THE MANUAL OF CORPORATE GIVING

Edited by Beardsley Ruml '15 in collaboration with Theodore Geiger. National Planning Association. 1952. 415 pp.

In the immediate past corporate donations to educational, scientific and welfare activities have experienced a substantial growth —in corporate interest primarily, and to a lesser extent in corporate action.

This large, well-planned and coordinated, and comprehensive but non-technical Manual is designed to bring immediate and greatly expanded activity and action in corporate giving. It is the direct result of a pamphlet report last year entitled "The Five Per Cent" by Beardsley Ruml 'l5 and Theodore Geiger. This report emphasized the great opportunity created by the 5% deduction from net earnings before taxes which corporations are permitted by federal law to make for donations to educational, scientific and welfare institutions. The pamphlet was a sharp challenge to business, alerting management to the nonretroactive features in the revenue laws. Mr. Ruml, one of the most interested and active of the business leaders seeking to stimulate greatly augmented corporate donations, has now given industry a detailed study of all manners and methods of putting a definite program into effect.

The volume covers policy and administration, including legal aspects, and then in great detail enters into possible fields of activity, with over a score of individual articles under the five main topics of "Community Projects," "Health and Welfare," "Education," "Science and Humanities," and "International Programs." Although several dozen men took part in producing the finished Manual it is evident that close collaboration existed, and the entire work is held together by a central and integrated theme.

In addition to Mr. Ruml, two other Dartmouth alumni contributed to the book. James W. Wooster Jr. '26, Executive Associate of the Commonwealth Fund, has written the highly competent and instructive chapter on Hospitals; and Charles E. Odegaard '32, Executive Director of the American Council of Learned Societies, has written a strong, and from the liberal arts viewpoint of a Dartmouth man, a pertinent and potent argument for corporate support of the Humanities.

All corporate executives, all persons connected with fund-raising for philanthropic institutions, and in a broad sense anyone who is genuinely concerned in perpetuating the American way of life will be interested in this volume and stimulated by the great potentialities involved.