"Annuity-Gifts"

Directors of college endowment campaigns are developing a technique that rivals the proverbial versatility of the cat-killing profession. There are now a score of ingenious ruses for extricating funds from fat pockets among alumni and benevolent friends-class insurance, class honor rolls, winning football teams, and (old but infallible) honorary degrees. Last week, headquarters of the Hampton-Tuskegee Endowment Fund uncovered a new trick, successfully worked upon Donor George Eastman, Rochester, N. Y., camera man.

Mr. Eastman had offered two of the five millions sought, on condition that the remaining three millions be found before 1926. The Hampton-Tuskegeeites countered with a proposal that the fifth million be allowed to take the form of "annuity gifts"--sums (over $5,000) which would be turned over to the fund as its property but upon which interest (5% to 8%) would be paid back to the donors during their lifetimes.

Attractions of the scheme: the interest received by donors is free of income tax until its aggregate equals the principal of the gift; income to the donor is guaranteed by the entire resources of the recipient institution; the institution enjoys an immediate increase in capital, especially desirable in contingencies such as the Eastman offer above cited; likely donors may be induced, and given opportunity, to make bequests, and see their fruits, before dying.

Said Fund-Chairman Clarence H. Kelsey: "The general trend in making gifts to educational institutions is more and more toward doing so during the lifetime of the giver rather than to make such bequests in a will. In studying the recent benefactions of John D. Rockefeller Jr., Mr. Eastman, James B. Duke and many others, it will be found that these philanthropists are particularly interested in placing their gifts in the hands of their beneficiaries during their lifetime."