Michigan State University students, alumni and community members raised over $1.5 million during the annual 24-hour Give Green Day campaign to provide support for MSU students facing financial hardships during the college career.
Give Green Day consists of projects from all 18 individual colleges on MSU’s campus that support students within their respective programs through their emergency fund. Also, 23 MSU varsity sports and 55 alumni clubs participated with projects of their own.
“We call them gift allocations, the funds that we’re raising for,” Kathleen Deneau, senior director of annual giving, said. “But there’s emergency assistance funds, which helps students when they are going to be disenrolled from classes or they’re having a housing crisis or they’re having any sort of financial hardship. So, many of the funds that the colleges are promoting are specific to the emergency assistance fund.”
This year’s Give Green Day total almost doubled from last year’s amount, which was over $788,000. Deneau said she believes the best thing about Give Green Day is the amount of support the projects receive from alumni and friends of the university.
The administration in each of the colleges decided which projects they featured. A majority of the projects focused on emergency assistance and aid, like the College of Arts and Letters Emergency Fund, which raised $4,250, or the Honors College Emergency Fund, which raised $7,455.
“Most of them are helping with emergency assistance aid. That tends to do best,” Deneau said. “It’s those types of projects that do best.”
In addition to emergency funding, colleges dedicated their projects to other goals, like study abroad initiatives in the Eli Broad College of Business or the zero hunger initiative in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, which raised $12,191 and $24,104 respectively.
Give Green Day also included projects from MSU Center of Survivors and MSU Safe Place for sexual assault survivors, from the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities (RCAH) for civic engagement and even from WKAR Public Media for student experiential learning.
“So for example, the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources (CANR) has a fund that’s called Zero Hunger ... It purchases 645 meal vouchers to help get one step closer to eliminating hunger for the CANR students on campus,” Deneau said. “Unfortunately, many of them need assistance from the Food Bank. They need assistance for food. So, that’s just one of the many different projects that’s being promoted on this day.”
Students in need of the emergency funds should either talk to their adviser in their colleges or the Office of Financial Aid, Deneau advises. Students who are at risk of not completing their degree program due to financial hardships are eligible for emergency funds.
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