This year, staff all across the district took their generosity to a new level. Spurred by the offer of incentive gifts to their school's endowment fund, over 700 MMSD staff gave more than $72,000 in the 2006 campaign for the Foundation for Madison's Public Schools. Compared with last year, these are increases of over 50% in number of donors and over 15% in the amount given!

Special recognition this year goes to Affiliated Alternatives and Cherokee Middle School, winners of the Foundation's special $1,000 school endowment gifts. Affiliated Alternatives (Larry Palm, Captain) received its gift for having the greatest percentage of its staff giving during the campaign: 96.9%! Cherokee (Donna Fogell, Captain) was honored for having the greatest increase in number of staff giving vs. last year: 1,333.33%!

On hearing these amazing results, Foundation Board member Vicky D'Orazio and her husband Richard made a special gift of $2,500 to increase the number of schools able to receive recognition awards this year. Thanks to the D'Orazios, the endowment funds of five additional schools have received a special gift of $500 from the Foundation.

• Wright (Ann Niedermeier and Linda Aten, Co-Captains), for a 675% increase over last year, and 58.5% of staff giving
• Sennett (Nancy Battist and Rafael Gomez, Co-Captains), for a 620% increase and 33.3% of staff giving
• Mendota (Sandy Gunderson and Cathy Hunt, Co-Captains), for a 283% increase and 44.2% of staff giving
• Kennedy (Margaret Stumpf and Craig Campbell, Co-Captains), for a 275% increase, and 23.1% giving
• Lindbergh (Shirley Raymakers, Captain), for a 250% increase, and 39.6% giving

As in past years, the vast majority of staff giving this year — nearly 70% — was targeted to the endowment funds of individual schools, bringing the total raised for these endowments to more than $750,000 over the past three years. Each school will get to use the "interest" from these endowments for special projects at their school each and every year, forever.

Also, more than $11,000 of this year's campaign gifts were targeted to the Foundation's unrestricted funds, and will support the Foundation's annual district-wide grantmaking program. These gifts are also helping the Foundation match an anonymous $125,000 challenge that will yield another $250,000 for these unrestricted funds. Stay tuned for an announcement on that!

The Foundation Board, staff, and volunteers extend their deepest thanks for this wonderful show of generosity by MMSD employees, and especially to the dozens of staff across the district who served as captains within their buildings and were such exceptional ambassadors for the campaign.