When he was a junior at Trinity College, Peter Doyle ’23 was elected as council president of his fraternity’s giving campaign. It was so successful that Doyle caught the attention of the fundraising professionals at Trinity, who asked him to be a part of the Senior Class Gift campaign. This campaign reached its goal, with half of the senior class making a gift in support of something they cared about on campus.
Fundraising—especially among one’s peers—is seen to be a tough job. Why did Doyle agree to do it more than once? “I got so much out of Trinity,” he says, “and this was a way to return the favor.” In addition to loving that Trinity is a small school that allowed him to get to know his professors, Doyle says that Trinity has a “big reach.” In his junior and senior years, Doyle learned how willing people were to help him, and his Trinity education began to earn dividends. “Doors opened up for me,” he says. “Sami Ashton from the Advancement Office put me in touch with David Linden ’16, who sat down with me for 45 minutes to talk about my future,” says Doyle, who now works in the financial services industry. “He’s even reaches out to me periodically to ask how my career is going!”
Catherine Wallace ’25 now chairs the Senior Class Gift, and, like Doyle, she says she agreed to do so because she has gotten so much out of her experience at Trinity. “I’ve had so many opportunities,” she says. “Since my first year, I’ve been on the golf team, which I have now captained for two years. I’m in the Pre-Law Society and the Political Science Honors Society; I’ve studied on the Rome Campus; I’ve had a legislative internship; and I’ve done work as a stage technician.”
Class gifts have a long history at Trinity and are a staple at most colleges around the country. Historically, Trinity classes would come together to make gifts in the form of items that Trinity needed, such as those considered by the Class of 1979, which, according to The Trinity Tripod, were “a pace clock for swim practice and meets, an objet d’art, . . . a fountain for the library.” In 1932, “The Class Gift to the college was . . . a pew end . . . designed to commemorate the Washington Bicentennial.” (The Trinity Tripod)
In more recent years, though, as part of the Senior Class Gift program, students have been able to direct their giving to organizations and causes on campus that are close to their hearts.
“I made my gift to athletics and the golf team,” Wallace says. “Golf was part of the reason I came to Trinity, and I’ve seen so much growth on the team.”
For the past two years, most seniors have directed their gifts to financial aid, with other popular areas focusing on athletics, DEI initiatives, the Student Emergency and Equity Fund, and Trinity’s greatest needs.
In talking with other seniors about their class gift, Wallace says she finds that they share her passion for Trinity and that “it makes them feel good to give back to organizations that mean a lot to them.”
