Igniting College Pride

The daylong public launch of With Passion & Purpose: The Campaign for SUNY Oswego officially began at 12 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 16, 2014, with a 24-Hour Challenge issued by ESPN SportsCenter Anchor Steve Levy ’87. If 750 alumni and friends made a gift to The Fund for Oswego this day, Levy would donate $40,000 to the college.

Within a minute, Robin McAleese ’93 M’95 became the first of the 1,163 donors who made gifts throughout the 24-hour period, raising a total of $143,584.33, plus an additional $56,161.40 in challenge gifts from Levy, Michael ’83 and Joanne Snyder Durney ’84, and Andrea and Tim Barnhart ’02.

Of those 1,163 donors, 199 were first-time donors. Donations from came as far away as Australia, from alumni from the Class of 1939 to the Class of 2014, and from one who hadn’t made a gift in more than 30 years.

This 24-Hour Challenge demonstrates the excitement and success of the several targeted mini-campaigns throughout the five-year With Passion & Purpose initiative and the #Oswegopride shown by our constituents.

The first 24-hour challenge, playing off the date 11/12/13, brought in 605 donors who gave $101,824, including the challenge gifts from Jim Kaden ’78 and Debbie Adams-Kaden ’78, Bob Moritz ’85 and a third anonymous alumni couple.

For two years in a row, the college has sponsored the Lakers Athletics Challenge, encouraging alumni- and student-athletes and their coaches to make a gift in honor of their favorite Lakers sports team or any college program.

By the end of the first athletics fundraising challenge, a total of 619 alumni-athletes, current and former coaches and current student-athletes donated $85,562 to SUNY Oswego, including a challenge gift from a member of the 1966 men’s championship soccer team and Oswego Alumni Association board member Dan Scaia ’68 and secondary challenge by Nancy Smith Salisbury ’93, a member of the women’s field hockey team from 1989-92 and former Oswego Alumni Association board member.

The 2015-16 Lakers Athletics Challenge raised a total of $185,832 for the college, including a $30,000 gift to Athletics from challengers Rich ’80 and Beth Kagan Lashley ’80.

To create some fun-spirited competition, the men’s and the women’s teams with the highest percentage of alumni participation in the challenge each received $1,000 for their teams. The men’s swimming and diving team won both years, and the women’s swimming and diving team won the second year, edging out the previous year’s winner—women’s basketball.

The month-long March Matchness challenges focused on engaging Graduates Of the Last Decade (GOLD) alumni in the culture of philanthropy. During the past five years a total of 1,192 gifts from GOLD donors came in through the challenge. Together, they netted $104,172, including gifts from challengers: Rob MacMurray ’02; Nancy Smith Salisbury ’93; Louis A. Borrelli Jr. ’77; Ron ’79, Cindy Dickerson ’79, Ron ’06 and Dan ’06 M’07 Tascarella; and Jennifer Shropshire ’86.

Alumni celebrating at Reunion often want to acknowledge their alma mater by making a gift in honor of their class’s milestone anniversaries. To spur their classmates along, sometimes a class member steps forward with a challenge to their peers. Also, the class with the highest percentage of classmates who make a gift wins the Participation Cup, which is presented during Reunion Weekend in June each year.

The newly re-instituted Homecoming celebration provided a great opportunity to establish a new challenge tradition. In 2015 during the first Homecoming Challenge, the college community also successfully met the first-ever Homecoming Challenge. The 876 donors who made a gift during the five-day challenge raised a total of $143,677 for The Fund for Oswego, including a $25,000 gift from Jeff ’92, a member of the Oswego Alumni Board of Directors, and Ginger Bray Sorensen ’93 and a $15,000 gift from an anonymous second challenger.

“Jennifer Shropshire ’86, The Fund for Oswego Chair, has served as a prime example of the Oswego Alumni Association championing the campaign over the past five years” said Campaign Chair Mark Baum ’81.

Representing the 85,000 alumni, we acknowledge the Oswego Alumni Association Board of Directors for their steadfast support of With Passion & Purpose:

Lisa Marceau Schnorr ’87, President
Amy Vanderlyke Dygert ’01, First Vice President
Kathy Smits Evans ’84, Second Vice President
Keith Chamberlain ’87, Past President

Edgar Ames ’68
Timothy Barnhart ’02*
Marc Beck ’93
Paul Brennan ’93
Michael Byrne ’79*
Michael Caldwell ’70
Karen Colucci Coia ’89
Dr. Raelynn Cooter ’77
Kerry Casey Dorsey ’81**
Jerry Esposito ’70
Donna Goldsmith ’82
Thaina Gonzalez ’93
Phillip Grome ’89
Jennifer Warner Janes ’91
La-Dana Renee Jenkins ’94
Maureen Flynn Kratz ’04
Claire Lacure ’17
Donald Levine ’78*
Molly Matott ’15
Steven Messina ’91*
Dana Segall Murphy ’99
Betsy Oberst
Cathleen Richards ’09
Mark Salmon ’93
Dan Scaia ’68
Stefen Short ’10
Jennifer Shropshire ’86* 
Christie Torruella Smith ’08
Jeff Sorensen ’92
Deborah F. Stanley**
Kevin Sutherland ’05
Koren Vaughan ’95
Richard Yacobush ’77
Thomas Yates ’89

*At-Large Member
** Ex Officio