Our Crowdfunding Groups
UPDATE
On May 1st, Anna would have celebrated her 45th birthday so to honor our dear friend and classmate the Class of 2000 is re-launching the campaign for Anna’s award and we would like to get at least 45 gifts in the next 45 days. Will you join us in celebrating our friend and helping us to achieve our goal of $50,000 so multiple student affairs/higher education students can be recipients of the award each academic year? Thank you for your support and please feel free to share this campaign on your own social media pages or with others that would be interested. Big or small, all gifts make a difference and get us closer to hitting our goal!!
On November 17, 2019, we lost our beautiful friend and classmate, Anna Furgiuele Whitted, BA ’98, EdM ‘00.
Anna, who always had a smile on her face, had an impact on the lives of everyone with whom she came in contact in her 43 years. She was the type of friend you could always count on in tough times and the biggest cheerleader for those she loved, especially her husband, Michael, and three sons, Michael, Johnathan and Christopher.
This past spring, members of our class had a check-in call on Zoom and it didn’t take long for us to realize how different the call felt because Anna wasn’t with us. Acknowledging this was our 20th-reunion year, we started to discuss wanting to do something in memory of our friend.
As we thought back to our days in graduate school at UB, and shared laughs about the good times we had, memories kept emerging about the fun we had had traveling together to various national conferences and meetings. These trips not only allowed us to meet and network with other higher-education professionals, but our class grew closer as a group -- and for that we will always be grateful that we had those opportunities together.
Since Anna loved to travel and our memories of traveling with her and as a class brought smiles to our faces, we decided to establish an award in Anna’s name to support students in the higher education/student affairs program in the Graduate School of Education at UB with their expenses related to participation in professional-development conferences and meetings. Students that have the financial means to attend conferences and meetings outside of Western New York have an advantage not available to students that cannot afford to attend. Attendance at such conferences can have a major impact on students’ lives and their career paths. It was because Anna was able to interview at the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) conference that she was able to secure a job after graduate school in Chicago, where she eventually met her husband and called home for 19 years.
Our goal is to raise $50,000 so that Anna’s award can support multiple students each year, allowing her legacy of impacting the lives of others to live on in perpetuity. Please join us in supporting this effort and sharing this campaign on social media and with others that would be interested. Together, we can make a difference in the lives of several students, while also remembering our dear friend.
*If this gift intention is to support an endowment fund, unless otherwise restricted by the gift instrument pursuant to paragraph (b) of Section 553 of the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law, the institution may expend so much of the endowment fund as it deems prudent after considering the factors set forth in paragraph (a) of Section 553 of the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law.
