Tuesday, Nov. 27, was a joyful day for Eastern Washington University students, faculty and staff. The reason is the university’s third annual “Giving Joy Day” — coinciding with the national Giving Tuesday — brought in more donations than had been anticipated.
A whole lot more.
Hoping to reach a goal of $275,000 in monetary pledges, in-kind gifts and cash, Eastern instead blew that number out of the water by raising over $1.8 million in contributions. In fact, $1,801,721 to be exact.
The biggest reason for the size of the contributions was a $1.1 million donation by an anonymous donor’s estate to the university’s Jazz Department. This year’s donation was on top of a $700,000 gift last year by the same estate.
“This person just loves jazz and wants to see our program remain strong in perpetuity,” senior director of planned giving Laura Thayer said.
The gift is to help recruit new students in order to sustain the program, as well as ensure musicianship. Thayer cited examples of the latter as buying new instruments, repairing existing ones and taking jazz bands on performing tours to enhance their learning and musical experience.
Another reason for the explosion in giving likely stems from the university lifting restrictions on what was donated. The first year of the program, 2016, Eastern surpassed it’s $100,000 goal for scholarship funds by $150,000, assistant director of annual giving Kyndell White said.
Last year, the university allowed contributions to its “Eastern Fund,” which is unrestricted giving, leading to topping its new goal of $250,000 by another $9,000. This year, in-kind donations helped out, such as a gift of equipment support for the computer science students.
“We were counting those as well because they impact our students too,” White said. “Equipment funds, renovation funds, any of that was going to be included.”
According to a story in the university’s Eastern 24/7 online magazine, a $10,000 challenge match goal by President Dr. Mary Cullinan had been net by Tuesday noon. Numerica Credit Union donated $25,000 for the third year in a row to its scholarship fund, and also surprised two EWU students as they emerged from classes with $2,500 scholarships for the 2019-2020 academic year.
“Two different students with high need and high academic success,” White said, adding the presentations were made live on Facebook. “It was very fun to be a part of that.”
The university also set a goal to get donations from all 50 states and Washington D.C. White said they fell 10 states short of that goal in their first attempt.
Giving Joy Day is Eastern Washington’s version of the national Giving Tuesday promotion, which is held the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving. White said the national campaign is “very social media-based,” and the university sought out people with EWU ties who are very prominent on social media to share their stories and why they give.
University officials are already looking towards 2019’s campaign, and while White said they didn’t have any details yet, they hoped to “game-ify it a bit more” to build on this year’s success.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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