It’s no small feat convincing graduating seniors to donate money in the midst of a poor job market. Yet, the Class of 2010 Fund did just that.
“It’s tough for young people to make commitments when there’s a lot of uncertainty,” Ben Jarrett, Assistant Director in the Office of Advancement, said. “But, we know how lucky we are at Georgetown to have such dedicated students.”
When Vox last checked in on the Class of 2010 Fund in early April, a quarter of the senior class had donated approximately $17,000 total. The final numbers, however, show a late-semester surge. With a 67% participation rate, the Class of 2010 ultimately donated $37,793 to the University.
The Fund’s numbers mark three-year highs in both donation amount and participation rate; the Class of 2010 raised about $15,000 more than the Class of 2009, while convincing 11% more of its senior class to donate.
Lauren Huddleston, Class of 2010 Fund Co-Chair, suggested that on-campus events, such as a senior toast in Riggs Library with President John DeGioia and a semi-formal held in the Hariri building, helped boost the Fund.
“We tried to market ourselves and put ourselves in any event where seniors would be,” Huddleston said. “We tried to appeal to a cross-section of our class.”
While $22,000 of the Fund will go to towards the 1789 Scholarship Imperative and the Georgetown Fund, the remaining monies will be split among specific departments or funds chosen by each donor. According to Jarrett, the next-highest donation choices were academic departments, student groups, and athletic programs.
Curious about how the Class of 2010 compares to previous classes? We’ve got the charts after the jump.
Aided by the University’s ongoing efforts to raise funds for the 1789 Scholarship Imperative, young alumni donations increased by 25 percent in the past year.
The Office of Advancement saw a similar jump in the number of young alumni donors, who are defined as members of the five most-recently graduated classes. Nearly 30 percent more students donated compared to the 2009 fiscal year.
“A lot of folks are rallying behind the Scholarship Imperative,” Assistant Director of Advancement Benjamin Jarrett said.
More than a quarter of the young alumni donor base, which the Office of Advancement defines as “solicitable alumni,” gave gifts to the University last year. The Class of 2008 led the pack with a 30 percent participation rate, however, no class fell below the 24 percent mark.
We know you’ve all been waiting on the edge of your seats with one question burning deep into the backs of your minds: What recently graduated class raised the most young alumni donations this past year?
As of this morning—which is the last day of the 2010 fiscal year, in case you didn’t mark your calendars—the Class of 2008 leads the pack with 421 gifts to the University. (The Class of 2005 closely trails them with 401 gifts, while none of the other three most recently graduated classes cracked 380 gifts.)
“This has been a pretty good year for alumni giving, so far,” Assistant Director of Advancement Benjamin Jarrett said. “It looks like we’ll be on track to have our best year ever in terms of the number of gifts coming in from the first five years out of college.”
Alumni who wish to make a last-minute donation to the University can do so through the Georgetown Fund’s website. According to Jarrett, over 8,500 alumni have already donated the Georgetown Fund and 1789 Scholarship Initiative, which aims to raise $500 million for undergraduate scholarships by 2014.
Leaders from all six advisory boards voted against creating the GUSAFund at a Funding Board meeting today, but the Finance and Appropriations Committee will still be able to pass the GUSA Fund through the Funding Board without their approval.
At the meeting, advisory board leaders voiced concerns that GUSA would not have the knowledge to run the GUSA Fund. They asked what kind of experience the GUSA Fund members would have, how GUSA would know if events were duplicities of events that already existed, and how the GUSA Fund would handle clubs that went over budget.
GUSA senators also learned at the meeting that the Funding Board has $51,412 in reserve, unlike $69,687 like they had previously believed. The GUSA Fund plans to draw $30,000 from that reserve, meaning the GUSA Fund will now require more than half.
GUSA Speaker Adam Talbot (COL ’12—LXR) said the GUSA executive will be looking for GUSA fund members who can bring both funding experience and club management experience. In regards to event duplicities, Finance and Appropriations Chair Nick Troiano (COL ’11—Village A, A-D) replied that because of access to benefits, advisory boards would still need to approve official club-sponsored events before the GUSA Fund could allocate funds.
Advisory board members suggested this would make an already tedious process even more bureaucratic.
“Clubs are looking for funds, and they’re willing to jump through hoops to get it,” GUSA Chief of Staff Tim Swenson replied. “While we’re trying to make it as streamlined as possible …. this is our way of addressing that temporarily.” [Edited at 10:21 p.m.]
After years of clashingwithSAC and bandying about the possibility of GUSA-sponsored club funding, the GUSA Senate passed a bill yesterday afternoon creating a GUSA Fund which will allow GUSA to provide an alternative mode of funding for clubs.
Longtime SAC-criticNick Troiano (COL ’11—Village A A-D) introduced the bill, which would create “the Fund” to “[serve] as a resource for the Georgetown community by co-sponsoring events and activities that are initiated by or benefit students.”
The Fund will consist of five members nominated by GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) and confirmed by the Senate. The Fund will meet once a week to consider applications for funds received through an online application.
The Fund will be able up to $500 per organization, event or initiative, but the Senate must approve any requested allocation over $500. The Fund will only be able to give money to groups that have already been granted access to benefits through SAC, and organizations receiving money from the Fund will have to “make it known” that GUSA has co-sponsored the event.
Where will money for the Fund be coming from? According to Troiano, GUSA will seek to gain about $30,000 from the Funding Board’s $69,000 surplus.
Troiano said the Fund should be ready to allocate funding by December or the start of next semester.
SPECIAL ELECTION RESULTS: The election commission ran a successful special election that culminated in the election of the following senators:
Townhouses: Matthew Ginsberg with 35 votes
Harbin 6-9: Clara Gustafson with 46 votes
Copley: Shaalin Parekh with 52 votes
Village A E-H: Nolan Johnson with 15 votes
The only apparent glitch was that students in the districts received “about three emails or so” for ballots because of a problem with Hoyamail, according to the election commissioners. Nick Troiano (COL ’11—Village A A-D) thanked the election commissioners for running such an impressive election, compared to last year’s chaotic special elections.
The election commissioners noted there were far more candidates per capita for the special election than the actual election. The Harbin seat had nine candidates, the Copley seat had seven candidates, the Townhouses seat had five candidates, and the Village A seat had three candidates. They said in the normal election, there were 35 candidates running for 34 seats, whereas in this election, there were 24 candidates running for four seats.
GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) attributed the peak in interest to run for GUSA Senate to the timing of the elections.
“You have to have the Senate in place at a certain time, and I think students don’t have their lives together until a certain time,” Angert said. “I think this was a very good indicator of why there wasn’t a good turnout [of candidates] at the start and why there was a good turnout now. There wasn’t any additional advertisement.”
The new senators agreed with Angert’s reasoning and added that the seats seemed more accessible because no one had the elections “wrapped up.”
GEORGETOWN FUND PLANS: Angert told the Senate there was “nothing super new to report on,” but the senators wanted to hear more about the executive’s plans for the proposed GUSA Georgetown Fund. Angert said the current plans are only a rough outline that have not yet been sent to the Finances and Appropriations Committee, but the Senate discussed several aspects of the potential Georgetown Fund.
Trying to get college seniors to give to their soon-to-be alma mater during one of the worst recessions in recent history is no small task. So how did Georgetown’s Class of 2009 senior class fundraising committee do?
Well, when we checked in with them in April, they had about $13,000 in the coffers and 32% of the class had donated. The giving period ended on June 30th, and the final total for the Class of 2009 is $22,360.52, with 55% of the class participating, according to Class of 2009 Fund co-Chair Chloe Waddington (SFS ’09).
The class of 2009 raised about $12,000 less than the class of 2008 donated (their total was $34,273), but had the exact same participation rate.
This year, seniors were able to individually chose a department or fund they wanted to put their donation towards. According to Waddington, the top three choices were the Georgetown Fund, a general fund for scholarships, faculty retention and student life, Athletic and the Center for Social Justice (68% of seniors who donated gave to the Georgetown Fund, 8% picked Athletics and 3% picked CSJ).
How does the class of 2009 stack up against past senior classes? We’ve got the full stats for the past 15 years and more info about how this year’s fundraising campaign went after the jump!
YouTube commenter cleverness: “Fine, I’ll give, but promise you’ll use the money for a better camera”
How’s the senior class doing philanthropy-wise? Vox checked in with Class of 2009 Fund co-Chairs Kenneth Gillette (COL ’09) and Chloe Waddington (SFS ’09) for an update:
The senior class currently has a 32% give rate, much higher than where the class of 2008 was this time last year (13%) and already a bit higher than the overall average for alumni giving (28%) according to Gillette and Waddington. A little more than $13,000 has been donated so far, for an average gift of $27 per person.
This is the first year the senior class gift has moved entirely away from a tangible gift (i.e. a lamppost) and given seniors the choice of donating to either to the general Georgetown Fund or to the organization of their choice. So far 70% have chosen the Georgetown Fund. Other popular recipients have been the men’s basketball team, the Center for Social Justice and the Georgetown Scholarship Program.
Their goal is to have 65% of the Senior class donate. If they make it, an anonymous alumni donor will add $10,000 to the class’s donation total. Last year’s class came close to that, with 55% giving for a total of $34,273.
Gillette and Waddington are optimistic about meeting their goal, but admitted the recession has made it more difficult to fundraise—as Waddington said, “One of the things we hear most often is ‘Why are you asking me to give when I don’t have a job?’”
How is GUSA doing on this year’s approval of the budget? I’m glad you asked. Here’s how Matt Wagner (SFS ’11) broke it down to the Senate yesterday.
“We have a budget the Senate voted ‘no’ on, and no new budget from the Funding Board, [the group of seven Senators and six heads of other student groups that creates the budget every year]. We either approve a budget on Wednesday, or we don’t.
What happens if the year ends and the Senate does not approve a budget? I talked to Erika Cohen-Derr, and she said there are two possibilities. A) clubs simply don’t get a budget from us, period, and that money is saved and rolled over into next year. That means a third of the funding for some of these groups is gone. B) administrators, namely Erika and her second-in-command Bill McCoy, give these student groups whatever budget they deem appropriate because the student government they over see failed to do that.
What’s gotten our favorite student bureaucrats into this mess? It’s a “huge conspiracy,” according to Senator Johnny Solis (SFS ’11). Check out the full story after the jump.
Vox Populi is the staff blog of the Georgetown Voice, Georgetown University's weekly newsmagazine. Opinions expressed in posts are those of their author alone unless otherwise stated.
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