The 1861 Giving Challenge raised over $300,000 for SUNY Oswego in addition to the $50,000 promised by 1976 alumni Al Roker.

The challenge was from Sept. 30 at 8 a.m. through Oct. 1  at 3:01 p.m. and lasted exactly 1861 minutes to celebrate the founding year of SUNY Oswego. The event occurred during Founder’s Weekend, when the college held events in honor of its 160th anniversary. Founder Edward Sustin Sheldon’s birthday was Oct. 4, according to the SUNY Oswego Alumni and Development website.

Roker is a foundation board member and is an active alum. According to Barbara Fike, the senior associate director of annual giving, he “readily agreed” to serve as the challenger this year. This is the most successful challenge to date, according to Fike, and she said she was surprised by the high turnout of donors. 

“Having Al Roker as the challenger was a great incentive,” Fike said. “People definitely open their emails because they see his name.”

Roker issued the challenge to SUNY Oswego alumni and supporters that if 861 people donated during the set time, he would donate $50,000 on top of the total sum given. The target was met with over 1,000 donors who gave $303,925.41 during the event. Of the over 1,000 people, it was the first time 341 of them gave money to SUNY Oswego.

“For our first giving challenge we had 605 donors altogether and for this one we had 1,543,” Fike said. “That’s been the biggest change, I’d say, is the number of donors who have given now. The buy-in from all of our alumni, faculty, staff, students [and] parents has been pretty neat. People are willing to give and are excited about it and will repost on social media and tag their friends.”

The Giving Challenge first started in September 2016 and has been held every year since then, except for 2020 due to COVID-19 because Fike said “we didn’t think it was the right time.”

Fike also said for this year’s challenge she worked with a communications team to create an interactive map on the SUNY Oswego Alumni website that tracked where in the U.S. people were donating. 

“We had a whole giving page set up that had a tracker and a map,” Fike said. “The map showed what state you lived in and it would turn the map green if that state made a donation, so that was pretty cool.”

Overall, 38 U.S. states including Alaska, Hawaii, Washington and California, had at least one person contribute. 

Another alum, Shane Facteau of the class of 1995, issued his own challenge in support of the Oswego State wrestling team. Anyone who donated to the wrestling program, he would match their contributions up to $25,000. His “challenge within the challenge,” according to the Alumni website, raised $50,081 for the wrestling team. 

In previous years, other SUNY Oswego alumni have issued their own mini challenges, including Michael Caldwell, class of 1970. During the 4.24 Challenge in 2018,  he said that if 424 people gave a gift to the college in 24 hours, he would donate an additional $24,000. In total, that giving challenge raised $144,973, including Caldwell’s donation, according to the Alumni website. 

After the success of this year’s giving challenge, Fike said she hopes alumni will continue to spread the word about challenges in the future and create their own in support of SUNY Oswego. She encourages everyone to always post and share about these events to show their Laker pride. 

Image via SUNY Oswego