Anonymous donors support women students, college presidents

Funding for Jeannette Rankin Women's Scholarship Fund comes from donations large and small. Some donors use named scholarships to honor friends and relatives; others support our general fund so that we can continue to administer scholarships as efficiently as possible.

Many of our donors tell us a little bit about themselves, including the reasons they share our commitment to women's education. But in some cases, they let their donation do the talking. This spring, an anonymous donor stepped forward (through an intermediary, of course) to provide a $20,000 donation to support JRF scholarships.

A donation of this size is especially helpful this year, given the tough economic climate. The struggling national economy creates a perfect storm for organizations like JRF: endowments and donations are down, and the need for college funding is up, as laid-off workers return to school. As we mentioned below, this trend played out in our office, in the form of a 39% increase in scholarship applications. Our generous anonymous donor enabled us to maintain our commitment to provide 80 scholarships to outstanding students across the country.

Our experience with anonymous giving led us to follow another story about philanthropy and women's education. Over the past several months, an anonymous donor has given more than $100 million to at least 15 colleges and universities. A portion of the gift is usually reserved for scholarships for women and minority students, and, most interestingly, all of the colleges are led by women.

Speculation on the Mystery Donor's identity abounds. Maybe it's a controversial celebrity or disgraced Wall Street financier, hoping to spare the colleges guilt by association. Maybe it's a giving circle, ensuring that, as Brian O'Rourke speculates in USA Today, "women presidents in higher education are successful." Maybe it's Oprah. (A spokesperson for Oprah says it isn't. But of course, that's what a spokesperson would say.) The colleges themselves agreed not to investigate the donor's identity; one school, Binghamton University, originally interpreted the request for anonymity so strictly that they didn't even plan to announce the gift, until they realized it was part of a pattern.

Here at JRF, we sort of like the anonymity, both of Binghamton's mystery donor and our own, no-less-important mystery donor. Of course we would like to say thank you, and tell our donor about the wonderful scholars their gift supports. But we also like that these donations say, in effect, "It's not about who I am. I could be anyone, because supporting women in higher education is important to all of us."