Agreed, literal anonymous, way cool. Undisclosed, much less so.

The tweet speaks of "dark money". I like that term better. It feels worse

I work for a nonprofit and “anonymous donor” definitely means “c-suite folks know who it came from”

I have a similar line of thinking. I'm a musician, so if I was filthy rich I might want to donate money to a school's music department. If the school is one fiscal entity, I would have to put that as a stipulation to ensure they gave the money to that department, not divert it to something overfunded or just padding the board's pocket as bonuses for "a job well done"

That was such a weird story! On one hand, he has been a big supporter of the football program at the school and the scoreboard didn't seem totally unreasonable. But as a former university librarian, the salary is generally under $60k for non-mangers, so saving that $1 million was an amazing feat of savings and the scoreboard seemed like a weird choice by the school.

I donate regularly to a charity and don’t try to dictate how they spend that money, because I have faith that they’ll responsibly use my donations.

Removing these biases is the whole point of public funding for things. Everyone shares the same resources and people who have more wealth give more. The fact that major institutions that perform public functions rely on private donations is the problem.

Maybe that person hates books and likes seeing them locked away in book prison?

I'm fairly certain it is only anonymous "on paper". Behind closed doors, they know where it came from and what is expected in return.

Oh 100% absolutely. I mean the gentrification of Hyde Park and Woodlawn with active, deliberate harm to the black community started at the University’s inception in 1898 (1895? 92? They keep changing the “established in” date on all their merch and propaganda, it’s hard to keep up) and continues to this day with no signs of slowing.

I also should have specified that if we’re talking about student/faculty attitudes the “real” UChicago community does not or at least should include Booth and the psychopathic econ department. That’s where all the money comes from (because it’s evil) but everyone except admin hates them. Also I’m pretty sure they would argue “community” means communism and community of any kind should be abolished in favor of a social free market or some shit, whatever garbage they are peddling these days.

More like they don't want the wider public to know it was them that donated. Some folks that are extremely wealthy go to great lengths to keep their names out of people's minds and stay out of the public eye as a matter of personal security.

I don't know what you mean by

double-blind to the donor AND recipient

But to me that phrase kinda implies that the donor doesn't know who they donated to. Which…no. It should be blind to the recipient. Entirely blind. But people donating can still choose where to donate to.