GCT 1

F UNDING GCT
A Silver Jubilee Effort By
T HE C LASS OF 1982

A C ONCEPT B RIEF

S WAMI M ANOHAR
August 2005

– GCT 82 –
2 GCT

1 Introduction

are on the threshold of a milestone: twenty five years since

W
E
the day we stepped out of GCT with our degrees. All of us
hold GCT dear to our hearts and wish to contribute back to
GCT according to our individual abilities. The Silver Jubilee year gives
us this opportunity to crystallize this desire into action. This white paper
is my view on how we can make a lasting contribution to our college.

2 Background

A brief account of my qualifications in writing this document are in order

and I present them here.

• In 1986, with the same shared urge of contributing to GCT, I at-

tempted to install a student scholarship by collecting money from
GCT alumni in the US. I was tocuhed by the quick response and
was able to collect several hundred dollars and installed a scholar-
ship. However, the mechanisms present at that time did not allow
for the growth of the scholarship fund. I am sure the following
mechanism still continues in GCT:
Deposit Rs x in the form of a scholarship fund. Calculate annual
interest on the fund. Use the interest to give the scholarship. With
this mechanism, the scholarship amount reduces to laugable amounts
very soon.
I was unable to convince Mr. Kumaresan (a very sincere person
heading the Alumini unit at that time) to do anything else. The net
result is that I think the fund is no longer relevant.
I resolved at that time that it is essential to set up appropriate mech-
anisms to ensure growth of such scholarship amounts.

• During my stay at Brown University, I was amazed at the amount

of money Alumni donated to Brown. Millions of dollars. (Early
this year, an Alumni donated 100 Million dollars to set up a schol-
arship fund!). I wondered as to why it is so, while in India we

– GCT 82 –
GCT B ASIC T ENENTS 3

do not donate so generously to our alma mater. If all of us ask this

question, it wil turn out that none of us have donated anyting close
to even 1IITs it is probably true for most colleges in India.
The distinguishing factor in Brown, as is true in most US universi-
ties, is that the mechansims for attracting alumni funds and utilis-
ing the funds are extremely well honed. Further, it is ensured that
every Alumni, who donates to Brown, irrespective of the actual
amount, is made to feel that their donation is recognised, valued
and will be put to the best use possible. I have personally donated
a meagre amount of US$30 and seen my name listed in a glossy
publication!

• IIT alumni in recent years have donated generously. Kanwal Rekhi

donated several millions to set up a very well recognised Kanwal
Rekhi School of Information Technology at IIT-Mumbai. There are
a few more examples, but these were curtailed when M.M. Joshi
was MHRD minister, he decreed that all donations to IITs should
be made only to a centralised fund and no naming of individual
donations is to be allowed. This fund received a grand total of Rs
5400 till the time the decree was revoked by the next government.
I have interacted with Prof. Phatak of IIT-Mumbai who was instru-
mental in setting up these donations.

• At IISc, I have been trying to understand why IISc alumni donate

even less to their alma mater than an average engineering college.
The reason has become obvious: there is no mechanism in IISc to
collect, value, acknolwedge, and grow donations.

3 Basic Tenents

In this section I outline the requirements of a system that will attract

Alumni donations.

• Recognition of individuals who contribute. One can lecture long

and hard about why GCT has given so much to us and hence it is
our duty to pay back. The fact remains that people give because of

– GCT 82 –
4 GCT

their generosity and because of the recognition that their generos-

ity brings in. The good feeling of having done some thing that is
appreciated by peers should not be under estimated.

• No amount is too small: Often, the way donations are discussed,

individulas prefer not to donate, rather than donate what accord-
ing to them is too small an amount. Unless the process encourages,
actively seeks, provides a comfortable mechanism, and conveys
sincere conviction that every donation is important, no significant
fund raising objective can be achieved.

• No amount is too large: Once created, a perpetual fund raising

activity should be in place. At least once a year, a campaign should
be launched to obtain the next tranche of donations.

• Grow the Fund: The fund needs to be professionally managed for

Growth, by investing wisely. This is the most important, and in
India, most overlooked aspect of fund raising. I will have more on
this later in this paper.

• Enable donors to avail of Income tax benefits available. This is a

simple commercial proposition: divert the money otherwise going
to the Taxman into our fund. This facility should be made avaialble
in as many countries as Alumni reside in.

• Small fish is needed to catch big fish: Money has to be spent in

raising money. Usually one to two percent of the money sought to
be raised is spent in raising the money.

4 Goal for GCT-82 Silver Jubilee Funding Effot

The well known adage is worth repetition: teaching someone to fish is

way better than giving free fish. I am sure that several of our seniors have
thought like us and have collected money and donated to the college. I
dont think any of them have had a lasting impact, since otherwise we
would have known about it.

If I know that the money I donate will have a lasting and growing im-
pact, my inclination to donate is enhanced. We are all familiar with the

– GCT 82 –
GCT T HE D ETAILS 5

sentiment, during any disaster donantion collection: who knows where

the money will go. So we sometimes use this uncertainity as an excuse
for our inaction. Eliminating this uncertainity means to give confidence
that the money will be well utilised. But a demonstration that the money
is not inly well utilised, but also well invested to make it grow and pro-
vide continous utility, will give a major boost to donors. This is precisely
the reason why donations are so effective in the US universities.

As far as I know, no college in India has such a mechanism in place,

certainly, no government college. Thus we can be pioneers.

based on the above, I propose that our fundamental contribution as part

of our Silver Jubilee is defined as follows:

To create a mechanism and a process for perpetual convertion of the

good will and generosity of the GCT Alumni into a well managed and
growing Alumni Fund, out of which specific objectives like building,
scholarship, technology etc., can be funded.

Please note the emphasis on perpetual: we can always point to the fund
and say, our batch created the fund.

In propose to do this in two steps: first, create a Silver Jubilee Fund that
will be collected from the class of 1982. Create the mechanism (as out-
lined in the next section) for a general GCT Alumni Trust Fund, and use
our SJ Fund as the seed funding for the GCT Alumni Trust Fund. The
details are presented in the next section.

5 The Details

This section is the least well thought out, and requries as many inputs
as possible. However, to provide a framework for our discussion, I am
outlining a sequence of steps that need to be executed.

• Create a charitable Trust in India, call it the GCT Alumni Trust (if
there are name conflicts, we can call it the GCT82 Alumni Trust),
registered for tax-exempt doantions. Need a board of Trustees who
will manage the trust, their terms of office, role of a managing

– GCT 82 –
6 GCT

trustee if any, rules for governing the election and retirement of

trustees, etc. Rules for Coopting members from the College ad-
ministration, voting rights if any. etc., also need to be defined.

• Create several levels of donations. For each level create a unique

and heartening method of recognition. For example, for amounts
between rs x and rs y, the donor will be given a silver plaque
and her name will be in the GCT Alumni Hall of Donors (website,
board on campus etc.)

• For donations above a certain amount, decided by the Trustees pe-

riodically, the donor will be given the option of serving as a Trustee.

• Set of activiites for which the funds will be utilised. The mecha-
nisms for such funds utilisation.

• Every donor (above an amount decided by the Trustees) will be-

come a non-voting life-member of the Trust.

• Mechanisms for informing life-members of the yearly activity, and

growth of the fund,

• In essence, create the Memoranadum and Articles of Association

for the Trust..

Between now and the Jubilee, we set a target of Rs Target and raise the
Sivler Jubilee Fund. On the Jubilee day, we declare the success of our
effort, and create the GCT Alumni Trust Fund, donate the SJ Fund to the
GCT Alumni Trust and start the ball rolling.

Factors to note:

• Clearly, this approach is more complex than just collecting some

money doing something useful, feel good about it and go on with
our lives. However, if we put in this effort, we will leave a legacy
that will even outlive us, and hopefully set a model for other col-
leges to follow1
1
I will be very happy if anyone is aware of any other college in India where some such
mechanism has been already put in place. We could then learn from their experience

– GCT 82 –
GCT G ROWING THE F UND 7

• This approach, gets us to focus on the important aspect of putting

in the mechnism to raise long term sustainbale donation process,
rather than discussing the relative merits of scholarships Vs build-
ings or schoalrships to ECE students rather than production stu-
dents etc.

• Also obviously, this approach will not allow us the immediate grat-
ification of seeing the fruits of our labor (for instance, a building in-
augurated) on our jubilee day. But I am hoping that all of us would
value a coninued contribution rather than a one-off effort.

6 Growing the Fund

Collecting money is hard. Spending it is easy. Growing the collected

money is much easier than collecting from scratch. This is a critical rea-
son why such a complex mechanism as a Trust is called for; grow the
money.

• Several mechanisms exist, but the meta-mechanism is to outsource

the management of the fund to a reputed funds management com-
pany on what is termed as an upside basis: they are paid on the
basis of the amount of growth that they have demonstrated over a
year. They will be subjected to rules and regulations of where they
can invest, and standards of ethical, moral and other contraints un-
der which they need to operate will be set and overseen by the
Trustees.
This is the reason why the Universities of Harvard, Chicago and
others have endowment funds larger than our foreign exchange
reserve!

• After our jubilee, the Trustees and the Trust will go after all our
senior Alumni (at least about 25 batches!) and tell them about the
wonderful mechanism that has been put in place to enable them to
donate to their college. Some of them may put the Alumni Fund
in their will, a very important mechanism by which US university
endowment funds get a continuous flow of funding.

– GCT 82 –
8 GCT

• As the donations come in, the number of life-memebers of the Trust

will also grow. Every year, the Trustees will provide new opportu-
nities for the life members to donate to the Trust, including at tax
filing time, where any surplus that cn save taxes can be given to
the Trust.

The above are all issues that need to be tackled once we broadly agree
on this being the right approach for oour Silver Jubilee.

7 Conclusion

The Silver Jubilee is the celebration of our collective joy in looking back at
the wonderful time we have had in GCT, twenty five years ago. All of us
have been significantly shaped by our stay, and I am sure for most of us
our time in GCT is THE most significant architect of our destiny. Hence,
this document should be rightly viewed as ONE possible approach to
creating a lasting legacy. Other ideas should provide us a basket of pos-
siblities to choose from.

– GCT 82 –