Firstly a word of apology to those who have had difficultyin pledging or depositing donations over the past two weeks. We have had a fewteething problems which happily will have all been sorted out by the time thisreaches you. Please do remember to fill in your pledge form and send thatthrough immediately either on line, scan and send, post or deliver personallyto either Mrs Bloemink or myself if you want to chat! One of the thingsthat we obviously never taught you at Boys High over the past 60+ was how tofill in forms - please try to follow instructions and fill in all the requiredblocks. Some of you have done well but forgot to tell us how much you arepledging - I am happy to fill the amount in if you give me carte blanche.
The response since the launch has been great. In thepast ten days we have received donations in terms of money in the bank andpledges of R1,191,100. What makes this figure even more significant isthe fact that this comes from only 56 donors. Can you imagine how well wewould do if we could extrapolate this from 4 or 5 thousand donors! Thebreakdown per decade is as follows:
Pre 1950 R12,500
1950's R549,700
1960's R92,000
1970's R350,000
1980's R111,600
1990's R55,400
2000's R1,500
Others R18,400
The others column includes a non-Old Boy who is a friend ofsomeone in the Class of 1994 and also grateful grandparents. The classes withthe largest number of contributors at this stage are (in order) 1968, 1994 and 1956.
As previously mentioned, we have two donations of R1 millionin the bank and a further two donations of R1 million in pledges, one of whichhas already paid the first tranch. Sadly, for the years from which thesedonors come, we have not factored these amounts in as they would have thenalready eclipsed the targets we have set. This leaves you guessing, I amafraid.
Please encourage all your friends to visit this websiteregularly in order to see how the campaign is progressing as we intend toupdate it weekly. Thank you to all who have responded so quickly andgenerously and good luck to all team members as you move ahead in contacting your classmates. Please do get them to inform you when they have donatedso that you don't need to follow up.
With gratitude and best wishes
Bill
