Class of 2008!
Welcome to the homepage for your Class Gift to SAIS. Whether you wanted it to be a fellowship, an endowed lecture series, grass for the roof or a fully-stocked keggerator the Class Gift is from all of us and we need all of us to donate to make it possible. Make that pledge and help us achieve our goal of $100,000! There are many reasons to give, ranging from altruism to self-interest. There are many things we can do to raise the money. Here you can learn what these are, keep up-to-date with what's going on and even get involved on the committee.
But first, some Frequently Asked Questions:
Q: Why should I give?
A: Many reasons! Every donation counts – whether it is $5 or $500 – because each pledge increases our giving percentage, a major factor in determining the university’s national ranking by US News & World Report. By taking part, you also show how much you value what SAIS has contributed to your life and that you are willing to invest in its continued success. Finally, your gift will help pave the way for the next generation of SAIS students!
Q: How much do you want?
A: We're asking for $300 over three years. This is well below the $2,000 that most students give at other graduate or business schools! Bargain!
Q: It sounds expensive, and I can't really afford to give anything right now...
A: Ok, that wasn't a question, but I'll let you off. To be honest, we're all a bit short on cash these days. The best thing to do is pledge in instalments over a few years. So if $300 looks difficult to give now, how about $50 every six months (or $25 quarterly) starting from December 2008? This would spread the payment over three years and give you plenty of opportunity to increase your pledge in later if you want to!
Q: How does my gift help? In fact, what is the Gift?
A: Any pledge you make will go toward the SAIS Class 2008 Fund, which we can direct to any cause we want. Our Class, in a vote earlier this year that will rival the US elections for excitement, has decided to provide a Fellowship to future students. The exact criteria are, in descending order of priority: 1) needs based, 2) student from a developing country, 3) student focused on sustainability. This last criteria was added because the second most popular voted cause for the Class Gift was to make the building more environmentally friendly.
In the first few years the Fellowship will evolve as we have more money to provide the recipient. At first it may be something small - perhaps funding a research project - but in later years it could be enough to pay a student all the way through SAIS! Suffice it to say, the lucky student each year will appreciate the relief from the financial burden we have all experienced these last two years.
Q: How can I stay involved with the Gift once I've graduated?
A: Well, apart from the instalment plan for your pledge, we hope to have reunions every year or so for the whole Class to raise more funds. When we do, we can even invite the lucky Class of 2008 Fellows to join us! We can also ask the recipients to keep us up-to-date with their progress, perhaps through an occasional email, newsletter, or even a joint blog! Finally, we will be setting up a contact scheme through which you can keep in touch with SAIS and the Gift - details to come.
Q: How can I pledge?
A: Easily! You can find the SAIS Class Gift 2008 pledge table in the Nitze lobby most days or at major events. Alternatively, you can donate online by following this link!
Q: How do I get my receipt for tax purposes?
A: Easily! All you have to do is write your name and contact details on the back of the pledge form and your receipt will come in the mail about a week after they take the first payment.
Q: What are the current pledge stats?
A: As of April 4th, 2008 the pledge* stats are:
Highest Pledge - $650
Lowest Pledge - $25
Average Pledge (mean) - $199
* pledges do not include cash donations or funds raised directly from events, like the Auction or Carneval.
CLASS TEE! Final designs are here!
Want to know what the class t-shirts look like? Well, you get a choice of two in either mens' or ladies' fitted designs!
SAIS Definition!
Please Do Not Feed the Neocons!
Q: So how and where and when do I pick up mine?
A: Well, first all you have to do is pledge $100 or more and you qualify to get a free t-shirt (no, we don't sell them). Then, all you have to do is mosey on down to the Nitze lobby, pick one out and that's it. T-shirts should be available for collection (fingers crossed) from Friday, May 2nd.
CLASS TEE! Designs are out for the Class T-shirt!
Our resident creative genius Thomas Kang pulled together during an unexpected idle moment tons of ideas for a possible SAIS Class of 2008 t-shirt. Here are a few examples of what he came up with - one of these will get chosen to become the official tee of our Class and everyone who pledges $100 or more will get one free! (Remember: you can spread that hundred over several years if you really want!)
Top Designs
“i heart economics”
“i heart monetary theory”
i heart
i heart
“
“I came to
“I came to
“fuhgeddaboudit”
“you had me at Здравствуйте” (Russian)
“you had me at merhaba” (Turkish)
“you had me at ciao”
“you had me at ______”
“Please Do Not Feed the Neocons.”
“All grown up and still interning. I heart
“overly educated and unemployed”
“Oral exam? Yes, please.”
“20036” (DC zip)
“41026” (
DC heart BC
BC heart DC
SAISer - \`sīs ər\ noun
1. student or alumnus of Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) typically characterized as: well-traveled, multilingual, globally sophisticated, over-achieving, habitually binge-drinking, easily excited by new issues of The Economist, cheap airfare and/or free food, engaging in incestual behavior, and often socially awkward
2. international sex machine obsessed with economics
THE AUCTION! The annual SAIS Auction has students put themsleves up for bid
Our annual SAIS Auction this year was a HUGE success with hundreds of items up for bid in both regular and silent auctions! From signed copies of books from eminent professors, to salsa and cooking lessons, everything was up for grabs for the highest bidder. Of all the money raised, HALF went to the Class Gift! Thank you everyone!
CARNEVAL! The German Club donates proceeds to the Class Gift
The recently created German Club, in its debut with the SAIS Community, held a funky Carneval Party at Local 16. A whopping 50% of the profit went to the Class Gift. All we can say is: Danke very much!
SAIS VOTES! Class of 2008, in a heated vote, chooses its candidate for the Gift
It was a close run race reminiscent of the Republican primaries on Super Tuesday just four days ago, but SAIS Class of 2008 has now finally voted and decided on its candidate for the Class Gift. By a runaway McCain-esque margin of 29 votes the Fellowship Fund pipped the pundits' favorite to win, the Romney-Giuliani style endowed lecture series, while Greenification of Nitze pulled a Huckabee to come in second place. So the Fellowship Fund is now officially the Class Gift of '08!
Fellowship Fund - 72 votes
Greenification of Nitze - 43 votes
Endowed Lecture Series - 40 votes
General Beautification - 4 votes
Printing Endowment - 1 vote
Still Thinking About It - 1 vote
Travel Fund - 1 vote
Mark Brininstool Mausoleum, which "you can use as a study room until I die" - 1 vote
RAISING THE ROOF! The SAIS Official 80s Dance Party
We raised a little under $1,000 from the 80s Dance party on Saturday December 1st. Thanks to all those who came, drank and danced like it was 1989. Here are a few photos in case you missed it!
Have more photos of this time-travelling night? Send 'em to to saisclassgift2008@gmail.com
TOWN HALL MEETING! George W Bush speaks to SAIS about the Class Gift
Did you miss the Town Hall Meeting on 19 November? Well lucky you, we taped it!
http://www.sais-jhu.edu/media/nov07/classgift2007.wmv
Link doesn't work and got a Mac?
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx
Prefer to read the speech about the Class Gift? Here it is:
"Thank you President Bush for that inimitable speech.
So there you have it. The President himself has extolled the virtues of being charitable and essentially threatened you if you’re not. Which neatly brings me to the reason you’re all here.
You may be trying to remember what this meeting was about. You’d been lured here by seductive posters and word of mouth. Rumours had been hanging in the air all week about a gift, a class gift.
What was this all about?
For many of us giving back to the institutions of our education – our alma maters – is a natural calling. Frequently we receive solicitations to donate to our graduate schools, our undergraduate schools, our high schools, junior highs, elementary schools and pre-schools.
Here at SAIS, trust me, this calling will still ring true. In fact, it will probably ring true on your phone 6 months after graduation. You’ll be unemployed, backpacking across Machu Pichu, or down on one knee about to propose to your girlfriend and they’ll call asking for money. But you can’t blame them for trying.
Donations to the school are critical for its continued success against other schools. And why shouldn’t we be interested?
The more students who give back, the higher the rankings of
The Class Gift is a chance for us to mold
This is why we are here. So we need to ask ourselves three basic questions:
What is our class gift going to be?
How much is it going to cost us? and
Why should I give anything to it at all?
Let me start with the second question first. How much are we expected to give? Well, let me bring up some important statistics to show how we compare against our peer schools:
[STATS of soccer victories against Georgetown and GW]
As you can see,
As you may have read in a now famous article in the Observer, Kennedy, Woodrow Wilson and Fletcher historically get more students to give back to the school.
Typically we averaged around 11% - the underdog – but last year with scant time before graduation the Class of 2007 pulled in 50% of us, even those of us not graduating, to donate to the Gift.
We can do the same – even better – we just need to be organised and committed.
We need to be committed to a goal. And that goal is $100,000 over the next two years. That may seem like a lot, but between us it is not. We can alleviate the burden, make it lighter.
Let me give you some perspective a moment. Most business schools ask their graduate students to donate $2,000.
So $300 is not much over two years: that’s 12 dollar a month or the price of a cheap bottle of wine.
But, if, say, we persuade a consulting company or bank to sponsor the gift, they could match on a 2:1 ratio what we all pull together. Already we need only raise less than a third, only $30,000.
Now it’s only $100 each… over two years. That’s under $5 a month, or about the cost of a good beer. If you gave up a few brews or glasses of wine a month and gave that money instead to the Class Gift, not only would we reach our goal but we’d all be much healthier, too.
Now that’s a bonus gift.
So what about the first of my questions? What should our gift be?
Is our gift going to be a bench? A few years ago a class scraped together enough cash to leave us this [bench on stage]. I’ve spoken to some of those from that graduating year. Whenever the subject came up about ‘the bench’ they were all just that little bit embarrassed.
Their pride in and connection with the school was more important than they realised. They realise it now, though, and I’ve heard there might be plans afoot to donate another, better gift.
So we know what not to give. But what should we give? We need ideas and in a moment I’m going to ask you for ideas. But for now, let me share two ideas of my own.
The first I want to explain with a story:
Some of you know a girl called Tirhas. She’s from
Back in May she realised despite all her efforts she could not afford her second year in DC. Numerous people tried hard to raise money for her. They organised a fundraising campaign and both faculty and students gave as generously as they could.
Yet it was not enough. So she could not be with us here in DC today.
Our gift could be a fellowship. We could say who we want it to be for, for people like Tirhas, perhaps. It would give someone the chance, someone who’s bright and hard-working but from a disadvantaged background, give them the chance to get all the benefit out of a
This is a worthy cause and we should seriously consider it. But I have a second idea and it is perhaps my own personal choice:
Let me give you some names: [pictures on screen]
Jonathan Edwards
Al Gore
Alan Greenspan
Stephen Colbert
and yes, the greatest of them all, Bob Sagat
What do they have in common? These are the speakers that GW students got to hear over the last year.
What about
We draw in some pretty big names, too: [pictures on screen]
Lieberman
Bhagwati
Gingrich
Ron Paul
the Foreign Ministers of
Of course, we really should give credit to Felisa Neuringer and others here who work so hard to bring in people like President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and General Petraeus.
But let us have more. And let us decide who they should be.
Bill Clinton?
Javier Solana?
Jon Stewart?
Bob Sagat!
We, the Class of 2008, could set up an endowed annual lecture series under our name. Each year, perhaps during that brief moment when
Not only does this add to the school’s reputation but we give back to the student body, all the students, not just one, and as the beneficent and magnanimous donors we would each year be invited to come and attend.
Perhaps one day one of us will be so sought after they will be invited to speak? Perhaps, the fund could be substantial enough to pay for all the catering, drinks and after parties? The possibilities are endless but in the end the lesson is altruism and self-interest do not have to be mutually exclusive.
This brings me to the final, and most important, question. Why on earth give?
“We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give” [on screen]. Winston Churchill said these words and he’s right. We know he’s right. That’s why we’re at this school. That’s why most of us are labouring through two years of intense study, working internships, trying to make our mark while paying through the nose!
But we do it, and we pay it, because we’re here to make a difference, we’re here because we want to be able to do something for this world, to give something back, make it all just a little bit rosier.
And I know that
We already have ten of you working hard on the Class Gift Committee, coming up with ways to raise the funds. On December 1st
We already have, without even having done anything, a generous donation. If you hadn’t heard,
They blew me away with their selflessness when they told me they’d like to give $1,000 of their personal prize money to the Class Gift. With
It has been a privilege and an honour to go to school here at
I chose
I knew this school had everything I needed to learn because of the people. With six months to go until graduation I know that now more than ever. So I wanted to give something back to you all and the Class Gift was how I wanted to do it.
The Class Gift is how we can all give back to each other.
Thank you."