All-School Gift raises record-high amount

The 2011 All-School Gift Committee met its overall goal of 1,861 student donors last Monday, May 16, earning a matching gift of $223,000 from the President's Advisory Council (PAC).

Along with the $15,000 matching gift toward sustainability, which was donated by an anonymous alumna when the Class of 2011 met its own 80 percent participation goal last week, and the approximately $12,000 already raised by the student body, the 2011 All-School Gift currently totals approximately $250,000, the largest student-driven gift in Vassar's history. The money will support Vassar's Annual Fund, an unrestricted fund that serves every aspect of the College.

Students first learned of PAC's $223,000 matching gift on Tuesday morning, when PAC Co-Chairs Beth Burnam '77 and James Kloppenburg '77 delivered the news in an all-campus email. PAC had originally promised a matching gift of $150,000 when the 2011 All-School Gift was first announced in February, but later exceeded their goal. "The larger gift was not a conscious decision to increase the goal," wrote Associate Vice President for Principal Gifts and Associate Campaign Director Jennifer Sachs Dahnert in an emailed statement. "We simply decided to let their cumulative additions over the last year keep growing." According to Burnam and Kloppenburg, members of PAC will continue to donate to the 2011 All-School Gift until the end of the fiscal year on June 30, whereupon PAC's total contribution will be announced.

PAC's matching gift is intended to celebrate the achievements of the Classes of 2011-2014, whose All-School Gift—the first of its kind—was designed to turn the tides of student giving. In a speech at the President's Reception on Tuesday evening, Kloppenburg noted that Vassar lagged far behind peer institutions in giving by young alumnae/i; whereas peers average 60 percent annually in young alumnae/i participation, he said, Vassar averages only 40 percent annually. Planners of the gift hope that it will foster a spirit of giving amongst current students that will continue even after they have graduated. "[I]t doesn't matter how much people start giving, but the largest and best donors over time, the most committed donors that really any college or university needs…are people who give consistently," said Kloppenburg in an April interview with The Miscellany News. (See "President's Advisory Council encourages giving," 04.21.11) "So the concept of PAC's challenge grant to the students was to broaden participation and to broaden participation now."

PAC's contribution of $223,000 makes for a momentous gift in a momentous year for the College: its sesquicentennial. Indeed, the 2011 All-School Gift was designed with Vassar's 150-year history in mind. The overall participation goal of 1861 student donors references the year of the College's founding, while PAC's originally proposed matching gift of $150,000 gave $1000 for each year of Vassar's history.

The Gift Committee sought to celebrate Vassar's history in a somewhat more significant sense with a gift to the Annual Fund, a critical source of funding to the College. "We felt that the most meaningful and most appreciated gift that we could give to the College would be one that could go the furthest and support students today," wrote the Gift Committee in a statement on its website. "The Annual Fund truly makes Vassar the place it is today. Without its support, our Vassar experience would literally not exist." At the President's Reception on Tuesday, Kloppenburg highlighted just one significant and far-reaching function of the Annual Fund: partially financing the cost of a Vassar education, which tuition supports for only 53 percent of the academic year.

The unrestricted nature of the Annual Fund is particularly appropriate for a gift designed to encourage giving from young alumnae/i, according to Associate Director of the Annual Fund Priscilla Weaver. Although a gift to the fund may be small, she explained, it nevertheless contributes to a larger effort. "Most students and young alums think they can't afford to give back until they get ‘that big job,'" she wrote. "With this project, we hope students have learned that gifts at every level make a difference and by coming together to support a cause they can make a huge impact."

The 2011 All-School Gift not only seeks to leave a legacy of giving, but also a legacy of the Class of 2011's commitment to sustainability, a cause they have prioritized over the course of this last year. As part of the gift, a new sustainability designation, or "bucket" was added to the Annual Fund in February of this year. Designations allow donors to put aside their contributions for specific causes; the Sustainability Bucket is the first to be created since designations were originally added to the Annual Fund in 1995, a significant achievement. In creating this new designation for the Annual Fund, seniors have ranked sustainability among other key concerns of the college, including campus preservation, residential life, and faculty salaries and research. Wrote co-Chair of the 2011 All-School Gift Committee Aaron Grober in an emailed statement, "This is not only an opportunity to leave an important legacy as a class that is passionate about campus sustainability, but an opportunity for the college to recognize sustainability as a priority."