July 2015
Hello to everyone in the Class of 1969! This is my second President’s Letter to you in our cycle leading up to our 50th Reunion in 2019. Our planning is underway! In particular, our Reunion Gift Chairs would like to share the following with you: We wanted to give you all a little background regarding our class’s 50th Reunion Gift efforts since we have received a number of questions from classmates. Unlike other reunions, the Class 50th Reunion Gift counts essentially all monetary gifts of any kind given by class members for the five years after their 45th Reunion (which we celebrated last year). This is because the 50th Reunion is the primary focus of fundraising over the life of a class.
The main focus for our class fundraising remains the Mount Holyoke Fund. Almost half of you have been regular and generous givers to this fund over the years and we thank you! However for our 50th Reunion, we are going to be setting a much more ambitious goal and we are hoping each of you will make a stretch gift to the Mount Holyoke Fund over these five years.
How much of a stretch? Our class has not yet set its 50th Reunion goal, but we know that the classes of 1966, 1967,and 1968 have each set a 50th Reunion Class gift goal of $2 million. This is roughly triple what our class has traditionally raised for the Mount Holyoke Fund over five years. We are also hoping that those who have not been traditional givers will consider a one- time gift to reflect how a Mount Holyoke education has enriched their lives over 50 years. Please be aware that you can now direct your Mount Holyoke Fund gift to eleven specific support areas for those who wish to tailor their gift more specifically towards their own interests.
Because of the five year horizon (which includes right now!) we are asking everyone to start thinking seriously now about what you want your gift strategy to be. You can stretch it over your five years of annual giving. You can make a more significant one-time gift. We will work with you to find a strategy that makes sense for you. If you wish, feel free to email Julie or Marcia and we will call you to discuss your thoughts. We can also get you information regarding other sorts of gifts to the College, such as annuities or bequests.
We are in the process of putting together our 50th Reunion Leadership Gifts Committee, made up of Class members who are willing to serve as fundraisers and who have also committed to a significant gift for Reunion. We thank these generous women, and will be communicating this list to you when it is final, as well as our 50th Reunion Gift goal. Stay tuned for more information and please feel free to contact us if we can help in any way. And thanks for your past and future generosity to Mount Holyoke!
Marcia Coleman (marcialcole@comcast.net) – Julie Van Camp (jvancamp5@gmail.com)
Please take advantage of their invitation to contact them with any questions—general or specific—that you may have about this process. Other plans for our 50th are underway too, of course. Notably, our sister class of 2019 is about to arrive at South Hadley to begin their studies, and I know our Reunion Co-Chairs Sally Gisel Green (salleegreen@gmail.com) and Ginna Holmes Moore (ginna.moore@gmail.com) welcome ideas about ways to connect with that class during their four years at MHC.
I was able to participate in a recent event hosted by the Mount Holyoke Club of DC (MHC-DC), a reception for high school graduates who had been accepted at MHC but had not yet committed. Next month we’ll have another reception, the Cherry Blossoms to Laurels Send-Off, for the incoming members of the Class of 2019. I hope other clubs have similar projects underway.
Dues for the 5-year cycle are $40; please check with our Treasurer, Kitty Howell Cannon, rick@cannonrick.com, to see if you have paid, and if you haven’t, please do!
Finally, you should have received a recent communication from the Alumnae Association about updating your page. You already have a page on the site, but they have updated the format, making it a little easier to read and also to modify. (Also, I, at least, found that my photo hadn’t made it into the modified version, so I had to upload it again.) Please do check this out, so we all have your optimum contact information. If you do this by July 31, you can be entered in a raffle for a watercolor painting of Mount Holyoke! This is the site: https://securelb.imodules.com/s/1660/aamhc/index.aspx?sid=1660&gid=2&pgid= 3&cid=40. The page you get explains what to do to log in or to create a log-in password. Please do this now while you are thinking about it!
Many thanks! More to come!
Warmly, Marilyn