Pink was the color of choice this fall for 50 students raising money at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill.
The students work for an annual fund that solicits alumni donations by phone. Early in the school year, alumnus Jack Pearl said that if the students could get 34 percent of alumni to donate, he would give the school half a million dollars.
That’s when Staci Warrens, assistant director of the Bradley Fund, made a promise of her own: If the students secured 700 credit card pledges, she would dye her hair any color they chose. If successful, fund-raisers would vote on the color. The more pledges each student secured, the more votes he or she would have.
“They wanted to dye my hair, but they also wanted to beat the other colors,” Warrens said.
The students surpassed their goal and chose pink. The campaign continues, and Warrens said it’s still going well.
At Northwestern, which has an annual fund similar to Bradley’s, the spirit of fund raising is quite different but also successful. Campaign Northwestern, with a goal of $1.4 billion by Aug. 31, 2003, passed the $1 billion mark in November.
“We don’t have anyone here dying our hair pink,” said Ronald Vanden Dorpel, vice president for university development.
But like Bradley’s telemarketers, NU students are helping with the campaign. For the past few years, Dominic Missimi, director of NU’s music theatre program, and a group of students have toured the country to perform for alumni and collect donations.
This method of fund raising lets alumni “see what their investment is in these talented NU students,” Missimi said. He said the performances give alumni a sense of pride and ownership in the school.
“I don’t have to dye my hair purple,” he said.
Janette Zilioli, a Speech senior who has been performing in Campaign Northwestern’s concerts since she was a sophomore, said Warrens’ pledge to dye her hair pink is “very cute.”
“But I can’t see anyone here doing that,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Bradley Fund already has another cheerleader. By the start of the new year, the fund had secured about 800 credit card pledges, only 4 percent away from its year-end goal. The director of the Bradley Fund is promising another round of hair dying at 1,000 pledges.
Still, NU fund raising is more hands-on than the telemarketing campaign at Bradley, Zilioli said, giving alumni a taste of what their money is paying for.
“I kind of like the way we do it here because we show the alumni who we are,” Zilioli said.
