In early October, the GDS advancement office launched the Senior Challenge, a new fundraising initiative encouraging seniors and their families to financially support programs, teachers and staff members at GDS.
The challenge, which concluded on Oct. 31, raised $32,605 — a record amount compared to figures donated by seniors in previous years, according to Director of Annual Giving Ashley Doherty. This year also marked the first time the advancement office solicited donations from seniors during the first semester.
Senior Isaac Seiken expressed uncertainty about the need for Senior Challenge donations. “I want to know where our tuition money is going so we can better understand why we need to do the Senior Challenge,” he said.
Doherty said donations to the Senior Challenge go to the Hopper Fund. “The Hopper Fund is our annual giving program at GDS, and really every single department and every single teacher benefits from it,” she said. “It raises about $3.5 million every year.”
“In order for the basketball team to have officials, for us to be able to pay coaches and teachers this money needs to be raised,” special gifts officer David Gillespie said. “If we just took tuition and tried to run the school, we wouldn’t get to do the programming that we do, because it’s not enough money.”
“A department will budget for what they need, and then the Hopper Fund is able to help make up the deficit between what we get from tuition and what else we need to have our full operating budget,” Doherty said
“I know a lot of seniors are curious about where the money’s actually going and where the resources are being allocated to, like teachers’ salaries or building facilities,” senior Shanwai Lin said. “I think if the school was more transparent about where there’s a deficit of money and where the budget is going, people would be more open about the challenge.”
Gillespie said the idea for the Senior Challenge came from overhearing his daughter, senior Alexa Gillespie, and members of the golf team, which he coaches, praising their teachers. “I was sitting there, listening to Alexa, her friends and the other kids and thinking, wouldn’t it be great for there to be this opportunity for those seniors to thank those teachers and those coaches in a way.” (Alexa Gillespie is the culture editor for the Bit.)
Doherty said donations from the challenge go into temporarily restricted funds for the department receiving the donation, making sure that “every department that is supported or the teacher that is supported through these gifts gets all the resources they need.”
Senior Kesi McDuffie said that she thinks the Senior Challenge is a good way to raise money. “Apparently the money goes to the teachers, or it goes to doing something good for teachers that you want to raise money for, so it does have its plus sides.”
Senior Evelyn Chen donated to the Senior Challenge, for her basketball coach, Pam Stanfield. She wanted to make her donation to the athletics department because “we don’t have a lot of the facilities that a lot of other schools have, so I think it’s important to give back.”
Both Gillespie and Doherty noted that though the Senior Challenge was successful, there were some improvements to make in the future. Gillespie said that introducing the challenge to seniors around the time of early decision deadlines was “not the best idea.”
Doherty said that she would want to make the announcement more intimate in future years, as opposed to the class meeting and email announcement this year. “I would like to get in front of smaller groups of seniors next year, rather than doing one big message.”