Claremont McKenna College raised $1.4 million in under two days last week, setting a donation record for its annual 1946 Challenge, a fundraising initiative to reach 1,946 donors in 1,946 minutes. Student phone bankers took part in the record-breaking campaign that led 2,060 donors to contribute over Oct. 14 and Oct. 15, topping last year’s overall donated amount by over $200,000.
An embedded campaign within the 1946 Challenge for donations specific to Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) Athletics garnered 1,252 donors, or 61% of total donors, and nearly $580,000 in donations, or 41% of total donations. The teams which received the highest donation amounts were women’s tennis, men’s tennis and women’s swimming and diving; the three alone made up over $165,000 of the donations.
Of the over 2,000 total donors, the top donating groups were CMC alumni, who made up 59% of donors; CMC parents and grandparents, who made up 21% of donors; and CMC faculty and staff, who made up 6% of donors. The highest amount of donations went to the Alumni Fund for Scholarships, which raised nearly $175,000 from 288 donors and will go entirely toward student financial aid.
The Randall Lewis Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (RLCIE) received the most donations of any of CMC’s 11 research institutes, raising over $69,000 from 29 donors.
“We’ve continued to outdo the previous years for the last few years now, which is awesome and exciting,” RLCIE Executive Director Ron LaPierre said. “We’re incredibly thankful for the parents and alumni and others who are interested in helping out student entrepreneurs, for helping us.”
LaPierre said RLCIE’s fundraising campaign this year included sending out email campaigns to alumni, advertising the challenge on LinkedIn and relying on his own regular outreach efforts to alumni throughout the year. But what expanded the campaign’s reach further this year was a matching program sponsored by several of the RLCIE’s advisory board members.
“That’s really exciting for anyone looking at donating to us, knowing that for every dollar they give, our advisory board members are willing to match three-to-one, so every dollar becomes four, up to a certain threshold,” LaPierre said. “That gets them very excited and motivated to support us, which is fantastic.”
Other matching programs covered donations more broadly. These programs included a $20,000 donation match from Eric Fujimoto CM ’93 and Lori Fujimoto, who have sent two of their children to CMC; an anonymous $15,000 donation match for women’s golf; a $10,000 donation match for men’s golf from Steven Hallgrimson CM ’64; an anonymous $10,000 donation match for men’s basketball and a $10,000 donation match “in honor of 50 years of co-education” from Scott Torrey CM ’91, the parent of two CMC graduates.
Students who work at Phonenite, a CMC fundraising and outreach program in which student callers reach out to over 15,000 alumni and parents each year, were also involved in outreach for the 1946 Challenge.
David Lyu CM ’27, a student manager at Phonenite, said student callers completed a special training to prepare to make calls for the challenge.
“We made it clear to all the callers that it’s an all-hands-on-board day,” he said.
Lyu just wrapped up his fourth and final 1946 Challenge. He said the main goal of Phonenite callers is to encourage a “habit” of donating to CMC. He also reaffirmed the importance of matching programs.
“[The programs are] very generous opportunities to make people feel more comfortable making a donation because they know there’s more money going in when they participate in this specific challenge,” Lyu said.
Hannah Langford CM ’28, a Phonenite student engagement ambassador, said that compared to other times of the year when students cold-call alumni for donations, the challenge presents a smoother fundraising process.
“It honestly made our jobs a lot easier with the people that we were calling knowing about the 1946 Challenge,” Langford said. “I think that made them more willing [to donate], because it wasn’t a situation where they just got a random call being asked, ‘Hey, would you be wanting to donate?’ They were expecting it.”
Near the end of the challenge, Lyu said he was inspired enough to make a donation himself.
“We were so close to that [1,946 donors] number, and I was like, you know what, I want to be a part of it, I want to help us get there,” Lyu said. “It’s about giving back to what you benefited from.”
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