From The Straits Times
By Jennani Durai
Published 25 Aug 2010
NANYANG Technological University (NTU) looks set to wrest the honour of having the highest proportion of generous graduating students among Singapore's three main universities.
Seven in 10 students from its 5,000-strong graduating class this year made donations to the university through the graduating class gift, a tradition of the universities here as well as most universities worldwide.
Over at the Singapore Management University (SMU), half the graduating cohort last year did so. As for the National University of Singapore (NUS), the proportion who gave last year was 17 per cent.The final tallies for both universities this year are not in yet, but figures suggest they are behind NTU's.
SMU was the first university here to institute the class gift in 2004. NTU followed suit a year later and NUS, in 2007.
NTU's feat is even more impressive given that when it started asking for donations from its graduating cohort in 2005, only 8 per cent responded positively.
NTU is also riding high in terms of the amount raised, with this year's cohort donating $96,778 - almost $20,000 more than last year's sum, and about 12 times the amount raised five years ago. In contrast, NUS, with a slightly larger graduating class, raised $23,320 last year and has so far raised $21,883 this year.
SMU, with the smallest enrolment of the three universities, raised $31,000 last year. This year, it has received more than $35,000 in pledges so far.
But all three universities reported that the rate of graduation giving has been steadily increasing.
How did NTU ramp up its giving rate?
Ms Marina Tan-Harper, director of NTU's development office, attributes it to a campaign called iGave which the university started two years ago.
It deploys student ambassadors - those in their first through third years and passionate about giving back to their alma mater - who fan out to secure pledges and donations from members of the graduating cohort.
She said: 'Five years ago, the development office used to send out e-mail messages asking for donations, and that was it. But we soon realised that students would be more effective at convincing their peers that this was important.'
Ms Tan-Harper was headhunted from Northern Kentucky University in the United States to create a culture of giving among NTU alumni.
She explained that lecturers granted the student ambassadors time during class to make appeals for the cause and to hand out pledge forms.
Third-year student Sally Wirianto, 21, who is the president of iGave, said the 70 ambassadors also knocked on the door of every room in the 16 hostels on campus to spread the iGave message to graduating students and to ask for pledges or donations from them.
They also held roadshows, set up booths during school events and held a 'phone-a-thon' to secure pledges.
All in all, they put in 10 to 25 hours a week between January and May soliciting donations, said Ms Wirianto.
Those who make donations can choose for their money to go towards supporting bursaries for financially disadvantaged students or into the School Advancement Fund, which supports various education and research initiatives at the university, said Ms Tan-Harper.
Ms Wirianto believes class giving is important because 'a grateful heart is the most important thing that the university is trying to teach us', given that students are given plenty of opportunities to develop themselves.
Ms Tan-Harper said that those who do not give back to their universities have not removed themselves from the past, when universities here were seen as purely utilitarian institutions.
'Now, the message is that you're a stakeholder of the university, and how great the university is, is a reflection of yourself. If you want to be proud of it and say with confidence where you went to university, you should invest something in it,' she added.
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