CONDITIONAL GIFTS

The custom, on the increase for the past few decades, of making conditional gifts to educational and other institutions, is on the whole sound. Such gifts act as a "starter" and give both possible future donors and those working to raise funds an additional incentive. gifts made conditional to the raising of further donors and those working to raise funds an additional incentive. Gifts made conditional to the raising of further funds also guard the donor against the danger, proved in the past to be very real, of having his money spent on a basement or foundation, the rest of the building being dependent upon pledged funds which often fail to appear.

The new indoor athletic plant about which there has been so much discussion recently provides a classic example of the unwise use of the conditional gift. A donor, as yet anonymous, has offered to present the Harvard Athletic Association with one third the estimated cost of erecting such a building, estimated at present at about one million dollars. The site that this building is to occupy has already been chosen and plans have tentatively been drawn, while Mr. Bingham and his aides are attempting to raise the some $600,000 that are still necessary for the structure's erection.

In view of Harvard's present athletic equipment the most important part of this building is the swimming pool, and this, alone, it has been estimated, will cost some $250,000. There seems to be no adequate reason, according to the architects, why this part of the building should not be erected first. The plans now in existence show that the swimming pool forms a sort of wing to the main athletic building, almost a separate building," though harmonizing in every way with the complete indoor plant.

Had Harvard's anonymous benefactor not made his gift conditional upon the raising of the other money required, construction could start immediately upon the swimming pool, and this facility would probably be ready to meet the undoubted demand a little earlier than the rest of the building. That this building will eventually be completed in its entirety can not be doubted, for all things, even Hemenway, must some day end. But the swimming pool seems to be the most needed of improvements, and were the gift of the anonymous donor not made conditional upon the prior raising of the total fund of a million, work might be begun at once.

The CRIMSON ventures to cite this particular instance, though other gifts of similar limitations might also be used to illustrate the principle involved. This comment should not be taken as a reflection on all conditional gifts on even on most of them to do so would be not only to look into the mouth of a gift horse, but to insist on an X-ray of the molars. But the swimming-pool gymnasium situation is so typical of the exception that this comment is offered with no stinting of gratitude, but rather as a plea for an earlier availability of a generous gift.