In Tuesday’s (10/27) Chicago Tribune, Bob Secter writes, “Northwestern University gave [a reception] the other day to venture capitalist billionaire J.B. Pritzker after he shelled out $100 million to the law school where he studied … henceforth to be known as Northwestern’s Pritzker School of Law…. The news [arrived] earlier this year that New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts was renaming its Avery Fisher Hall in honor of entertainment mogul David Geffen [after] Geffen stepped in with an offer to foot $100 million of the estimated $500 million in rehab costs. Giving back is unquestionably admirable. The question is whether the nobility of such gestures is diminished when the beneficence comes attached to the nonprofit equivalent of a bright spotlight likely to shine after the giver is long gone. To be sure, this is far from a new phenomenon…. But what once was occasional is becoming ever more commonplace…. Many of today’s big donors … gained a big chunk of their wealth through aggressive use of tax-reducing strategies often out of reach for those of more modest means.”
Posted October 29, 2015
