The Story Behind “The Class of 1969 Memorial Scholarship Fund”

In May, you may recall that our website published Meet The New “Class of 1969 Scholar” – Maddie Hoffman. Well, I got curious: I hadn’t heard of a “Class of 1969 Scholarship Fund,” so I decided to investigate. What was it? Who started it? How is it used? How much is in it? There were lots of questions.

Sleuthing a bit with the Yale Development Office, I found that Don Galligan and a group of friends established the fund just over 6 years ago. I called Don and asked what he had in mind. He explained, “I have always regarded my Yale education as one of the great opportunities and experiences of my life. As one of five siblings, I would never have had the opportunity to attend the University had it not been for financial aid. Whenever possible, I have directed my financial support of Yale to scholarship funds.”

It turns out that to establish any sort of special endowment fund like this, Yale required a minimum gift of $100,000, a hurdle which Don and his friends were able to clear. As a group, they decided to name the Fund for the Class of 1969.

Over the ensuing years, they have made some additional donations, and David Swenson** and the investment pros handling the Yale endowment funds have grown the principal value as of June 30, 2017, to $407,465! (The June 30, 2018 numbers will be available in the Autumn sometime.)

** The compound annual growth rate of the Yale Endowment for the past 20 years is 12.1% per annum, compared to the 7.3% all-college-endowment average.

When Yale or similar institutions make grants from endowment funds, they use a “spending rule” — a factor they believe can harvest the increase in value (both income and appreciation of principal value) and still leave the principal intact, including the effects of inflation. For this Class of 1969 Scholarship Fund to cover an entire year of Yale, which now costs $70,570, the Fund would have to be about $1.57 million. ($70,570 ÷ .045*** = $1,568,222.)

*** the current Yale “spending rule” is very close to 4.5%

Don and his friends believe that would be a worthy goal to achieve … to leave an endowed scholarship capable of annually supporting one undergraduate student for an entire year.

If you would like to donate to the Class of 1969 Memorial Scholarship Fund, simply take either of the following two steps — and yes! it will count as a “reunion gift” for this year … both for you and for our Class:

Mail A Check

To make a donation by check, make the check payable to YALE UNIVERSITY, and on the “memo” line, include the name of the designation, which in this case is Fund #15609 – Class of 1969 Scholar-ship.

Then mail the check to:

Yale University
Gift and Record Services
157 Church Street, 8th Floor
New Haven, CT 06510-2100

Online Donation

To make a donation online, simply go to Yale’s secure online, gift site (click here) and do the following:

Fill out the gift amount at top of page
Click on the item that says “View other / give to multiple funds“
That will bring up a pop-up window that looks like this: (click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)
Inside that window, scroll down to the very bottom, select “Other” and then click “CONTINUE”
That will return you to the original page, with a space to add the information about the Class of 1969 Fund and the Fund number (#15609), like this: (click to enlarge)
(click to enlarge)
Fill out the rest of that page and click the “NEXT” button
Complete check out with credit card information, as you would on any e-commerce site

Note: any contributions to the Class of 1969 Scholarship Fund made between now and June 30, 2019, will be counted as part of our reunion-year gift. So, please be generous!

If you wonder how much a difference it makes, consider this: For the past academic year, Yale College supported its largest student body ever with almost $145 million in financial aid. A full 51% of undergrads got some help, with the average award being $49,575 … helping to offset the cost of tuition, room, board, books and personal expenses totaling $70,570 per year.

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