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MSU celebrates 'Day of Giving' with donations to university progams

November 29, 2016

MSU will participate in its largest ever Day of Giving on Tuesday.

The Day of Giving at MSU is a campaign to bring donations to a variety of university programs.

The campaign is part of Giving Tuesday, a global day of gratitude and philanthropy to follow holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Though this is MSU’s fourth annual Day of Giving, it is the first year that every college has at least one project to promote, in addition to other university groups participating in fundraising.

This year’s campaign comprises of 30 projects with fundraising goals ranging from $810 to $5,000.

“We’re trying to have a grassroots effort to get … smaller gifts that otherwise wouldn’t have come in,” senior director of annual giving Kathleen Deneau said.

Giving donations to smaller projects, rather than a large fund like the endowment fund, allows people to feel more connected to their colleges and the people they’re supporting, University Advancement director of marketing and communications Stephanie Motschenbacher said.

“People feel like they can’t make a difference,” Motschenbacher said. “We really tried to find projects that could be funded and taken care of on this day.”

The projects that University Advancement hopes to fund are small and community-minded, like 4-H participation fees for local youth and the Community Music School’s Detroit Aspiring Musicians program.

Donors can choose the projects they’d like to fund through the MSU Day of Giving website.

There will also be a push to raise money for the Student Emergency Assistance Fund for MSU students in times of financial crisis.

“If a student has no other options for resources, and their classes are going to be dropped, or they can’t pay rent, then this is assistance that they can apply for through the Office of Financial Aid,” Deneau said. ”They are given access to money to help pay the bills or keep them in school, for example.”

Some projects will earn extra money through challenges that University Advancement has set up throughout the day.

“We’re going to be picking (donors) randomly every four hours, and whatever names are drawn, whichever areas they chose to support will get an additional $500 into that fund allocation that that person chose to support,” Deneau said.

President Lou Anna K. Simon will be participating in a challenge of her own.

President Simon donated $50,000, a gift that is contingent on projects reaching their funding goals.

“As the projects get funded, they’ll get an extra $1,000 added into their pot of money," Deneau said.

Deneau and Motschenbacher have high hopes for the campaign.

“We’ve set a goal of $100,000. We’re feeling very optimistic that we’ll go past that,” Motschenbacher said. “That will be three times more than what we’ve done on a Day of Giving (in the past).”

Deneau said she thinks the campaign’s grassroots efforts can be significant for MSU.

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“Every gift makes a difference, no matter how small,” she said. “It’s the combination of all the gifts together that makes the greatest impact.”

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