One thing to suggest to these successful persons is this: Those of you who give back, by sponsoring university scholarships, should sponsor one as a prize for a chess tournament. This would help your favorite school.
There would be no entry fee, but all players would attend a presentation by the school. Then they would compete at their local high schools during their junior year, and the winners would compete at the university during the summer, when dormitory rooms are available.
The winner would win a full scholarship. The rest would get a view of the campus and a taste of the cafeteria food just before making a major life decision.
Even if the football team stinks, they would have a dynamite chess team.
Interesting idea, but would the scholarship be transferable? Multitalented young scholars have indeed won full chess scholarships to Universities only to use them as “resume padding” to be to accepted at a different University. If I were going to be such a generous donor, I would limit this event to juniors and seniors because junior high school is an awful long time to have to be committed to using the scholarship if you won it. Yes, entering my version of this tournament would impose a binding contract on the winner to attend the institution that awarded the scholarship. No resume padder would bother to enter and the winner might indeed help build the chess team at the University. Current scholarships are non-transferable and my stipulation would make the achievement of winning the tournament non-transferable as well.
If they win a four year scholarship and they turn it down, the scholarship would go to the next place finisher.
It is so much fun to say how we will spend money we don’t have.