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By Rachel Chan
STOMP contributor Brad Tan has an axe to grind with his alma mater.
It all started with a 'sneaky' phone call last week, when a caller from the National University of Singapore (NUS) first asked to update his personal details before moving on to the main agenda - a donation.
"We are already being bombarded by irritating calls from banks about their products and credit-card fund transfers day in and day out," Mr Tan said.
"It really hit a raw nerve with me to see a classy institution like NUS stooping so low to get funds."
What is more, he had initially thought that the caller had been recruited by the university, which has a 186,000-strong alumni, to solicit funds from its graduates.
However, Stomp's check with NUS revealed that the caller was a student from the NUS Student Call Centre, and not an employee of the Alumni Office.
Ms Ng Pheck Choo, Annual Giving team leader of NUS' Development Office, said: "The NUS Student Call Centre was launched by the Development Office in November last year, with the twin objectives of engaging NUS alumni and informing them about our Annual Giving campaign."
The NUS Student Call Centre, she explained, is manned by the university's students, many of whom are bursary recipients.
The funds from donors are to go towards helping students with financial difficulties.
A check with Nanyang Technological University (NTU) revealed that similar efforts are used to encourage each graduating class since 2005 to give back to the school.
In a Straits Times article last month, director of NTU's development office Marina Tan Harper said:"In the professional world of fund-raising, you cannot leave donations to chance. You have to solicit donors and call them up."
NTU was unable to respond by press time on how these calls were made.
On the other hand, Singapore Management University (SMU)'s culture is such that the year's graduating class voluntarily pools a sum of money as a Senior Class Gift for the university.
The $13,000 collected from this year's graduates would go towards a scholarship that sponsors the tuition fees of one needy student for a year.
The funds from previous batches from 2004 to last year have been channelled to the SMU Alumni Scholarship Fund, which will go to a deserving student in his or her third or final year.
In an e-mail response to my paper, an SMU spokesman emphasised that funds for the yearly gift are raised through word of mouth, and not through cold-calling.
"Contributions are voluntary and made by graduates who genuinely feel for giving back to their alma mater," he added.
Meanwhile, NUS' Ms Ng has apologised to Mr Tan for calls that he felt were "harassing".
"Our student callers have been trained in general phone etiquette to be as professional as possible. If they should appear overly enthusiastic in promoting the cause, it is because it is, after all, very close to their hearts," she said.
"Phoning our alumni members is just one of the means to reach out to our diverse alumni population and to keep in touch with them, which includes updating their contact information."
rachchan@sph.com.sg
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