Giving

2019 Class Gift

We did it!

At our 25th Reunion in 2014, our Class Gift Co-Chairs, Paul Dabbar and Clint Carroll, presented our Class Gift development plan at our Class Meeting – a plan to raise $400K for USNA over a 4 year period. Through interviews and surveys, we discovered two areas which raised the most interest from the Class: Cyber Center Support – 80% of our gift – and Athletic Excellence – 5% of our gift. The remaining 15% of our project went to the Naval Academy Annual Fund.

We launched the campaign on September 15, 2015, and by October 30, 2019, we exceeded our overall fundraising goal by $304K (176% of our goal), just in time for our 30th reunion. This table shows our results as of October 30th:

 

 

Because of how certain large gifts are allocated, even though we exceeded our overall goal, we still came up short on the most important part of our gift – our support to the Cyber Center. So I challenged all of us at our 30th Reunion Class Meeting to meet that shortfall. From October 30th through December 31, 2019, if only 89 of us agreed to pledge $19.89 a month for the next 5 years to the Cyber Center project, we would meet or exceed our goals in each of our project areas. Tony Cox ’89 threw in a little incentive: for every increment of $19.89 a month that someone pledged for the next 5 years (or increments of 1-time gifts of $1193.40), he/she earned an entry into the giveaway of the beautiful 1989 fire pit that you see pictured on this page.

It worked! About 70 of us rose to the challenge, and as you can tell from the below table, we made up the $104K shortfall for Cyber Center Support. Tony Cox ran the drawing on March 12th, and the winner of the ’89 firepit was Ben Goodwin!

 

 

 

Let me close by emphasizing how extraordinary this is! The U.S. Naval Academy Foundation set a stretch goal for us of $400K, and through a range of very large donations to small, about a quarter of our class took a strain and exceeded all expectations. Wow! More than double our goal! Almost $1M from 276 alumni! Outstanding!

What about 89?

Posted by Ingar Grev on March 15, 2020.

 

---

Archives

10/30/19 Update:

in early 2015, we embarked on an effort to raise $ 400,000 to support USNA. Now at the end of our project, we have a big opportunity to finish strong by making new pledges to meet our goal of raising $320,000 for Cyber Center Support..

Click here to view a presentation that provides a status of Hopper Hall and the Cyber program.

Here’s the status of our giving towards the project:

 

 

 

 

As you can tell, although we exceeded our overall goal of $400K (awesome!) we are still only ~$104K short of our Cyber Center Support Goal

If only 89 of you agree to pledge $19.89 a month for the next 5 years – BEFORE December 31, 2019 – we will reach our goal.

Here’s the sweetener – for every increment of $19.89 a month that you pledge for the next 5 years before December 31, 2019 (or increment of 1-time gifts of $1193.40), you will be entered into the giveaway of the beautiful 1989 fire pit that you see pictured on this page.

Learn more and donate by clicking here.

Posted by Ingar Grev on October 30, 2019

 

 

9/15/19 Update:

in early 2015, we embarked on an effort to raise $ 400,000 to support USNA. Half way through the fifth year of your project, I and the fellow officers would like to thank you for your great support of the Brigade of Mi

dshipmen, in particular by supporting the building of Hopper Hall – the new Cyber Center.

Click here to view a presentation that provides a status of Hopper Hall and the Cyber program.

Here’s the status of our giving towards the project:

 

 

 

Over the past year, we’ve increased our engagement as a class – we went from exceeding our overall fundraising goal of $400K from 60% to 75% ($640K to $698K), we’ve increased our number of unique donors, and many of you have answered my call back in February to start a new pledge of $19.89/mo or increasing your pledge by $19.89/mo. The bad news is that we’re still well short of our goal of raising $320K for the Cyber Center (we’re $104K short), but we still have much to be proud of with our overall support of our Alma Mater!

We can still hit that goal of $320K for Cyber Support if everyone reading this makes a new pledge for $19.89 a month for 6 months, or increases his/her pledge by $19.89 a month.

If you think you can handle my $19.89/mo for 6 months challenge, then please e-mail Melissa Nelson (melissa.nelson@usna.com) or call her at 410-295-4117 and let her know that you would like to make a new pledge to the 89 Class Gift, but only to the Cyber Center (not the other two other categories), for $19.89/mo for 6 months (or $119.34 total).

Posted by: Ingar Grev on September 15

 

2/16/19 Update:

We’re still doing an amazing job of exceeding our overall fundraising goal by 70%! We have much to be proud of as the Class of 89!

Click here to view a presentation that provides a status of Hopper Hall and the Cyber program.

 

Here’s the status of our giving towards the project:

As I mentioned a few months ago, although we are exceeding our overall fundraising goal, we are behind on the cornerstone of our project – the Cyber Center. I threw down a challenge for 500 MORE of us to pledge $19.89 a month – to just the Cyber Center – so that we could achieve our goals in each of the 3 areas of our project. It looks like about 22 of us responded since the summer, increasing our gifts (paid + pledged) to the Cyber Center by over $24K! That brings us to only 33% short of our goal!

So here’s my new challenge – would you join me in pledging $19.89/mo for the next 12 months (March through February)? If 450 more of us join in by March, at only $19.89/mo, we’ll meet our goal!

If you are an existing donor, if you could increase your current pledge by $19.89, that would count towards the 450 new participants that we need.

If you think you can handle my $19.89/mo for 12 months challenge, then please e-mail Melissa Nelson (melissa.nelson@usna.com) or call her at (410) 295-4117 and let her know that you would like to give to the 89 Class Gift, but ONLY to the Cyber Center (not the other two other categories), for $19.89/mo for 12 months (or $238.68 total). The option of only designating the Cyber Center has been removed from the online donation system, so you need to contact Melissa to set this up.

450 additional classmates is a TALL order, so if you feel you can do a little more, please do. Again – we just need the help with our Cyber project – we’ve reached our goals with the others.

Posted by: Ingar Grev

---

11/4/18 Update: As a reminder, in early 2015, we embarked on an effort to raise $400,000 to support USNA. As we end the fourth year of your project, I and the fellow officers would like to thank you for your great support of the Brigade of Midshipmen, in particular by supporting the building of Hopper Hall – the new Cyber Center.

Click here to view a presentation that provides a status of Hopper Hall and the Cyber program.

Here’s the status of our giving towards the project:

 

Again, awesome job so far!!!!! We’ve exceeded our overall fundraising goal by 60% through a large number of us doing what we can to help 89 build our legacy at USNA. Thank you so much for all you’ve done! Note that we’re still at only 59% of our goal for Cyber Center Support, the cornerstone of our project.

In August, I threw out a bold challenge for 500 MORE of us to pledge $19.89 a month – just to the Cyber Center – so that we could achieve our goals in each of the 3 areas of our project.  3 of you responded, so since we lost a couple of months, we now need a few more (507) to pledge $19.89 a month for the remaining 13 months of our project.

I know that’s a big ask, and it would be extraordinary for over 50% of any class to engage in a class gift, but…what about ’89?

If you are an existing donor, if you could increase your current pledge by $19.89, that would count towards the 507 participants we need.

If you think you can handle my $19.89/mo for 13 months idea, then please click here (you’ll need to login), select “Click Here to Donate to Your Class Project”, scroll down to “Class Funds”, and type $238.68 into the “’89 Cyber” box, and then select “pledge” for the gift type. Spread it over 1 year with a monthly frequency, and it will be $19.89/mo. Then next December  (2019) you can just give a 1-time contribution of $19.89. I’ll remind you about this next year. If you prefer to take care of this over the phone, you can call 410-295-4117.

507 additional classmates is a TALL order, so if you feel you can do a little more, please do. Again – we just need the help with our Cyber project – we’ve reached our goals with the others.

Posted by: Ingar Grev

---

8/11/18 Update: In early 2015, we embarked on an effort to raise $ 400,000 to support USNA. As we continue through the fourth year of your project, I and the

fellow officers would like to thank you for your great support of the Brigade of Midshipmen, in particular by supporting the building of Hopper Hall – the new Cyber Center. Here’s where the project stands:

Click here to view a presentation that provides a status of Hopper Hall and the Cyber program.

Here’s the status of our giving towards the project:

Dear classmates:

As you know we started our next 10 year-increment class project process right after our 25 year reunion last year, and this week we are launching the solicitation

Our recent steps:

We completed our phone and Survey Monkey surveys during the summer, and then the committee and class officers worked with the Foundation to finalize the selection.

The class voted that their highest interest project areas were Cyber and Project Based Learning.

So after some work, we identified two specific projects that were high in USNA’s top priorities for outside funds, that encompassed both of those top two areas of interest from our class surveys: International Cyber Outreach and Midshipmen Cyber Competitions

On the International Cyber Outreach project, the Cyber center (run by our classmate Paul Tortora) has started doing international trips during the summer for midshipmen to visit various other countries and get exposure to how they are “taking the fight” on this growing area for international security. Our funds would allow the this initial effort to be expanded and lengthened in terms of number of summer this can be funded.

The second project is Midshipmen Cyber Competitions.  To support midshipmen participation in cross college cyber exercises (or as the Supe put it, “hackathons”).  Before Paul and the current Supe took over this effort, USNA did not perform very well, but this last year after their re focus on that, USNA came in first in the Cyber Defense Exercise (“CDX”) out of 28 schools, and met the President for the award. USNA participates in the NSA CDX, the NYU CTF Competition, and others that are proliferating across the military and undergraduate college realms. Additional funds for this program would allow additional participation of midshipmen in these events and an expansion in the number of events they can participate in.

Below is the final official project goal description.

Goal:

As an effort to broaden the understanding of how our international partners are operating and proceeding in the cyber domain, funds will be used to expand the current “International Cyber Outreach & Exposure” program.  These focused summer trips will visit key partner countries, foreign industries, and other foreign based cyber efforts to comprehend operations in a globally connected world, constantly threatened by state and non-state actors.  (Superintendent’s #3 Priority: International efforts/awareness/experience).

Should the Class raise a wider amount of funds from a successful solicitation, we will also provide funding to support and expand current cross-college and Department of Defense cyber competitions for the midshipmen, such as the NSA CDX (Cyber Defense Exercise) the NYU CTF Competition, CalTech/UCLA HackTech, and the Stanford TreeHack. (Superintendent’s # 2 Priority: Cyber Studies)

The Class officers will work with the Foundation and the Academy to brand one or both as Class of ’89 programs

The Class Officers also recommend that Classmates also allocate 5% of their donation to Athletic Excellence, as well as 15% as an Unrestricted Contribution to the Foundation.

Next steps:

The Foundation and the Class Fundraising Committee will be making calls to you all to begin the fund raise. And a letter will also come out from us describing the projects and request you donation. Please take the call and donate!

Any questions please let us know

 

• USNA Website
• NavySports.com

©2013-2024 United States Naval Academy Alumni Association
Class of 1989