Class of '89 Fundraising Project
Check back
here for information on the class fundraising project as well as meeting minutes
from fundraising committee meetings.
Minutes are available here.
Here’s a letter from Paul Dabbar explaining the project:
Dear classmates,
As many of you who were
at the 15 year reunion already know, we are about to start our first class
fundraising project. Ingar solicited volunteers
for a class fundraising committee in January, and the class officers appointed
a committee from the group that volunteered. They asked me to chair the Fundraising
Committee (the "FC"), and the
other voting members are Ingar Grev, Matt Sandoval, Ellen Gardner, Jim Maxfield, Joe
Fagan, Mike Harnett, Stephen Wistner, Mark Kapral, Michelle La Duca, and Matt Sturges.
The long lag time from
Shipmate input to Shipmate magazine distribution makes it a very untimely method
of communication to the class, so we plan to use multiple communication means to have a
dialogue with the class, and execute the fundraising. In terms of
communications, we plan to use Shipmate, the '89 listserve,
the '89 web site, and the USNA AA mailing and email list of our class.
VERY IMPORTANT, in order for us and the USNA AA to
have complete and up to date contact information, please, simply go to the
Alumni Only section at www.usna.com, login,
and click on the top button: Update Your
Profile.
Your e-mail address is
safe here -- only the Class President has access to it, and it will only be
used for official communications.
The FC has had several
meetings since early Feb. At the first meeting we determined and voted
upon the composition of the FC and the decision making process of the
FC. Minutes will be taken of the
FC meetings by the FC Secretary, Jim Maxfield, and
posted on the '89 website. The FC is
planning to do the following things with the input of the class officers and
the class as a whole: identification of a list of possible projects, solicit
feedback from the class via the '89 website (please keep checking this site),
and aid in selecting the project to be undertaken by our fundraising, determination
of the fund raising goal amount, communications with USNA AA, communications
with the Class, and execution of the fundraising. We also had a FC
meeting with the USNA AA to review our interaction with the Association
regarding the project.
We will hopefully, with
the input of the whole class, narrow down on a specific class project by
April-May, and launch the fundraising soon thereafter.
This fundraising is a
great opportunity for the class as a whole to support the Academy and current
and future midshipmen. There are as many individual reasons why each of would
like to contribute as there are people in our class. For me and many other
classmates I have talked to, it gives an opportunity to give back to the
institution which for many provided that launching pad for our professional
lives 20 years ago on I-day 1985 (has it been twenty years!). I know we all paid back the investment the
Many of our undergraduate
school peers, like Penn, Yale, and Harvard, have significant endowments (some
in the billions of dollars), which are used to supplement their other revenue
methods (i.e. tuition for them), to support world class programs. Many of you donate yearly to the unrestricted
fund, but this is an opportunity for us as a class to specifically fund a
project that we can target to one area that will help achieve the school's goal
of being a center of excellence in academics, leadership & character
development, and athletics. For those who normally do not contribute, this is
an opportunity to help our school accomplish a specific goal, and for those who
have contributed in the past, it is an opportunity to step up for a larger
amount for a specific project.
It will be important that
we get significant support from the whole class in order to be successful. I know we can do it; we made it through Heintz Linz!!!