Santa Clara University

Development 

Giving Made Easy 

Dear Alumni: 

I arrived at the law school in March of 1999. In the fiscal year ending on June 30 of that year, the law school counted less than $500,000 in total giving, with an alumni giving participation rate of approximately six percent. In the six years since then, we have made a significant effort to reach out to law alumni, not only to ask for financial support, but to involve more alumni in the life of the school. We have increased from a staff of one to a current staff of five. I’m pleased to say that the response to our efforts has been extremely positive.

In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2004, our total giving was $3.8 million. The alumni giving participation rate was 18.8 percent, above the national average for graduate schools for the third consecutive year. As I write this, our alumni and friends have made gifts and pledges totaling more than $11 million toward the $12 million goal of the school’s first-ever capital campaign, “From Promise to Prominence.”

John Baldwin

As we contact more and more of you individually, we frequently hear that “this is the first time that I have been asked to support the school.” Despite all that we do—direct mail, phonathon, face-to-face-visits—we are unable to contact all of the more than 8,500 law alumni. This, I believe, is reflected in the statistic that slightly more than 50 percent of law alumni have never made a gift to the school. I am confident that significantly more alumni would support the school financially if only they had the opportunity and the means to do so.

Here is one very simple way for you to demonstrate how much your Santa Clara legal education has meant to you in your life—on-line giving.

The University and the law school maintain a secure on-line giving page for alumni and friends to use at their convenience. Visit www.scu.edu/law/alumni and click on “Giving to the Law School” in the right-hand column. You can use the on-line giving page to designate where your gift should go. You can even split the gift to support more than one area. As you browse through the page, you will see there are ten choices for giving to the School of Law. You also may designate your gift to any scholarship, program, or fund you would like by using the “Other Designation” portion of the online giving form.

Please feel free to contact the Law Alumni and Development office at 408-551-1748 if you have any questions.

Again, thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

John Baldwin
Assistant Dean for Development