The Founding of
The Yale Alumni Fund
They were sitting around a fireplace one chilly night early in the spring of 1890, discussing Yale and what they could do to help her.
Yale was not poor. In the last twenty years so many buildings had gone up that one would hardly recognize the old place: Farnam, Durfee, Lawrance, North Sheff, Battell Chapel, the Peabody Museum, the Sloane Laboratory and the Observatory; soon to follow were Welch, Vanderbilt and Phelps. But as President Timothy Dwight never failed to point out in his annual reports, these generous and welcome gifts of buildings only underscored Yale's need for unrestricted funds — funds that could be used for any and all University purposes, to the end that the education provided by Yale might continue to match in quality her growing physical plant; funds essential to Yale's balanced development.
And so they sat around the fire in the Fifth Avenue apartment of William B. Ross, 1852. They were members of the executive committee of the Yale Alumni Association of New York. The difference between their discussion and uncounted others like it was that these men saw something they could do—and decided to do it.
What they discussed at that meeting on March 24, 1890 was a way "to open an opportunity for contributions for the Alumni to the funds of the University." . . .
The committee's report was adopted by the New York Alumni Association, and copies of the resolutions were sent to President Dwight, who replied on June 13, 1890 that "the Corporation will very willingly comply with the request," and that the Alumni University Fund "is now opened."
From "Anything is Possible": The First 75 Years of the Yale Alumni Fund by A. J. Allen, Jr. (New Haven: Yale Alumni Fund, 1964).
Return to Alumni Fund Volunteers.
