Challenge Grant Met!
Challenge Grant Met!
Congratulations and thank you to the NMHU Foundation Board members for meeting the $50,000 challenge grant from Regents’ Chairperson Leveo Sanchez. Jay Moore’s $1,000 contribution and Bo Prieskorn’s $2,000 contribution put us over the top. Plans are being made for a ceremonial presentation of $100,000 to the School of Education for the Center for Professional Development. Publicity for this will encourage other donors to help meet our final goal of $300,000.
The Phonathon ended April 2 and the final batch of 12,000 letters for the annual drive were sent last week. More than 3,400 of those letters were aimed at the School of Education fund drive. We have had a first response to those Phonathon and annual drive efforts of over $8,000. Calls for the Phonathon were made from phones that identified us as Highlands, but that was not enough to assure scam-savvy alums who we were. We sent on average 20 to 30 letters daily verifying the solicitations and we have more than half of the pledges still to come in from the Phonathon.
The School of Education, with a very specific call, did better and on average had higher donation totals. We made an attempt of at least three phone calls to people we were unable to reach. For those we did reach we were able to confirm addresses and gather e-mail addresses to correct or add to our data base. The average amount from most in-state donors was $35. Out of state donors averaged $100 per donation. We think we have at least three more weeks of donations coming to us and other fundraising efforts for the school of education are underway.
The good news about these fund raising efforts is that we are getting positive feedback from 99% of the folks we have contacted with wonderful suggestions and powerful notes about how proud they are of the progress of Highlands under Dr. Jim Fries’ leadership. Our alums love this university — as we do.