Haverhill and Lawrence, MA (April 7, 2022) – The first ever Giving Day at Northern Essex Community College started out with a goal: 100 individual donors.

Katie Yeaton-Hromada, Coordinator for Career Services and Internship Programs, volunteered on the Haverhill campus.

The college’s Board of Trustees had pledged to collectively donate $10,000 if 100 people gave to the campaign on April 7. Giving Day’s organizers were more than up for the challenge and got to work creating excitement for the 24 hour event both on and off campus. Those efforts paid off in a big way. By 11am they had already sailed past the 100 donor goal and realized “we’re gonna need a bigger boat!”

A $1,000 matching challenge from the college’s vice presidents spurred even more activity in the late afternoon. And when all was said and done, 206 donors had come together to raise $34,604. The effort smashed previous annual giving campaign records and made April 7, 2022 the largest single-day community fundraising effort in NECC Fund history.

In an email to the college community, President Lane Glenn noted “This milestone is an incredible testament to the amazing work that can happen when our entire community comes together to rally around a common cause. The money we’ve raised will go a long way toward benefiting the important initiatives, programs, and scholarships that we work so hard every day to support.”

All of the funds raised will go to the NECC Fund, which provides critical support to the college’s areas of greatest need. Gifts to the NECC Fund are unrestricted, meaning they can be spent immediately and benefit a range of resources and programs that are crucial to the success of students, faculty, and staff. Historically, the NECC Fund has offered substantial support to some of the following areas: student scholarship, innovative, academic programming, career programming and classroom resources.

Giving Day will now become an annual event, held on April 7. The date is significant: more than 60 years ago, April 7th was the date students could first register for classes at the newly-formed Northern Essex Community College.

You can learn more about Giving Day and other ways to support Northern Essex Community College by visiting the Alumni & Giving webpage.

Thank you to the many volunteers who worked to make Giving Day a huge success and to those 206 donors who showed the power of coming together as a community.