Now, the University is legally seeking to expand the parameters of the Fulton McMahon Research Fund, broaden the scope of who can benefit from the yearly income. The process of expanding the purview of the donation highlights the complicated issues involved when yearly funding exceeds the enumerated need on the campus.
In addition to graduate students, the pool of potential beneficiaries of the fund may now include undergraduates studying in the French and Italian department or the Spanish and Portuguese department, graduate students going abroad for reasons other than research and graduate and undergraduate students in other departments.
Though the original intent of the gift to finance travel expenses for Romance language graduate students remains the top priority of the proposed expansion, the University said, some individuals within the affected departments worry there may be less money to go around.
Goran Blix, director of graduate studies for the French and Italian department, said the expansion could impact graduate study and research abroad.
“Assuming the funds available for graduate student travel — which is all the McMahon fund is currently used for in [French and Italian] — would be reduced, that would be very worrisome, because it would make it much harder for our Ph.D. candidates to conduct research abroad and attend professional conferences,” Blix said in an email. “Our department already funds undergraduate travel and study abroad quite generously, so there is no question, at least for us, of needing to redress the balance internally.”
But Vice Provost for Academic Programs Katherine Rohrer said the expansion of the fund will not affect the amount of money available for graduate students’ travel — the original purpose of the gift — because all the funding for this purpose would be distributed before granting funding for other purposes.
Many donations that have been given to the University in the past have grown considerably over the years, and it is sometimes difficult to spend all the income every year, according to Provost Christopher Eisgruber.
Since donors intend their funds to be spent rather than be allowed to accumulate, Eisgruber said, the University will seek to expand the terms of the fund if it is unable to spend all the money for the stipulated purpose.
“Sometimes, the restrictions on funds are sufficiently narrow that the University cannot expend the funds for precisely the original purpose for which they are given,” Eisgruber said in an email, referencing the McMahon Fund. “This may happen partly because, as a result of the University’s prudent stewardship, the size of the fund grows beyond what the donor had anticipated — a happy circumstance, but still a practical problem.”
Rohrer said the University will seek to alter the terms of the McMahon Fund through a process called cy pres, which means that the University will seek to be as true to the original terms of the fund as possible.
“The changes would not impact the amount of financing available for graduate students of the humanities, since under the cy pres petition we are asking the court for alternate uses only for dollars that are not needed for the donor’s original intention,” Rohrer said in an email. “The first use will always be grants-in-aid for scholarly travel to graduate students in the departments of French and Italian and Spanish and Portuguese, just as the donor stated.”
But a new expansion would make it the fund’s second priority to support “scholarly travel” of undergraduate students of the Romance languages.
Money from the McMahon Fund would go to support fellowships and teaching assistantships for graduate students in those departments. Last on the list of priorities for expansion is the University’s desire to have the fund finance graduate and undergraduate expenses in other departments.
In 2009, the New Jersey legislature voted to approve the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act. The act allows institutions more autonomy with gifts they receive, laying the foundation for the University to pursue these types of changes with charitable donations.
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