Centre News

An anonymous donor recently issued a “Second Mile” challenge
to Centre alumni. For every gift an alum makes between now
and June 30, the donor will match that amount two-to-one.

With the highly successful “One Million Reasons to Give” challenge in the rearview mirror, Centre alumni now have a chance to meet the “Second Mile” challenge for the Centre Fund. On Thursday, April 29, Richard Trollinger, vice president for college relations, announced that the same anonymous donor who issued the “One Million Reasons to Give” challenge was so inspired by the response of the 2,713 alumni who made new or increased gifts that he wanted to do something equally compelling to help maintain that momentum through the end of the year on June 30.

For the original challenge, the donor promised to make a $750,000 gift if alumni would contribute $250,000 in new or increased gifts by June 30.

The terms of the “Second Mile” challenge are very straightforward. According to Trollinger, the donor will match every gift from Centre alumni between now and June 30 on a two-to-one basis, regardless of the size of the gift. With alumni participation in annual giving currently at 50 percent, the hope is that this challenge will encourage alumni who haven’t yet made their gift to the Centre Fund to do so prior to June 30 and help Centre reach 60 percent alumni participation and be in contention for the number one spot in alumni giving.

“Our anonymous donor wanted to help us communicate the message that every gift is vitally important to sustaining the work of the College,” said Trollinger.

Shawn Lyons ’81, associate vice president for development and alumni affairs, added, “We’re optimistic that this challenge will create the same kind of generous response from alumni that we saw to the first challenge.”

Lyons added that challenges like this one are helpful because they provide an extra incentive for alumni to give, but that the main reason alumni give remains their support for Centre’s mission.

“We know that our traditionally high levels of alumni support are important to prospective students, the various college rankings and others who look for some objective ways to measure alumni satisfaction with their education. We also know that many of our alumni take great pride in those rankings, but I think at the heart of it, most alumni give because they know their gifts really do make a difference to individual students. This challenge means that a $100 gift that would have provided financial aid to a worthy student or helped build the library collection or helped a student study overseas will now have a $300 impact. Meeting the challenge is important, but what is really important is that by meeting the challenge, our alumni are going to be helping transform the lives of our students.”