The Washington Post reported Sunday on a unique fundraising program that is raising steady bucks for a number of nonprofits through a form of gambling that was actually approved by the supreme court as "not" gambling (the element of chance is absent). It's called bingo but it's done through machines that are slot-like in that the action happens on a screen and cash is the ultimate prize. More interesting to me is how little money is made for the nonprofit -- about 10-20% if I am calculating correctly.

You know, the only thing wrong with tainted money is there tain't enough of it. And really, as many of these groups recognize, 10-20% of $1.00 is more than $0.

As I have followed here, Senator Grassley has been poking around in the college world suggesting that the mega-endowed schools ought to be doing more with their endowments. He even has floated the idea that large college endowments spend 5% of their earnings annually mirroring the requirements of private foundations (in order to maintain their nonprofit tax status).

In the race to avoid legislation (not necessarily the race to be better), Thursday's 2-21-08 Wall Street Journal reported that Stanford will "no longer require parents earning less that $100,000 to pay tuition. It said it also will not ask families earning below $60,000 to contribute at all to the cost of their child’s education, including expenses for room and board."

The same article noted that Harvard offers a similar package to Stanford for those earning below $60,000 plus students from families earning up to $180,000 pay 10% or less of income. Dartmouth has free tuition for students earning less that $75,000 a year. The University of Pennsylvania is offering loan-free aid packages to students with families under $100,000 annual income and Yale is giving everything to those families earning less than $60,000 and for those with incomes of between $60,000 and $120,000 the cost is 1-10% of family income. Families earning more than $120,000 pay about 10% of income (kinda like tithing).

So, have these schools avoided Grassley dreaded intentions?

As for me, I am not convinced by the college's offerings. For one thing, just how many students do any of these colleges admit that meet these criteria. These offerings look good on paper but what will this really cost the schools -- even 1/2% annually from the endowments? I think we must applaud the appearance but let's look closer at the real impact. Have the colleges just found a clever way to stave off regulation and continue to amass wealth -- just like their graduates?