Reconversion Special Fund

A movement which has already taken on fairly substantial proportions and which in the next year or two may be of tremendous significance in meeting the severe financial problems which the College faces was launched by an alumnus with a $5000 gift early in December. This alumnus who gave instructions that he must remain anonymous, wrote that he was making the gift in realization of the fact that the College is facing a deficit of $300,000 this year, possibly double that next year, and other probable deficits of large proportions for an indefinite number of years thereafter until the full peacetime undergraduate body should be reassembled. He indicated his guess that there were "100 other Dartmouth men" who would like to join with similar gifts. He indicated that he would make his "usual Alumni Fund gift next spring and that this contribution was entirely apart from the Alumni Fund.

Joshua A. Davis '27, chairman of the Alumni Council's chief fund-raising agency, the Alumni Fund Committee, temporarily assumed the leadership of this project in calling the proposal to the attention of other alumni. A number of other substantial gifts were promptly forthcoming and donors of these gifts offered their help in further dissemination of the idea among their friends and acquaintances in the alumni body.

As a result, the Reconversion Special Fund was created and by the end of December amounted to $25,000 from six contributors, with a contribution of approximately $5400 promised for early in 1945. One donor provided that he should have the option of later specifying a portion of his gift as a contribution to the Alumni Fund. The others provided that their gifts, all of which were to remain anonymous, were entirely apart from their regular Fund contributions. Mr. Davis emphasized in disseminating the original proposal that individuals interested in this special fund ought t() provide first for Alumni Fund contributions at least as large as last year, in view of the probable enlargement of the class objectives of the Alumni Fund reflecting a probable Alumni Fund objective of $300,000 to meet the estimated College deficit for the year.

Recognizing the desirability of getting this information around to a selected number of alumni who might be interested before the end of the 1944 calendar year, Mr. Davis as head of the Alumni Council's primary alumni fund-raising agency accepted temporary leadership of the Reconversion Special Fund. However, since this is a project apart from the Alumni Fund, he has indicated his expectation that a chairman will be named to head this special fund, which will remain a separate open account on the College's books, unrestricted in its uses, with the expectation that during this year and next its size will be multiplied several times over.