Message From Our Leadership

Message from Mark Lindquist
President, Peralta Colleges Foundation

Building a Strong Board

It is a pleasure to serve the Foundation as your President in 2007.  Through the support of our Board and Foundation Staff, your Foundation is better positioned than ever to accomplish its goals to build a superior support network for all four Peralta Colleges.

While the Peralta Colleges management decisions are handled by a publicly elected trustee board, our Foundation Board serves a distinctly different purpose from the work of the trustees.  Our focus on the Foundation Board is to create awareness within the private sector of the Colleges’ needs not met through public support and implement a plan by which our financial needs can be met by private gift support.  In this process, the Board, made up of community leaders, work closely to tie the Peralta Colleges to its philanthropic supporters.  We do not get involved in the governance structure because the Foundation is apolitical.  We are however, actively concerned and interested in the community and view our Community Colleges as closely related.

In quoting from another distinguished Community College, the job of Foundation Community College Board Members is universal and our roles are as follows:

• be aware of those individuals, who need the institution as a resource and to invite those individuals into a relationship with the college,
• to serve as a bridge to the industrial business and professional communities,
• to help interpret the college to the community and, in the process, gain the interest and support of the community,
• to procure and allocate financial resources,
• to be donors to the annual giving, planned giving and capital gifts programs,
• to ensure that the advancement program is designed to affect all of the colleges’ stakeholders in a positive way.

With the help of our alumni volunteers, we are a committed board who views the colleges as important to the health and welfare of community.  We are willing to work and provide leadership to ensure the Foundation’s ongoing success.

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Message from Elihu Harris
Chancellor, Peralta Community College District

This has been a truly exciting year for the Foundation. With our annual golf tournament and gala dinner well established, the Foundation’s endowment is now experiencing genuine growth. We are in the process of adding new board members to the Foundation Board of Directors, and we are looking to forge new relationships with local corporate and business leaders. We are launching a first-ever direct mail campaign with alumni and this new Foundation newsletter. All of these activities are important elements of an overall plan to move the Foundation forward and lay the groundwork for accelerated, sustainable fund development.

Building a substantial endowment fund is critically important if the Foundation is to contribute in significant ways to the education of our students.  San Francisco City College, for instance, has an endowment of $19 million. We, however, have less than $1 million. Our goal is to raise at least $5 million in five years. With everyone’s help, we will make this kind of dramatic and ambitious progress.

The Foundation wants to be able to provide more scholarships to our students, and to support innovations in teaching through curriculum development. This is not possible without a greatly expanded fund balance.

I am proud of the progress made by the Foundation to date. If 2005-06 has been good, 2007 promises to be even better. I invite everyone to support the Foundation and to get involved. Please contact us. We welcome your assistance and your contribution.