Nick Cheng, a University of Toronto alum and current UTSC faculty member, describes his technique for convincing UTSC alumni to donate money to the university following their graduation: by promising to name department supplies after them.
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0:05
[Nick:] I remember one student…So he was actually in math. But he took some computer science courses in his…
0:15
I somehow knew him. And he, I remember he said to me, ‘My goal is that within one year of graduation, I’d be making a $100,000.’ This is in the 1990s. [Christine:] Yeah.
0:30
[Nick:] And so I still remember one day in May, I was preparing for my first lecture of the summer course.
0:37
He walks into my office and says, ‘I did it.’ ‘What did you do?’ ‘I just signed a contract. $100,000.’ And he had graduated the June previously.
0:47
[Christine:] Wow. [Nick:] So this is May. So, yeah. Within a year, he hit a $100,000. [Christine:] Yeah.
0:54
[Nick:] I got him to donate some of that money. (laughs) I said, ‘You know, our printer just died.’ [Christine:] Quick thinking on your part. [Nick:] ‘We need a new printer. Would you like to donate to our new printer?’ (laughs)
1:10
And we were quite fortunate. I think there was a matching program those days. And so he donated, I think, $2,000. And university matched. It’s $4,000. Nice new printer. (laughs) [Christine:] Nice, nice.
1:23
[Nick:] And I don’t know if you know about printers. Sometimes they’re given names, so you print to whatever. [Christine:] Yes, yeah. [Nick:] History at UTSC. [Christine:] Yeah. [Nick:] So there it is.
1:36
And so I said, ‘We’ll name it after you.’ (laughs) So for a while there, we had a printer named Eugene. That’s…(Nick and Christine laughing) [Christine:] I love it.
