A Fast Fund Start

THE 1961 Alumni Fund, officially under way on April 1, has already set records for Dartmouth annual giving. On March 20 the pre-opening total of gifts was $134,500, the largest dollar amount the Alumni Fund has had on that date in its 46-year history. This is $80,000 more than on the same date last year and some $20,000 ahead of the total on March 20 in the recordsmashing campaign of 1957 that produced $928,000.

This early showing in itself offers encouragement to the members of the six-man Alumni Fund Committee of the Alumni Council which voted the 1961 objective of .$1,000,000. But there are more broken records to indicate the interest in this year's program. To date more than 2400 alumni have volunteered to serve their classes as Fund agents this spring, the largest agent organization on record. Another mark has in part been caused by this huge agent organization: attendance at the traditional Alumni Fund kick-off dinners in New York, Boston and Chicago was larger than ever before.

President Dickey and Alumni Fund Chairman John D. Dodd '22, principal speakers at these three traditional kickoff occasions, took their program on the road and presented (and will present) the Alumni Fund case for 1961 from coast to coast through Presidential Dinners sponsored and run jointly with local alumni associations. Last month class agents met for work sessions with Executive Secretary Clifford L. Jordan Jr. '45 and Mr. Dodd before dinners in Philadelphia, Detroit, Minneapolis, and Pittsburgh; and on April 6 and 7 the same pattern will be true for San Francisco and Los Angeles.

A "first" in Alumni Fund communications is the opening mailing piece from the Fund Committee to all alumni. One part of this message was prepared by the Fund Committee on this side of the Atlantic while the other half was written by President Dickey in Krakow, Poland, half a world away from Hanover.