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It was great news when officials at Freed-Hardeman University in Henderson, Tenn., lined up entertainment icon Bill Cosby to speak at their 50th annual benefit dinner to raise money for student scholarships.
Then, suddenly, it wasn't such good news.
The Cosby gig, slated for Dec. 5, had been arranged months ago, before the recent resurgence in public accusations by multiple women that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted them in incidents going back decades.
Cosby, through his lawyer, has denied the allegations. He has not been charged or convicted of any crime, and probably can't be charged because statutes of limitations have long expired.
Nervously, the small Christian university pondered what to do. Officials watched the news, followed social media and counted the new allegations popping up near-daily against Cosby over the last few weeks.
On Wednesday, they announced that Cosby had been cancelled and replaced by Ben Carson, the fiery neurosurgeon from Baltimore who is considering a run for president as a Republican in 2016.
"It got to the point that (the Cosby speech) was going to detract from the event and from our main goal, which is to help students," Don Clouse, a university vice president, said Wednesday.
It was just one of numerous cancellations of performances and appearances for Cosby, 77, since the rape allegations resurfaced and brought his career comeback to a halt.
It also helped illustrate how the deepening Cosby crisis is spreading beyond Cosby's career to affect his longstanding philanthropic interests — especially in higher education — and even hurting individual schools and students.
What happens to a non-profit organization when a major benefactor gets into horrible trouble?
Do they stand by him or sever ties? Scrub his name from buildings and scholarships? Give back his money or keep it for a good cause?
So far the response from Cosby's beneficiaries and associations has been mixed.
At Temple University in Philadelphia, where Cosby sits on the board of trustees (he was an undergraduate there, is a frequent visitor, commencement speaker and attendee at basketball games), officials are sticking with him. This despite a former student's petition on Change.org (about 700 signers so far) to pressure the university to sever ties.
"What message does it send to students when an alleged serial rapist is sitting on the board of trustees," says Kerry Potter McCormick, a 2005 graduate, now an attorney in New York, who posted the petition. "It will have a chilling effect on the reporting of sexual assaults on campus."
But Temple isn't budging. "Our response (to the petition) is that Mr. Cosby continues to be a member of the Temple University Board of Trustees," says Temple spokesman Ray Betzner.
Cosby has close associations with other universities, including Spelman College in Atlanta, to which he donated $20 million, and Morehouse School of Medicine, also in Atlanta, which got $3 million. He's given $1 million to the U.S. National Slavery Museum in Fredericksburg, Va., and Camille Cosby gave $2 million to St. Frances Academy in Baltimore.
Earlier this year, right before the Cosby allegations started to mount, he and his wife were treated to many huzzahs for loaning their acclaimed African-American art collection to the Smithsonian for an exhibit at the National Museum of African Art in Washington.
None of these institutions are talking about giving back money or turning away art.
On the other hand, Berklee College of Music in Boston said in a statement Monday that it will no longer award an online scholarship in Cosby's name.
The University of Massachusetts Amherst, which earlier stood by Cosby, who received his master's and doctorate there, now has asked him to step down as honorary co-chairman of the school's ongoing $300 million fund-raising campaign. Cosby agreed, according to the Boston Globe.
And High Point University in High Point, N.C., has removed Cosby from its National Board of Advisors, despite praising him as "one of the most influential performers of our time" when it announced his appointment last July.
"In the best interest of all parties, we are temporarily removing his name from our board of advisors until all information on (the allegations) is available," says High Point spokeswoman Pamela Haynes.
Also, as the Associated Press reported this week, none of the institutions to which Cosby and his wife have donated tens of millions of dollars over the years has decided to return the money or reject a new donation. Just between 2000 and 2013, the couple's foundation has given more than $800,000 in scholarship grants, according to AP's perusal of IRS records.
But turning down big bucks has happened before: Former Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling was a major donor who got into major trouble, which greatly embarrassed his charitable interests. Soon after Sterling was caught on audio spewing racist bile, UCLA cancelled a $3 million pledge from him for kidney research, saying it conflicted with a diverse public university's core values.
"It definitely causes a problem for non-profits because for them, image is everything," says Stacy Palmer, editor of the biweekly Chronicle of Philanthropy. "It's an ethical question, not a legal question, because it raises the question of hypocrisy."
Some will argue that if the money from a troubled donor is going to a good cause and is being managed by good people at respectable non-profits, what's the problem?
After all, American philanthropy was practically built by rapacious robber barons (Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, du Ponts, etc.) who threw around pots of money in the 19th and 20th centuries in part to polish their battered images.
"Other non-profits are more worried about the image problem, especially an educational institution worried about leaving the right messages with students," says Palmer.
Each institution that has ties to Cosby has to decide whether continued association with him is "inconsistent with their core principles," says John Lippincott, president of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, which helps colleges and universities raise money, manage alumni and market themselves.
"They're going to have careful, thoughtful conversations within their leadership (asking), is this person so seriously damaged that we want no association, including no association with any money that's been given?" says Lippincott. "How is the greater good served in the circumstances?"
The robber-baron era of philanthropy, when the media were more deferential and it was easier to look away from unpleasant facts about donors, is long gone. In the era of social media and 24/7 breaking news, no one can afford to ignore scandals that are instantly known to all, Lippincott says.
"That is the world we live in now so that's part of the calculation for an institution in deciding whether to sever ties or maintain them, because whatever they decide to do it's going to be widely known."
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