Alumni Support FMS Through Phone-a-thon
Tradition of Brotherhood: at Alumni Weekend 2014, Alumni gather to sing the school songs with Cadets.
(Waynesboro, VA) — Members of the Fishburne Military School Alumni Association’s Board of Directors filled the Alumni House with happy chatter this past Saturday. Stories of “the old corps”, memories from barracks life and visions for Fishburne’s future were punctuated with laughter and often led to questions of “whatever happened to…”. It wasn’t one another, however, with whom the Caissons in the Alumni House were reminiscing. This was the first in what promises to be a continuing series of Alumni Association Phone-a-Thons.
“The object of this project,” explains FMSAA Board of Directors President, Sam Knight ’00, “is to help strengthen the bonds of brotherhood between Fishburne Military School Alumni and to encourage them to increase their level of involvement with their Alma Mater. We want to see the FMS family continue to grow in size and strength and we’re here this weekend to, hopefully, spur along some of that growth.”
Volunteers from the Class of 1956 through the Class of 2006 manned eight phones in the Alumni House and personally reached out to each of their classmates and as many members of their “shoulder classes” as time, and voice-strength, would allow. “We really want to get across the fact that we are all members of the same FMS family,” Knight noted, “and the strength of that family depends directly upon our loyalty to one another and to our school.”
Debbie Todd, Director of Alumni Affairs for FMS, couldn’t have been more pleased with the participation and the results of this first FMSAA Phone-a-thon. “It was really great to hear our guys making contact with one another, some of them for the first time in years. We were able to reach out to a huge number of alumni this weekend to let them know that we’re thinking of them and to invite them to Alumni Weekend 2016.”
Throughout the day, “whatever happened to…” led to Google and Facebook searches, an update of the school’s records and then to a subsequent phone call from an active alumnus looking to “catch up” and share the latest news from campus. “Response has been great,” Todd smiles, “every one of these guys is having a great time and we’re all learning a great deal from the experience.”
One major discovery? A great many of the school’s alumni were gratified to learn that gifts as small as $5 and $10 were whole-heartedly welcomed and could be put to immediate use on campus. Many more were unaware that supporters of FMS could make recurring gifts through the school’s website: www.fishburne.org/donate. “A lot of people mistakenly think that a smaller gift is somehow less appreciated than a larger one,” Todd explained, “they don’t realize that, with tuition only covering around 80% of the school’s expenses, every single dollar of support makes an immediate impact upon the lives of Cadets.”
“When we give to larger institutions, like our college alma maters,” Knight illustrates, “that money is, I’m sure, appreciated…but it doesn’t have the same kind of immediate and substantive impact that the same donation could make at a small institution like FMS. More importantly; as FMS alumni, we have all benefitted from the generosity of generations who came before us…now we have the opportunity to continue that legacy of giving by ensuring that future generations have the same (or better) opportunities that we did.”
Ultimately, the discussion always returns to one subject: Family. “Fishburne Military School,” says Todd, “thrives today because we have always been members of the same family. The strength of the school depends upon small and large donations alike…the future of the school depends upon the size, strength and commitment of the FMS family as a whole. In a number of ways 10,000 gifts of $5 each can mean as much to our future as a single gift of the same amount. It’s important that FMS’ future continues to belong to all of us.”
Fishburne Military School is the oldest and smallest of all military schools for boys in Virginia. Its college-prep curriculum is built upon the structure of an Army JROTC program. FMS is designated as a JROTC Honor Unit with Distinction and may nominate qualified candidates to the United States Service Academics. Fishburne hosts one of only four Summer JROTC programs in the nation, accredited by US Army Cadet Command.
