The Beginning

Welcome to the SUTD Alumni blog!

This is the very first post here, so we’ve got lots to share! Many things have happened over the past few months and we’ll be updating this blog frequently as we progress together.

The Mysterious Donor

Though talks about forming an Alumni Association started three years ago when our pioneer batch graduated, progress had stagnated since then, but a recent development imposed a sense of urgency to get things moving.

Early February this year, we were briefed by the Office of Advancement and the Alumni Office that if we could raise $25,000 to kickstart our very own endowment, a donor — who wishes to remain anonymous — would be willing to match that amount dollar-for-dollar. That would bring the total endowed amount to $50,000!

On top of that, MOE would also provide dollar-for-dollar matching grants for donations made through SUTD. That means if our fundraising campaign is successful, we’d have $50,000 in endowed gifts, plus an additional $50,000 in grants which would go into SUTD’s Development Fund — the common pool that provides scholarships, bursaries and other types of funds for students.

Such a sweet deal, right?

Most importantly, the returns from the endowed $50,000 will be managed and used by the Alumni. This means that an Association has to be formed to oversee the administration of the money.

Quick Primer On Endowments

For those who aren’t too sure about what it is exactly, an endowment is a fund that is meant to exist in perpetuity. Unlike expendable funds, which are meant to be used in their entirety within the specified period, an endowed gift is invested for the long term, and a small payout (usually 3%) is withdrawn yearly, thus providing a steady and permanent source of funding.

This is a very common concept. Almost every university has a massive endowment — Harvard has the largest endowment in the world at $36 billion, MIT has $13b, NUS has around $4b, and SUTD’s very own endowment will soon hit $1b.

Our $50,000 endowed gift will contribute to the pool. Since we are a new university, one of our major concerns is whether our tiny Alumni population can raise a significant amount for the fund to be able to make any noticeable impact on SUTD.

Here’s the quick math. Assuming we manage to get the $50,000 and the annual payout is 3%, during the first few years the Alumni’s share would be a measly $1,500. How should we use this to maximise our impact?

Launching the Campaign

To be honest, we may have jumped the gun.

We were told that our mysterious donor would prefer that we hit the target soon, before the end of June. The Office of Advancement also recommended us to create a campaign using the giving.sg platform, as the backend system is already set up for SUTD to receive money through it.

With this opportunity presented, we eagerly created the 25K Challenge. The campaign went live on 23 February. To start the campaign, we donated some money, and there was at least a thousand dollars in the pool before we first publicised it during an Alumni gathering the very next day.

The response couldn’t be more disappointing, but it was entirely our fault. We started campaigning before we had a clear plan about how and where the money was going to be used. Sure, some of the more charitable guys gave generously without any questions asked, but there were many questions from the Alumni and the biggest concern was: How are the funds going to be used?

These questions need to be answered quickly. To aid the brainstorming effort, we recruited the help of many more Alumni.

Filling the Gaps

After the team expanded in mid March, we reorganised ourselves and created two task forces: one dedicated to raising funds through the Alumni, and one dedicated to raising funds through external parties such as companies and charity foundations.

One of our first tasks was to conduct interviews with some Alumni, and we learnt that the poor campaign results were caused by lack of clarity of how the funds were going to be used.

That’s when we noticed that prior to launching the campaign, we had posted a short survey on the SUTD Family Facebook group asking how the Alumni fund should be used, but the results were not consolidated before the campaign began. Hence we re-looked into those results.

The responses gathered were categorised, and another poll was sent — this time to all the Alumni’s personal emails — to gauge which categories we should focus on. The results gave us a clear idea on the preferences of the majority.

With the Alumni’s preferences, it was time to give a definitive answer to the question of how the funds would be used.

How Should We Use the Fund?

Let’s revise our facts again:

• We aim to raise $25,000, which will result in a $50,000 endowed gift after the donor’s match.
• MOE will match that amount and contribute $50,000 to the Development Fund
• Annual payout from the investment is estimated to be 3%, which gives us around $1,500 annually in first few years.
• Financial Aid, Fifth Rows and Alumni Activities are our top priorities.

Knowing that the $50,000 contribution to the Development Fund would already be directed towards Financial Aid, the annual payout should address our next priorities — Fifth Rows and Alumni Activities.

We recognised that $1,500 is too small an amount to be an impactful donation if channeled towards a single Fifth Row, or sponsoring a single event. We turned to the idea of building the fund by using the money to hold meaningful fundraising activities. It could be a networking dinner, a series of workshops, social events or any activity that would create value for Alumni or current students in exchange for donations. The returns could then be used to make an impactful donation, or reinvested into the endowment.

As our endowed gift grows, so will the sum of returns. So don’t worry, many years down the road, the payout will definitely do more than just sponsoring the fundraising events! We will put all our ideas into a “things we can do with $X” list, prioritise them according to feasibility and desirability, and then use it to define our next milestones.

What’s next

Now that we’ve found a good way to use the funds, we will spend some time to update the Alumni, continue to encourage donations, as well as reach out to external parties.

In the meantime, we will work together with the Finance, Student Life and Pillars departments to ensure that a backend system will be in place for the Alumni to contribute easily to Fifth Rows and pillars, and of course for students to be able to easily draw from the funds.

We will also turn our focus to creating the Alumni Association, starting from this weekend.

Keep Updated!

We will be on social media to create some hype and to post some tidbits of info. All these times we will also send out several announcements via emails and WhatsApp messages for more important happenings, and will keep these blog posts reserved for more detailed documentation and information.

Leave a response below if you have an interesting idea on how to grow the fund! If you would like to join the team, feel free to drop any of us an email.