The Chadron State Foundation kicked off its annual fall fund campaign this week, once again using a good-natured competition between teams of local leaders and college faculty and staff to raise money to help the college.
CSC development officer Leslie Bargen is this year’s campaign organizer, and says this year’s theme…Building Tomorrow Today…can be interpreted both literally and figuratively.
“We’re very excited about our new buildings projects on campus… Armstrong Events Center and Rangeland Coffee Pavilion. Those are happening because of money that was raised through the annual campaign and the countless volunteers who helped.
But we are building futures here all the time, and our students are our finished products. They’re constantly building and growing as young people, growing into their adulthood here.”
This year’s drive has 124 volunteers divided into 20 teams…10 from the campus and 10 from the community…who are contacting businesses and individuals in the Chadron area for donations.
Serving as the chairs of the community teams are Jason Carnahan, a loan officer at Security First Bank in Chadron, and mortgage specialist Senna Reeves of First National Bank-North Platte, who is also co-owner of Outlaw Printing in Chadron.
The campus team leaders are Bargen’s husband, men’s basketball coach Brent Bargen, and softball coach and math professor Dr Rob Stack. Chairs serve two year, and this is the second year for both Carnahan…a former CSC football player…and Brent Bargen.
Leslie Bargen says the teams wasted no time in getting down to business and contacting the individuals and businesses on their lists for donations, with some turned in the very first day.
The active portion of the annual campaign runs through the end of the month on the 30th, when all the teams will check in and the donations and pledges each received will be tallied to see which campus and which community team came out on top.
Bargen says while there’s no set dollar goal, she’s hoping the drive will raise somewhere between $175-and-200,000 during the active phase of the campaign…although, as she emphasizes, contributions come in throughout the school year.