The second complaint is that the contract stipulated a conference of some sort needed to occur at the institute by October 2018, and the resulting Catholic conference was unsatisfactory to them (it sounds like they disliked the conference's emphasis on heterosexual marriage).
It's hard to tell how reasonable these complaints are from the outside, and how much of it is donors who don't know much about universities trying to micro-manage a gift after the fact. For what it's worth the article claims the Pearsons have lost a similar donation case before.
Had they been more senior professors from lower ranked universities it probably would be close. But being junior AND lower ranked is kind of icing on the cake.
As for the conference, they had a specific mandate and didn't fulfill it. They knew they weren't going to fulfill it so they sent a request to the Pearsons asking if a conference that was already happening would suffice. A conference about hetero marriage which seems to have nothing to do with world peace. So seems like a blatant cop out.
My first thought was that they are just difficult, seeing as they have sued before, but it may just be that they are just vigilant as to how their money is used.
If you're trying to build a vibrant research institution, one of the best thing you can do is to grab promising young faculty, rather than relying on senior faculty who are harder to recruit. Getting promising junior faculty, and using the institute's resources to position them for success - more hard money, better startup packages, support for staff and postdocs, etc. is absolutely a promising way to build what the Pearsons want.
And within the band of universities we're talking about, the variance between individuals is way bigger than the difference between those institutions based on rank - which is a problematic measure at the best of times.
However, it appears to me that in most academic settings, one does not move up two or three tiers (assistant/associate professorships to chaired professorships, which are the new positions in this case) at once to a peer university at the top level, unless one makes an earth-shattering contribution, say an equivalent of the first successful self-driving car.
Apparently the Pearsons want four faculty members at the chaired professor level at this institute and two of the appointees to chaired professorships, though could be brilliant, do not yet have that level of name recognition in the field.
I believe the Pearsons argument is valid in this case unless the field’s criteria for promotion is very different from science, engineering, and computer science. What do you think?
Rankings across every discipline will be different and vary based on the source but that's a decent estimate. The article notes one source has Chicago at #3 and Columbia at #5, with NYU at #30.
No Federal Judge is going to accept the Pearson's argument that Columbia is an obviously far inferior school. This argument would mean that the only acceptable sources of faculty would be Princeton, Harvard, Chicago and Yale (tied for 3rd with Chicago). Maybe they would accept Oxford and Cambridge as additional acceptable sources?
The overall complaint gives the sense that the Pearson's are exacting and highly litigious. Exacting on a $100MM donation is understandable, filing suit this fast is rather absurd. But both sides have lots of money for both academic research and lawyers so it will be entertaining at least.
I've made directed donations before. If I found out that the donation to my school was spent on football helmets instead of the scholarship fund, I'd be very upset.
If the idea for the Institute had been the universities, and they were soliciting donors to fund it, and Pearson was one of multiple donors, sure that would qualify as a gift, but as the article is written, this was a very different beast.
UChicago didn't have to accept it. They chose to accept it, with the associated terms and conditions. The way the article reads, it looks like there's blame to go around, but possibly more to UChicago than Pearsons.
Normally when you make a tax-deductible charitable gift, the organization you donated to will send you a letter documenting your gift and stating that no goods or services were provided in exchange for the gift:
https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1771.pdf
The IRS might review that documentation as part of a tax audit. If it's inaccurate, it could conceivably affect the tax status of the organization that issued the acknowledgement letter.
The IRS can also revoke the 501(c)(3) designation of an organization if it concludes that the organization is inappropriately providing benefits to its donors. For example, it might require the organization to be reclassified under a different tax-exempt status where donations are not automatically treated as tax-deductible charitable contributions.
A subtle thing that might be bothering you is that people can make extremely specific charitable gifts to pursue extremely specific goals, and those can still be treated as tax-deductible. For example, you could donate to create a scholarship with very detailed eligibility requirements (often, donors to schools have created scholarships for students with very similar life circumstances to the donors' own). But, there is still a requirement that can't claim a deduction for the amount of a donation for which you personally receive goods or services with a market value as a quid pro quo, except to the extent the donation exceeds that market value.
I'm not a lawyer or accountant and this is not tax or legal advice.
When I joined the Bronx Zoo as a member, I gave them $200 and received some benefits in consideration. Those benefits are valued at $140, so I am able to deduct $60 from my income.
This is a first though, I didn't know you could take it back.