A Call for College Classmates to Reunite in Behalf of Public Service

If Ralph Nader and other members of the Princeton University Class of 1955 are successful, college reunions will no longer be about rowdy all-night drinking parties and the strong-arming of classmates into making big gifts.

ALSO SEE:

Class Action

Appleseed Foundation

Instead, the focus will be on public service — and on ways to turn alumni groups into a powerful force for social change.

At Mr. Nader’s urging, his classmates already have spent the past decade undertaking a variety of public-service efforts, such as fighting tuberculosis and setting up public-service internships for Princeton students.

They now are trying to persuade alumni from other colleges and universities to set up public-interest projects of their own. Mr. Nader himself has donated $10,000 to what the classmates have dubbed the “Alumni Network,” and grant makers have chipped in an additional $75,000.

The project’s goal is to encourage the development of alumni-based public-interest programs at 50 colleges and universities by 2005.

Mr. Nader’s idea is not so much to get alumni to provide direct service, but to persuade them to create institutions that will make enduring contributions. He himself is the consummate institution builder, having founded groups such as Public Citizen, the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, and the Center for Auto Safety.

But it remains to be seen whether project organizers can garner enough support from college and university alumni to create and sustain such institutions. They also may encounter obstacles from development officials, some of whom worry that the emphasis on public-service collaborations could dampen contributions to the schools themselves.

The idea of using college-class ties to stimulate volunteerism was developed at a 1989 meeting in Washington, when Mr. Nader challenged a group of his classmates to think more about donating their money and know-how to helping society.

He was candid about how frustrated he had been that Princeton had not made better efforts to take advantage of the skills of his classmates who loyally returned to campus for reunions.

“I was appalled by the non-intellectual nature of these reunions,” he says. “They were big alcoholic celebrations. I felt Princeton should be asking us for our intelligence, not just for our checks and our whoop-dee-doo.”

As a result of Mr. Nader’s prodding, his class formed Princeton Project 55, the name of which denotes not only the year they graduated, but also the age that many of them were turning at the time.

Princeton Project 55 officials estimate that, during the past 10 years, hundreds of Princeton alumni from its class and others, have helped set up public-interest projects by volunteering, donating money, or both.

One such project has helped gain recognition for the worldwide problem of tuberculosis. The alumni maintain an office in Washington where two recent Princeton graduates, aided by Mr. Nader and a physician who is a former executive from drug manufacturer Merck, work to obtain federal and private money for research and education on the disease. Their goal is to develop a vaccine to fight the disease, which infects eight million people around the world each year — and takes the lives of three million others.

Another Princeton 55 project, the Public Interest Program, has helped more than 700 students and graduates from Princeton and other colleges obtain internships or fellowships at about 300 non-profit organizations. More than 200 of those students have gone on to continue working at non-profit organizations.

The efforts that the Princeton alumni have made to encourage public service not only among themselves but among students was a key reason that two prominent New York foundations decided to underwrite the expansion of the alumni network.

The Carnegie Corporation of New York made a $25,000 grant “because these kinds of projects are just super opportunities for getting young people to be thinking about a lot of different careers in the non-profit sector,” says Geri Mannion, who heads the Carnegie fund’s democracy program and special projects.

The Surdna Foundation provided $50,000 for similar reasons.

“They’ve got a good program of placing young students in community-service roles,” says Vince Stehle, who oversees Surdna’s grant-making programs to strengthen non-profit organizations. “Replicating that at good schools around the country seems like a really powerful concept.”

Even before Princeton 55 came up with the idea of the Alumni Network, the community-service project started to grow popular on other campuses.

After getting their own projects under way, Mr. Nader and his classmates took the idea to the Harvard Law School Class of 1958, of which Mr. Nader also is an alumnus. Classmates there decided to create the Appleseed Foundation, which has set up 16 public-interest law centers around the country.

They also inspired the Yale University Class of 1955 to set up a project in the New Haven public schools. Working with the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, a New York charity, the program is teaching schoolchildren the principles of starting a business. The alumni are close to raising the $22,000 that is needed to get the program off the ground, and instruction is beginning in two schools this fall.

“All of us our getting to an age when we’re retiring,” says Peter Goldsmith, a retired manufacturer’s representative who is the Yale project’s vice-chairman. “Some of us may have money, some of us may have time, and there’s a great social need out there.”

Chet Safian, a New York investment adviser who directs the Alumni Network, says working through alumni classes is a perfect way to find successful people who can contribute their time and money to meaningful public-interest projects. ”It’s already there,” says Mr. Safian, a former chairman of Princeton Project 55. “It’s a cohesive force already.”

The Princeton Project’s effort to provide internships has also spread to other campuses. As at Princeton, alumni groups at Dartmouth and Smith Colleges help arrange the internships at the non-profit groups and sometimes provide money to subsidize stipends that students receive. They also provide guidance to the students taking part in the program.

“Letting the alumni hear the students talk about what they did and catch their enthusiasm is magical — it’s just inspirational to everybody,” says Karl Holtzschue, a lawyer and past chairman of the Dartmouth Partners in Community Service program.

Ann M. Sharfstein, who graduated from Dartmouth in June, participated in internships at Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York and at the Boston headquarters of A Better Chance, a non-profit group that works to improve the education and career opportunities for black students.

During her 10-week internship at A Better Chance, Ms. Sharfstein, an English major, received about $2,000 in living expenses. A Dartmouth alumnus who is a board member at the non-profit organization provided Ms. Sharfstein with advice and guidance.

Upon graduation, Ms. Sharfstein joined A Better Chance as a program and research associate, helping minority students prepare for college. She now is advising another Dartmouth student who began an internship at the organization in September.

“The greatest thing about this is everyone has benefited here,” says Ms. Sharfstein, the third Dartmouth student to serve as an intern at the charity. “A Better Chance got someone who really wants to be here, and I got a wonderful job right out of college. And now they get another intern.”

Despite the positive reaction that public-service programs have received among alumni, some college officials are wary about encouraging them.

Some staff members at university alumni offices worry about the extra workload. And some college development offices fear that public-service efforts could compete with their own fund-raising efforts.

Laney Funderburke, director of alumni affairs at Duke University, says he is unsure whether he would help inform Duke alumni about the Princeton effort out of fear that it would interfere with Duke’s own fund raising.

“There is only so much time and volunteerism you can get from a group of people or individuals,” he says.

Princeton Project 55 initially encountered similar resistance from the Princeton alumni and development offices, says Adrienne A. Rubin, an associate director at the Alumni Council of Princeton University.

But she says such programs can actually increase the number and amount of alumni donations.

Mr. Safian, the director of the Alumni Networks program, agrees. Until he became involved in Princeton Project 55, says Mr. Safian, he gave only $100 a year to Princeton. Now, he says, he gives “many times that.”

“When a class does something on a community-service or public-interest basis, it brings more members of that class back to the university. It makes people feel good about being alumni,” Mr. Safian says.

Many members of the Princeton Class of 1955 volunteer for Prince ton Project 55 and also to raise money for the university’s annual fund, said Rand Mirante, a Princeton fund raiser.

He believes that Princeton Proj ect 55 has strengthened donations, and he recommends that college and universities support such alumni efforts on their campuses.

“I don’t see why a project like this couldn’t be as every bit of a success anywhere else in the country,” he says.

Even when colleges do show support for public-service efforts among alumni, such projects are doomed to failure unless they have several energetic champions. Mr. Nader estimates that at least 20 alumni must be committed to a project if it is to obtain what he calls “critical mass.”

One of the challenges, says Mr. Holtzschue of the Dartmouth program, is finding a way to motivate alumni, who normally have little contact with one another beyond reunions. He says the Dartmouth alumni have not had much luck persuading other classes to work with them.

“To get a class actually to do it isn’t easy,” Mr. Holtzschue says.

It took nine years for the Yale Class of 1955 to decide to sponsor its entrepreneurship program in the New Haven schools. An earlier effort to provide textbooks to Eastern European universities was a failure, says Mr. Goldsmith.

But given the determination and dedication of the Princeton Class of 1955, Ms. Rubin says the Alumni Network is likely to inspire many new projects. “I think, with the people behind it,” she says, “it may have no choice but to be successful.”

* * *

The Princeton Project 55 Web site provides information about the Alumni Network and other class projects. The address is http://www.project55.org.