Pay hefty, become part of an IIM brand

It will soon no longer be necessary to be a Nobel laureate or a pioneer in a discipline to get a gold medal at an Indian Institute of Management (IIM) to be named after oneself.

An interested party needs to only be willing to part with Rs 25 lakh and the coveted gold medal will bear the name of the individual or corporate donor for 10 years, when the scheme at IIM Ranchi becomes operational, says director M J Xavier. His officials said Bokaro Steel and JSW Steel had already sent feelers in this regard.

The donor will not just be a sponsor of the medal but the award, given to academic achievers, will be named after the donor as well.

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Traditionally, in educational institutes across the world, these are named mostly after celebrated alumni. A medal in IIM Calcutta, for example, is named after B C Roy. Another is named after Srikanth Damalra, an alumnus now no more.

"We will raise money through chair professorships and naming buildings after the donor. I think yearly just two gold medalists come from every class and the awards will be representative of excellence," said P Rameshan, director, IIM Rohtak.

He negated the idea that IIM Rohtak would come up with scheme similar to the Ranchi one.

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The 13 IIMs across the country have been working on the nuances of professional fund raising since the January workshop to educate management institutes on the methods to raise funds.

Most are in the process of setting up a separate fund raising department, staffed by professionals, at an estimated cost of Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million). The idea behind the process was to ensure the IIMs are able to build a corpus of funds.

At present, much of the money the system gets is through government grants. Income generation for most IIMs is through fees and management development programmes and executive education programmes they conduct.

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The IIMs have not been successful in getting any significant donation from outside parties and using that corpus to do things leading to academic excellence.

According to experts, this would be a first of its kind scheme for any educational institution and more so for an IIM, which have in the past taken grants from companies for meritorious students but in the form of fellowships and scholarships.

"No corporate funds medals like this. At IIM Ahmedabad, we have had a tradition of getting meritorious students fellowships of up to Rs 5 lakh from interested donors, who fund six-seven students every year," said Samir Barua, director, IIM-A.

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His institute, interestingly, has been trying to raise Rs 10 crore (Rs 100 million) for a new facility for the past year but has been unable to do so.

Also under discussion is the idea of a chair professorship to be given to an esteemed person in return for a grant to a specific department.

The second method under consideration is providing partial/electronic access to courses for companies making donations.