A simple “thank you” can go a long way. All around campus today, students and Elon community members wrote notes of appreciation to alumni members of The 1889 Society, thanking them for their financial contributions and support to the university.
The sixth annual “A Thousand Thanks” event encourages the recognition of alumni members who give to Elon each year. Members of The 1889 society include seniors who made a gift to Elon before graduating as well as other alumni who continue to donate to the university.
Today’s event kicked off at College Coffee, where writing stations with suggestions for notes and cards could also be found at the Moseley Student Center, Daniel Commons and Global Commons.
The campus-wide gratitude event hit its goal by 4 p.m. today after receiving more than 1,000 thank you notes.
Junior Dawson Nance, co-president of Elon’s Student Alumni Ambassadors, said the goal of 1,000 was reasonable since it was easily achieved and surpassed last year with a total of 1,139 notes written to donors. The final count for today is not yet known.
Each writing station location had postcards with various prompts and examples, but participants could also write notes that are specific to them.
Nance gave an example of a worker at the Global Education Center who wrote a thank you note. Because of the generous donations of about $500,000, the worker thanked donors saying the GEC is able to provide numerous scholarships to Study Abroad and Study USA programs.
Vicki Winslow, coordinator of Donor Relations, said most students begin with the example notes and build off of them with personal words of gratitude. Many students chose to express how they've been able to grow at Elon, largely because of the donations that have made their experiences possible.
One of the example notes reads, “Your continuous giving to Elon supports all of us here on campus. Because of your generosity, Elon has grown in the best ways possible.”
The event highlighted the importance of philanthropy on campus and the impact of all donations on the student body.
Students were also able to contribute by writing their own personal note and sending it to Donor Relations at 2600 Campus Box.