College officials often look at gifts intended for a specific purpose and think, “Well, I have more important purposes and ought to be able to redirect some of that money.” Several years ago, philanthropy expert Martin Morse Wooster (among his books is Great Philanthropic Mistakes) wrote about this problem for the Pope Center and in this week’s Clarion Call, he examines a donor intent case that has turned out remarkably well.

It involves Trinity College, where investor Shelby Cullom Davis established an endowment that was to be used only for the support of the “Shelby Cullom Davis Professorship of American Business and Economic Enterprise.” At the outset, Davis was adamant that there were to be “no exceptions” when the president of the college suggested a squishy wording that would have allowed the school to divert money away from the Davis professorship and, almost inevitably, into uses that would not have aligned with Davis’s staunch free market thinking.

In 1981, Gerald A. Gunderson was appointed to that professorship, which he holds to this day.

In time, however, Davis began to loosen his grip and Trinity’s new president, James F. Jones, Jr. began trying to divert money from the endowment into his own preferred uses. That led to strife between the two. Jones did what he wanted, and Davis counter-attacked by getting the Connecticut Attorney General’s office involved. Perhaps surprisingly, the AG’s office that oversees charities sided with the Davis Endowment. The school was required to return more than $190,000 to the endowment. The ending gets happier still — Jones pushed too far for his plan to transform the college (including a provision that fraternities and sororities must be of mixed gender, no more than 55 percent men or women) and was ousted before his contract expired.

All of this has turned out well for Trinity. Wooster writes, “The victory for donor intent has spurred alumni giving. For their 25th anniversary, the Trinity College Class of 1990 is establishing ‘The Alumni Fund for Trinity College,’ a donor-advised fund independent of the college. The fund is established in honor of Gerald Gunderson, who the class says, ‘has labored tirelessly — and at personal expense — to ensure that the donor’s intent of the Davis Endowment was respected at Trinity College.’”

It’s too bad that we have to celebrate a victory for donor intent, but like the rule of law generally, it has come under attack by people who have little regard for contracts and property rights. This is a win to savor.