by Joe Long, Alumni Relations Director

Scott Jarvis photo.

I was sitting at home last night opening my mail when I came across an invitation from my alma mater to apply for an affinity credit card. This offer was just like the ones you get from me. It was a credit card that offered me an attractive 9.9% annual rate and 0% – financing for 12 months if I transferred funds from some other high-interest card. I realized I had been getting these pieces of “junk mail” about every six months or so. Each time I received it, I’d open it, take a cursory look over the oer, quickly surmise that I was okay with the credit cards I already had, and toss it into the recycle bin (this is a topic for another letter.) Now I am wondering why I have been doing that.

If I had taken the time to really read this piece of “junk mail,” I would have realized that just by having a credit card from my alma mater, I could help a student go to college who may not have had the opportunity otherwise. You see, the credit card offered by my alma mater was one that gave money back to the alumni association and
a portion of this money was used to fund student scholarships. How did I not know this? How could I have been so blind to this simple way to make a difference in the lives
of today’s students by simply doing what I would normally do any way? I have a credit card and boy, can I find ways to use it.

I decided to take my alma mater up on their offer and called the 800 number located on the application. I opened an account and felt better right away. This morning,
I came into the office and called my alma mater’s alumni office to speak with the person responsible for the affinity programs. She informed me that by simply having
this credit card, I was not only supporting student scholarships, but also the alumni career services and networking activities my alma mater offers. This was great!

Now I only had one thing left to do: find a way to let the alumni of Plymouth State University know that they have the same opportunity to do for their alma mater what I did for mine. I looked over the credit card offers we have been sending out and realized that the most important part of why we offer this credit card to you was hidden, lost in the mass of text and fine print. How did I ever let the important message that, by having a Plymouth State credit card, you are making a difference in the lives of today’s students, become lost in translation? I decided I would do something, and you are reading it.

Today, the Plymouth State University Platinum Plus MasterCard provides over $4,000 each year to Plymouth State University alumni scholarship and outreach efforts. Now do you want to know the amazing part?We are doing this with only a little more than 800 alumni having a card. That is a little more than 2.5 percent of our alumni population. Can you imagine what we could do if we were to up to 10 percent? If you were a math major—and I know some of you were—I am sure you could quickly tell us that we could be providing over $16,000 a year to these activities. Today, we direct 10 percent of the funds we receive to student scholarships. Tomorrow we want to be able to do more.

Now comes the best part. If we can get 10 percent of our alumni to simply have a Plymouth State University Platinum Plus MasterCard, we will increase our commitment to student scholarships to 25 percent of what we raise. That means by just having the card in your pocket, you can help provide $4,000 a year to students who need it most.What an amazing and easy way to make a difference.

In addition to our partnership with Bank of America, we have affinity partnerships with Liberty Mutual and American Insurance Administrators (AIA).While our partnership with Liberty Mutual has been active for over a decade, our partnership with American Insurance Administrators is brand new.We presently have the same 10 percent split with the proceeds from our partnership with Liberty Mutual and had planned to do the same with AIA. I think we can do better. I am willing to make the same commitment concerning Liberty Mutual and AIA as I am making with of Bank of America MasterCard. Ten percent participation equals 25 percent of the proceeds going directly to support student scholarships. Using a nice round figure, if we had 10 percent of our alumni using our sponsored affinity programs, we would be able to direct $12,000 a year to student scholarships. Now that would be amazing!

So next time you get that piece of “junk mail” from me, think twice before putting it in the recycling bin. Your card or insurance application may just be the one that puts us over the 10 percent threshold.