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Million dollar Duck coaches just not that into the Charitable Fund Drive

Every year Oregon holds a Charitable Fund Drive for state and university employees. Donations can be made by check, credit card, or convenient payroll deduction. The CFD has a long list of charities you can earmark your gifts to. The CFD reduces the cost to charities of fundraising and reduces the costs for givers, and lets them opt out of spam and junkmail. University employees can sign up here. (Don’t forget that, for this year at least, the IRS will let you deduct up to $300 in donations even if you don’t itemize. I believe all donations are deductible on your Oregon income tax.)

In an effort to promote a little altruistic competition, the CFD posts the number and total of donations by department. Here is the current data (the drive closes Dec 31). The Duck Athletic Department and it’s well-paid AD and coaches are missing because their donations so far total $0. Last year they gave a total of $150.

12 Comments

  1. faculty member 12/29/2020

    I don’t think I ever received notice of this. I’ve donated every year but did not this year, and I think someone in my unit forgot to send out the email.

  2. honest Uncle Bernie 12/30/2020

    Can you give an update on how to give to UO-related charities, e.g. SAIL? Do such donations get hit by the notorious Foundation 5% tax?

  3. Bob 12/30/2020

    Oh, c’mon. The implication is that the highly-compensated employees in the athletic department are stingy and uncharitable. But one can donate to charity in a number of ways. The choice not to do so through the CFD is little or no evidence of a lack of charitable giving. It simply means that the athletic department employees have chosen not to donate to charity in that specific manner. No more can be inferred from the data presented.

    • CSN 12/30/2020

      Faculty, staff, and OAs *may also* contribute to charity in a number of ways. Presumably many of them do. Your assertion is effectively that there is something categorically different about Athletic Department employees that affects their propensity to give through this channel and that this categorical difference *does not impact any other aspect of their charitable giving behavior.*

      In fact, to reject the “stingy and uncharitable” characterization as you have, you must believe that AD employees categorically give *more* than faculty, staff, and OAs elsewhere to make up for the giving that those individuals have done through this channel.

      Bold assertions.

      If there was, say, a highly publicized effort to get AD employees to give that was separate from CFD, this is perhaps believable. I am unable to find evidence of any such program.

    • honest Uncle Bernie 12/30/2020

      You of course are correct about the epistemology of their possible charitable proclivities, but is that really the point? They could generate a lot of good will, and silence a lot of cynics, if some of them just tossed in a few good donations, or a lot of them threw in a lot of smaller ones.

  4. Leporello 12/31/2020

    I’m calling class warfare. How dare you.

    Haven’t you been reminded enough that we don’t know what they’re doing privately???? Isn’t it better to imagine that they are giving away their excess?

    If if they do subscribe the the Carnegie “Gospel of Wealth,” well that’s their right and you can simply point those green eyes elsewhere.

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