Giving: a matter of life and death

UK and German universities are now doing what the US and Australia are old hands at - tapping alumni for cash. But Italians still think it's all rather vulgar...

A landscaped wall is nearing completion in a quiet corner of the campus at the University of Richmond, Virginia. It is a columbarium and memorial garden exclusively for alumni of the university who want to make the school their final resting place.

There will be 2,913 niches available to alumni, students, faculty, staff, trustees and members of their immediate families. Each can hold two urns of cremated remains; each costs $3,000 (£2,000). Alternatively, alumni's ashes can be scattered in a memorial garden for $350.

Richmond is an extreme, but by no means isolated, example of the lengths to which American universities will go to maintain relationships with their biggest single source of financial donations - their alumni who comprise 29 per cent of all donors, nearly $7 billion a year. Donations from alumni account for nearly 10 per cent of US university revenues.

"A lot of institutions are making more concerted efforts to target their givers," said Colleen Nielsen, a spokeswoman for the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. "They do everything they can to enhance the relationship between the institution and their alumni."

Some universities offer credit cards carrying their names and mottos, organise trips around the world with faculty along as cultural experts and even license their logos for use in caskets.

In most cases, the universities earn commissions on these; Richmond's columbarium will make nearly $8 million when it is full. But alumni officials say the aim is mainly to remind alumni of warm nostalgia for the alma mater.

"It's almost a personal relationship," said Kevin Wesley, director of alumni relations at Bowdoin College, a private school. "The most important thing I do is provide an array of activities that bring people into a closer relationship with the institution. It reinforces the connection to what for many people was a critical juncture in their lives."

At Bowdoin, 57 per cent of all alumni contributed last year, accounting for 90 per cent of all financial donations.

But alumni of American universities play other roles, too. Many volunteer to conduct interviews with prospective students unable to visit campus. Increasingly, they furnish career advice or assistance for graduating students.

Mr Wesley, who himself attended Bowdoin, said: "We're spending a lot of time working on our career networking, having alumni provide the students with information about what it's like to be a lobbyist in Washington or a banker in Chicago."

One consortium of ten universities pooled its resources and ran a career fair in Los Angeles, featuring speakers who were alumni in the entertainment industry.

Technology has also tightened the relationship between US universities and their alumni. Most schools now offer alumni free lifetime email addresses, reminding them of their time in college each time they receive or send a message. Stanford University has started an electronic newsletter that it says has boosted knowledge of the institution and increased alumni giving.