36.29 Gifts; golf course.

(1) All gifts, grants, and bequests for the benefit or advantage of the system or any of its institutions, departments, or facilities or to provide any means of instruction, illustration, or knowledge in connection therewith, whether made to trustees or otherwise, shall be valid notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter except as otherwise provided in this subsection and shall be executed and enforced according to the provisions of the instrument making the same, including all provisions and directions in any such instrument for accumulation of the income of any fund or rents and profits of any real estate without being subject to the limitations and restrictions provided by law in other cases; but no such income accumulation shall be allowed to produce a fund more than 20 times as great as that originally given. No investment of the funds of such gifts, grants, or bequests shall knowingly be made in any company, corporation, subsidiary, or affiliate that practices or condones through its actions discrimination on the basis of race, religion, color, creed, or sex. Except as otherwise provided in this section, the board may invest not to exceed 85 percent of trust funds held and administered by the board in common stocks. This subsection does not apply to a gift, grant, or bequest that the board declines to accept or that the board is not authorized to accept under this section.

(2) All gifts, grants, or bequests under sub. (1) may be made to the board, the president, a chancellor, or any officer, or to any person as trustee, or may be charged upon any personal representative, trustee, heir, devisee, or legatee, or made in any other manner indicating an intention to create a trust, and may be made as well for the benefit of the system or any of its institutions, colleges, schools, departments, or facilities to provide any means of instruction, illustration, or knowledge in connection therewith, or for the benefit of any students or any class or group of students whether by way of scholarship, fellowship, or otherwise, or whether for the benefit of students or any class or group of students in any course, subcourse, special course, postgraduate course, summer school or teachers course, oratorical or debating course, laboratory, shop, lectureship, drill, gymnasium or any other like division or department of study, experiment, research, observation, travel, or mental or physical improvement in any manner connected with the system, or to provide for the voluntary retirement of any of the faculty.

(3) It shall not be necessary for a gift, grant, devise or bequest to exactly or particularly describe the members of a class or group of students intended to be the beneficiaries, but it shall be sufficient to describe the class or group. In such case, the board shall divide, graduate or otherwise categorize the students into such classes or groups as are necessary to select and determine those students belonging to the class or group intended.

(4) Any grant, contract, gift, endowment, trust or segregated funds bequeathed or assigned to an institution or its component parts for any purpose whatsoever shall not be commingled or reassigned.

(5)

(a) Except as provided in par. (b), the board may not acquire or make a commitment to operate any golf course not owned by the board prior to July 2, 1983, without specific authorization by the legislature.

(b) Notwithstanding s. 20.924 (1), the board may accept a gift of a golf course for the University of Wisconsin-Madison if no general purpose revenues are used in the acquisition, development or operation of that golf course.

(6) The board may not accept any gift, grant or bequest of real property with a value in excess of $150,000 except as provided in s. 13.48 (2) (b) 1m.

(7) The board may not accept any gift, grant or bequest of a building or structure that is constructed for the benefit of the system or any institution unless acceptance is first approved by the building commission, or unless the plans and specifications for the building or structure are reviewed and approved by the department of administration and the building or structure is inspected as provided in s. 16.85 (12).

(8) This section does not apply to a private gift or grant made to the office of educational opportunity.

History: 1973 c. 335; 1983 a. 27, 192; 1987 a. 27; 1989 a. 31; 1991 a. 39; 1995 a. 243; 2001 a. 102; 2003 a. 264; 2011 a. 32; 2015 a. 55.

The university cannot accept trust funds that are for an unlawful purpose, and the expenditure of trust funds must comply with special and general laws. Execution of a trust, whether restricted or unrestricted funds are involved, must be in a lawful manner not in conflict with other express statutes. 62 Atty. Gen. 4.

Student loan funds established by gift for the benefit of students are trust funds. 62 Atty. Gen. 109.

Sub. (1), which prohibits investment of university funds in companies that practice or condone discrimination, is not unconstitutional. 67 Atty. Gen. 20.

Constitutionality of the no discrimination clause regulating University of Wisconsin investments. Guynn, 1978 WLR 1059.