignored

At what point does a big check become more trouble than it’s worth?

- Dan Duray

There’s an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm from 2007 in which Larry David feels upstaged by Ted Danson because both of them have given large sums to the National Resources Defense Council, only Danson did so anonymously. “Now it looks like I just did mine for the credit, as opposed to Mr. Wonderful Anonymous,” David seethes, eyeing a “by Anonymous” plaque on Danson’s building wing. Is the donation even anonymous if, as David soon finds out, Danson is going around telling everyone about it? The rest of the episode is given over to discussing such matters, and others related to dry cleaning.

Institutions in the real world, however, more often have the inverse problem: Benefactors’ gifts come with an increasing number of strings attached. There are, of course, the high profile examples of this, such as when Blackstone Group’s Stephen A. Schwarzman expected to have Abington Senior High School, which he attended in the 1960s, renamed after himself in exchange for a $25 million donation last year until students and alumni revolted. This followed a brouhaha in which Sanford and Joan Weill’s efforts to change the name of upstate New York’s Paul Smith’s College to Joan Weill–Paul Smith’s College were rebuffed in court. (That ruling led to their rescinding a $20 million donation.)