After some renovation, with new equipment and a load of new staff, the Mills College Annual Fund started July 1 under the Office of Institutional Advancement.
“The purpose of the annual fund is to get the college money for current-use projects,” said Annual Fund Director Holly Stanco.
With a full staff, including 20 new student workers, OIA started soliciting funds on July 18 with the help of a new automated dialing system. When the annual fund was at the alumnae association, fund-raisers manually dialed numbers from a list.
“She [Stanco] is in the process of putting an incredible program into place,” said Executive Vice President of the Office of Institutional Advancement Ramon Torrecilha. Other new aspects of the annual fund include a new parents’ fund to solicit all parents of undergraduates for donations.
In February, the Board of Trustees approved $300,000 for remodeling, new equipment and staff hiring, according to Torrecilha.
To make room for the new growth, Upward Bound was moved out of the 2nd floor of Carnegie Hall, and that space was renovated to create eight new work stations and an office for Stanco, who previously worked in fund-raising at UC Davis and started at Mills on June 1.
As of Sept. 14, the fund had raised over $110,000 with a goal of $2 million for the year.
Torrecilha said the transition had not been difficult. “It’s going really well,” he said. “We had developed a fairly tight plan … and the community and alumni have been very helpful and responsive.”
Planning started last spring when the Board of Trustees approved the start of the Mills College Annual Fund.
