Eliot Circular

Annual Fund Raises $4.4 Million

By Chris Lydgate '90

Thanks to a last-minute surge of support, Reed alumni, parents, and friends shattered the record in giving to the Annual Fund this fiscal year, which ended on midnight June 30.

According to the latest returns, contributions to the Annual Fund amounted to an astonishing $4,441,136.22—the biggest in Reed’s history—blowing past last year’s total of $4,084,000.

Even more remarkable, no fewer than 4,458 individual alumni made gifts, the largest number in several years, exceeding the target of 4,400. The number of alumni donors is considered a key indicator of the college’s long term strength.

Graph

Some 4,458 alumni gave to the annual fund in FY15, reversing a downward drift.

The campaign got a boost from hundreds of volunteers with Alumni Fundraising for Reed, who reached out to their classmates and asked them to give back. 

The late-breaking surge of support—which gathered force hours before the deadline—stunned Annual Fund staff members, who spent the next several weeks hunched over their abaci double-checking the figures.

We want to express profound gratitude to our amazing alumni for helping us pass the torch to the next generation. But perhaps the most eloquent thank-you comes from that generation:

“When I arrived at Reed three years ago, I knew I had finally found what I had been looking for,” says Georgia Miller ’15. “From classroom debates about Levi-Strauss and gendered rituals to lunchtime dialogues about Walter Benjamin and film photography, I’ll always feel at home in Reed’s vibrant community of unapologetic nerdiness! Without support from people like you, none of this would be possible. Thank you!”