Alumni Fund Gets off to Strong Start

OFF to the fastest start it has ever had, the Dartmouth Alumni Fund two weeks after the formal opening of its 1955 campaign had received $220,000 from 4,000 contributors. These mid-April totals put the Fund $42,000 and 1,000 contributors ahead of the Fund figures reported at the same time last year. The average amount of the first 4,000 gifts last year was $52.69; this year the average gift from that many contributors had risen to $54.46.

The early upsurge in alumni participation and the increase in the size of contributions were taken by the Alumni Fund Committee as signs of the ultimate success of the 1955 drive for $700,000.

Sharing in the fast start enjoyed by the Fund in general was the special Dartmouth Parents Campaign, directed by a 39-member Parents Committee headed by Joel S. Mitchell, president of Standard Brands, Inc. On April 15 this campaign had raised $18,000 of its $50,000 goal from 200 parents, which was $12,000 and 140 contributors ahead of the 1954 results as of that date.

While the Class Agents and their assistants carry the responsibility for the Fund campaigns in their individual classes, the Alumni Council's Alumni Fund Committee, headed by Roger C. Wilde '21, chairman, and Nichol M. Sandoe Jr. '45, executive secretary, annually makes its appeal to the whole alumni body in a series of mailing pieces from Fund headquarters in Hanover. The first of these, "The Power of the Fund," was distributed the first of April; and the second, telling the story of how and why a Class Agent succeeded in getting a man-sized gift from a hitherto token contributor, will be mailed to all alumni around the first of May. A message from President Dickey will be the Committee's third general mailing piece in June.

President Dickey, Mr. Wilde and Mr. Sandoe were the principal speakers at the annual Alumni Fund dinners attended by head and assistant agents late in March in Chicago, Cleveland, Boston and New York. Charles J. Zimmerman '23, Alumni Trustee and former chairman of the Alumni Fund Committee, spoke at the Cleveland dinner which President Dickey was unable to attend.

At the Boston dinner three awards for special achievement in the 1954 Fund campaign were made to head agents who were outstanding in their respective class groupings. The James B. Reynolds Trophy went to William H. Perry '21, the Harvey P. Hood Trophy to Munroe S. Fitzherbert '36, and the John R. Mason Trophy to Stanley L. Newton '45. Their citations are in the class-notes section of this issue.