The University is asking seniors for one more thing before graduation in May: financial donations.
The Senior Fund Committee promotes and encourages seniors throughout campus to donate money for the future of their school, so that talented incoming freshman in need of financial aid can enroll at Tufts.
"[The Senior Fund] is an opportunity for everyone to be a philanthropist, at any level, to enjoy giving back, to know that small gifts make a difference," Betsey Jay, University Director of Advancement Communications and Donor Relations said. "Tuition only covers ... 80 percent of the real cost of a Tufts education. Every student at Tufts is subsidized by generous alumni."
At Tufts, senior participation in the Senior Fund program has risen over recent years, up 10 percent in two years to 61 percent of the class now donating to Tufts, according to the Tufts University Advancement Office.
Students are offered options on how they can choose to donate money before graduation. Approximately half of the donors make the gift in honor of a professor or counselor who had a particular impact on them. Other students designate their money to go straight to the undergraduate financial aid office.
A small group, according to the University Advancement Office, will ask for their funds to go toward specific projects on campus.
"The average gift size [for seniors] is about $13, but again, the the goal is participation," Jay said.
University President Larry Bacow and his wife, Adele Fleet Bacow, have also enticed seniors to give through a series of events and dinners with seniors and alumni as the honored guests.
"[These dinners] give seniors an opportunity to meet Tufts alumni, and help provide a bridge from campus life to post-graduation life," University administrative assistant, Kathleen Kiernan, said.
At the Bacows' dinners, graduating seniors are given an opportunity to share their thoughts about their Tufts education as a whole. At the end of the dinners students receive a "field guide" about alumni association giving.
But administrators avoid mentioning donations during the senior banquets. "At no time during the dinner are students asked to donate to Tufts," Jay said.
Tuition-paying parents of seniors are also asked for donations. The University contacts alumni through Tufts Telefund and frequent donors and parents of students to ask for donations to Tufts.
The assortment of methods of encouraging donations have begun to pay off. The University raised a record $116 million in the 2003-2004 fiscal year, up from $94 million the year before. The University's Vice President of Advancement Brian Lee said that the fundraising success was "a tribute to the many individuals and organizations who invested in the intellectual, social and athletic pursuit of Tufts."
Tufts is not the only school that requests funding from its seniors. Eighty-three percent of seniors at Yale donated to their university last year, while 73 percent of Georgetown seniors and 66 percent of Harvard seniors donated to their respective universities, according to the Tufts University Advancement Office.
