[转帖]These MBAs Also Give

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With either cash or time, many members of the class of '92 have been generous in their charitable activities

After Aneel Pandey sold his company, Transcender, in 2000, he started surveying the charitable-giving landscape. He had donated primarily to his church in the past, but now he wanted to do something on a broader, grander scale. In 2002, the Tennessee resident and Vanderbilt alum chose a cause that raised some eyebrows: the Tennessee Student Scholarship Lottery.  

Voters in Tennessee were being asked to vote on whether the state should have a lottery. Pandey believed that Tennessee's low education scores warranted the annual $300 million a lottery could add to state-education coffers. He also realized its passing was far from guaranteed. Alabama, another historically conservative state, had recently failed to pass a similar initiative.

So, Pandey donated $30,000 to fund a pro-lottery commercial, a satirical take-off of Saturday Night Live's "Church Lady" skit that addressed the concerns of those opposed to the lottery. The spot generated such controversy before it even aired that Pandey pulled it. Still, he says, the ad caused much heated debate and media coverage, and he believes $30,000 was a small price to pay for increasing the lottery's chance of passing -- which it did.

HOURS PER MONTH.  Pandey is just one of the members of the Class of 1992 who contributed to charity on a grand scale in 2002, according to BusinessWeek's first-ever survey of alums. One of the biggest givers is Harvard's Gerald Chertavian, who donated $500,000 and committed 10 years of his working life to an inner-city school for young adults that he founded when his technology company was purchased.

Few alums have the means for such large-scale giving, and the economic downturn has made many of them opt to give their time exclusively. The Class of '92 donated more than 7,000 volunteer hours each month in 2002. On average, those who volunteered did so seven hours a month.

A popular way to serve, especially for those who have taken time off to raise a family, was joining a nonprofit board. "Running a nonprofit is really similar to running a small business. I wouldn't be half as valuable on the board without my MBA," says Cornell's Johnson School alum Paige Johnson Roth, who served on the board of Oregon's Friends of the Trees.

GIFTS TO SCHOOL.  Others, like John Elliott, owner of New York City-based Web Marketing Associates, have melded their professional and volunteer lives. The University of Chicago alum, an avid runner, donates 20-plus hours each month to creating, managing, and hosting interactive Web sites that organize runners to raise funds for St. Jude Children's Hospital and for the Achilles Track club, which provides partners to assist disabled marathon aspirants.

Giving back to their almas mater is a favorite choice of MBAs. Respondents from the University of California at Berkeley's Haas School were the most generous to their B-school, giving on average $6,000. Close behind were graduates of Emory's Goizueta School of Business, MIT's Sloan School of Management, Harvard Business School, and Wharton. On average, members of the class of '92 gave $953 to their B-schools.

They were even more generous with their undergraduate schools, with the average donation being $1,046. Many said they credited their undergraduate education with giving them necessary life skills, and hence the larger donations. "My undergraduate education shaped who I am today," says Kellogg's Ilene Laderman. "Without it I don't think I could have put my Kellogg skills to their optimum use."

Large numbers of alums also noted that although many B-schoolers graduate indebted, their MBA gives them a certain ability to pay off that debt, an ability that a debt-strapped undergrad well might not have. The class of '92 shows that MBAs -- often accused of being all about getting and spending -- are about giving as well.


By Kate Hazelwood in New York