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Message from the Vice President of Institutional Advancement
Recently, my colleague, Judy Boggs, senior director of advancement operations, concluded several months of work in compiling donor impact reports for more than 300 endowed scholarship funds at Westminster College. Judy ensured that every donor received a personal thank-you note from the student or students who have benefitted from the donor’s generosity. As Judy shared her progress with me over the past several months, I was reminded that expressing gratitude is an essential and perpetual element in my work and that of my team in the Office of Institutional Advancement. We thank our faculty and staff colleagues for collaborating with us to connect with alumni and friends. We thank our volunteers for giving of their time. We thank our donors for their gifts. We write notes, send letters and make phone calls, and write features in this magazine and on our website to show appreciation. Gratitude pervades every aspect of our work— and it is our donors and friends who provide us with so many reasons to be thankful.
But what is gratitude and why is expressing it important? According to one researcher, people feel grateful when they have benefitted from someone’s costly, intentional, voluntary effort on their behalf, and experiencing gratitude motivates beneficiaries to extend generosity to third parties. Gratitude is a motivator of “reciprocal altruism,” returning benefits to one’s benefactors, and of “upstream reciprocity,” passing benefits on to third parties, a pay-it-forward mindset. Gratitude is a “benefit detector and a reinforcer and motivator of prosocial behavior.” It is indeed all those things, but in its most basic form, gratitude is a good mindset for all of us. And of the hundreds of students who wrote thank-you notes to donors, grateful minds and hearts are on full display:
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“Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to receive this scholarship…this will have a great impact on my future, and I am grateful.”
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“Thank you so much for the support this scholarship has given me. Being at Westminster has opened my eyes to so many things and has taught me to work hard to be successful in everything I do. Thank you for making this possible.”
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“Being a student at Westminster College has given me certainty that I will be successful in life, as well as giving me so many friends and connections. Thank you for investing in my future. I am so grateful.”
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“Thank you so much for your support, which has kept me focused and working hard. I am excited to keep learning.”
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“Thank you so much for your support. I cannot describe how meaningful it is to receive financial support as a college student. Your gift has had a tremendous impact on my life and it has forever changed me as a person.”
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“I am grateful for the life experiences that have been part of my time at Westminster and I thank you for your support.”
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“Thank you for your generous contribution to my education. You’ve lightened the financial burden of attending college and that is something for which I am very grateful.”
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“I am sincerely honored to have been selected to receive this scholarship. Thank you for your generosity, which has allowed me to be able to proceed with my Westminster degree with the ease of knowing that there are people like you who are willing and able to assist students like me.”
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“I am so thankful for this scholarship; it allows me to have fewer student loans and to obtain my education at a reasonable and affordable rate, which is incredibly important for financial success after graduation; my education at Westminster would not be possible without your support.”
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Our students say it best, and I will repeat it: thank you to each and every one of our alumni, friends, volunteers and donors for sharing your time, treasure and talent with Westminster College.
Sincerely,
Jean M. Hale, Ed.D. Vice President for Institutional Advancement
Thank you to Judy Boggs and the entire Institutional Advancement team—Jami Darlington, Nicole Hunter, Rob Klamut, Merrianne McGill, Kara Montgomery, Jamie Offutt, Brad Tokar, Linda Wilson, Andy Winner—for all you do for me, each other and the entire Westminster College community.
