Colleges get more strange donations

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Quirky donations. It's hard to find a college that hasn't gotten at least one.\nAt University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill there's the gift of 26,000 comic books.\nAppalachian State University had bestowed upon it, years ago, a chair that former President Nixon once sat in.\nAnd Winthrop University in Rock Hill? It would be a tossup between a 5-foot python and more than 200 tuxedos. When you hear what happened to the tuxedos, they win.\nA drama professor sat down and wrote a musical comedy they could be used in. He called it "212 Tuxedos."\nMore donations have come into colleges and universities in December than any other time of year, most schools say, in time for end-of-year tax deductions or holiday gifts. And now that the economy is showing signs of picking up, the gifts are getting bigger and arriving more often.\n"Some of the largest gifts that I've been involved with have come between Christmas and New Year's," says Jerry Hutchens, senior associate vice chancellor for development at Appalachian State University. "We tend to get surprised at this time of the year."\nAmong the surprises are a restored Thunderbird convertible to the University of South Carolina, four cemetery plots in Virginia to Appalachian State in Boone and a sawmill and bull semen to Warren Wilson College near Asheville, N.C.\nIt happens all across the country.\nAn entertainer named "Bunny" asked to start a scholarship fund at the University of Las Vegas, Nev., for showgirls.\nAnd there are reports of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus giving a dead elephant to Oglethorpe University in Georgia in 1941 and future royalties from the song "I'll Be Home for Christmas" going to St. Lawrence University in New York.\nSometimes it's the story behind the gift that makes it interesting. A few years back, Don Locke, director of the Asheville Graduate Center at UNC Asheville, and his wife set up a scholarship at the school with Locke's winnings from the TV game show "Wheel of Fortune."\nThose are the fun stories in an otherwise serious business, in which many donations help needy students earn a degree.\nDonations have dropped in the recent past at many schools because of a troubled economy.\nIn fiscal 2001-02, donations to higher education fell by 1.2 percent, according to the Council for Aid to Education. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it was the first drop since 1988. Some experts attribute that to a change in tax laws and consider 1975 the year of the last real dip.\nThe recent decline came at a time when schools were most needy, faced with state budget cuts, rising costs and students who expect campuses to provide them with the amenities with which they grew up.\nBut in the past few months, with the stock market turning and other good economic news, colleges and universities are seeing more money.\n"We're starting to see donors give some stock again," says Laura Simic, associate vice chancellor for development at UNC Charlotte.\n"We'll finish this calendar year better than where we were last calendar year," she says.\nAnd at Davidson College, donors are setting up scholarships as holiday gifts for their parents or other relatives.\n"I'm seeing more of that kind of thing," says Kristin Hills Bradberry, Davidson's vice president for college relations.\nStudy results released earlier this month by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University show that all nonprofit fund-raisers are more optimistic about donations as the year ends. And educational fund-raisers, according to the study, are more optimistic than all others.\n"We're definitely seeing an upturn recently, within the last couple of months," says Nan Perkins, vice president for institutional advancement at Elon University at Greensboro.\n"For a while some of our loyal donors were saying, 'Come back later, I'm not comfortable making a long-term commitment right now.'\n"We're not hearing that as much. I detect a mood of optimism"