SPC is a student-run organization at both the Lincoln Center and Rose Hill campuses. It offers opportunities throughout the year for students to give back to the larger Fordham community through their time, energy, and donations.

“[It’s] a group of dedicated students working to create awareness and educate their peers about the importance of giving back to Fordham and its community,” said Kathryn Mandalakis, FCRH ’19, former senior class gift chair and current Fordham Fund Officer. “Our mission is more than just fundraising—it’s more about creating buzz and passion about giving back.”

The committee kicked off giving season on Sept. 24 with its annual Thank-A-Thon, a four-day tabling effort that encourages students to write thank-you notes to Fordham Fund donors. 

“One of the tenets we stress in our meetings is that it’s important to say thanks!” said Mandalakis. “It’s also just a great way for students to interact with our staff members and the Fordham community at large. We always ask students to write a thank-you note so they can more passionately support the cause.”

With the guidance of Fordham’s Office of Stewardship/Donor Relations, these Thank-A-Thon notes are sent to donors who support student scholarships, clubs and organizations, campus renovations, and other initiatives. 

The Student Philanthropy Committee not only provides opportunities to thank existing donors but also offers students the chance to become a part of the larger community of donors themselves by making gifts to the causes that have been most important to their student experience. 

“Being a part of the Student Philanthropy Committee allows me to talk to my peers about how impactful gifts of any size can be, and how impactful your time, energy, and focus can be in improving other people’s lives,” said John Morin, FCRH ’20, the Fordham College at Rose Hill senior class gift chair. 

A few of the opportunities available for students to learn more about giving back and the benefits of becoming a part of the donor community are the Senior Class Gift Kick-Off taking place in November, followed by Giving Tuesday on Dec. 3, and Fordham Giving Day from March 3 to 4. 

“Supporting the senior class gift is a great way to give back to Fordham before becoming an alum. It acts as a vote of confidence in a senior’s four years at Fordham and allows him or her to support the areas that have been most important throughout,” Mandalakis explained. “[It] also introduces students to the world of giving at Fordham in an approachable way while they’re still together with their classmates.”

Current seniors are encouraged to give $20.20 to represent their graduating year. However, seniors who give $50 or more over the course of the year are able to receive the benefits of Young Alumni President’s Club (YAPC), a giving society reserved for current seniors and alumni within 10 years of graduation. (YAPC alumni who have graduated within 1 to 5 years make annual gifts of $250, and for those who have graduated within 6 to 10 years, gifts of $500.)

Much like the President’s Club alumni, who have graduated within 11 or more years and have donated annual gifts of $1,000 or more, YAPC members are invited to exclusive donor receptions and celebrations hosted by Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. This year’s YAPC members can look forward to an invitation to the President’s Club Christmas Party, where they will be able to meet longtime President’s Club members. They will also be offered the opportunity to attend a YAPC reception in April and a cocktail reception during Jubilee weekend in June, and they’ll receive recognition in the University’s annual honor roll of donors. 

“I love Fordham and what Fordham stands for, and I wanted to give back to this great institution,” said committee member Kaitlyn McDermott, FCRH ’21. “Joining SPC allowed me to find an outlet for philanthropic duties while learning valuable skills about being a woman for other people.”

–Chloe Meyer

The party, which was held for members of the Young Alumni President’s Club as well as alumni, parents and friends who’ve given $1,000 or more in a fiscal year, was an unofficial kickoff for the holiday season and a chance for old friends to catch up with each other and make new acquaintances.

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, used the occasion to remind attendees that come December 25, the University will be celebrating its 175th Christmas, as part of its Dodransbicentennial anniversary.

“Dodransbicentennial—Say it loud, and there’s music playing. Say it soft, and it’s almost like praying. I cannot stop saying it,” he said.

This year, there are plenty of reasons to celebrate, including

-This summer, a record 44,000 applications were submitted for the incoming freshman class.
-The class of 2020 is the most geographically diverse in the University’s history.
-Both women’s softball team and mens’ soccer team were A-10 champions this year.
-The mens’ football team is 8-3 and on November 12, the Rams defeated the Holy Cross Crusaders for their first win at Yankee Stadium since 1941.

It is also, he noted, a time to celebrate 175 years of Fordham miracles: Young men and women of extraordinary talent and great generosity of heart who come to Fordham to be transformed.

“Fordham gives a distinctive education. It teaches young men and women to read critically, to think analytically, to write with persuasion, to speak with eloquence, to set their moral compasses so that they can go forward and lead lives filled with a sense of noble purpose,” Father McShane said.

“Without you, the Fordham miracles stops. Without your generosity, lives cannot be transformed. Because of you, the sacred ministry can continue.”

In fact, he said, attendees are not just benefactors; they are “colleagues in ministry,” and practically members of the Society of Jesus, sans the SJ initials.

“When I say your names in prayer, this, my friends is when music wells up in my heart, and tears in my eyes. You are colleagues in ministry, men and women, whom Ignatius would claim as his own.”

Just ask Will (FCRH ’07) and Angelica (FCRH ’07, GSS ’08) Corrigan.

The Keating Hall steps, engraved with the names of heads of state who have visited campus, was the site of the Corrigans’ very first kiss, on a drizzly spring evening in 2005. Five years later, Keating served as the location of Will’s surprise wedding proposal.

Will had interned in Fordham’s alumni relations office as a student, and he kept in touch with several contacts there after graduating. In late 2010, he called on them for help with his plan to lure Angelica (née Iacono) back to campus for the proposal, asking them to create a fake evite for an alumni Christmas party to take place the first week of December in Keating Hall.

Will planned to ask Angelica to marry him on the steps of Keating, but when they arrived on campus that frigid Friday, Angelica insisted it was too cold to walk to the steps at the front of the building and wanted to enter through a side door instead. Somewhere in between, Will got down on one knee and proposed.

“There was a mix of tears and runny noses,” said Angelica. “But there was no hesitation in my reply, and it wasn’t because I was freezing but because there was nothing to think over or consider. I knew he was the one!”

Eventually, they entered Keating Hall so Angelica could take off her gloves and put on the ring. She then insisted that they get to the party—which she still didn’t realize wasn’t happening.

Instead, in true Fordham style, Will had made reservations at their favorite Arthur Avenue restaurant, Emilia’s, and after dinner, they stopped at another favorite hangout, Pugsley’s—where “Pizza is good and love is it!”—to tell the owners their news.

“Pugsley’s was a big part of our Fordham lives,” said Will. “Countless late nights were spent there just hanging out eating a Ritchie’s special or a garlic bread with cheese, or singing karaoke, or some other late-night shenanigans. We even got them to reopen after the Senior Ball.”

Owner Sal Natale recalled how Will and Angelica had started coming in as part of a group and over time came in as a couple, eventually winning a karaoke contest together.

“They are both beautiful people, and we watched their love grow,” he said. “We couldn’t ignore what we saw in them.”

Will and Angelica were married on May 5, 2012, at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Malverne, New York. The wedding party included their former classmates Christina Morea (FCRH ’07), Annette Vetrano (GSB ’07), Katrina Vetrano (FCRH ’07), and Robert Rowe (FCRH ’07), and more than 20 Fordham alumni attended the reception.

Today, Will is a performance and reward manager for HSBC, and Angelica is a social worker for the North Shore-LIJ Health System, where she works at an elementary school mental health clinic. She is taking a little time off, though, on maternity leave with the couple’s three-month-old son, Nino.

Wanting to acknowledge the important place Fordham has in their lives, the Corrigans recently decided to give back to the University that brought them together. They made a gift to the Fordham Founder’s Undergraduate Scholarship Fund, and in so doing became members of the Young Alumni President’s Club.

As a former Founder’s Scholar, Will knows well the help scholarship support brings students, “how much of a burden was lifted off of me and my family.” He said giving back helps keep the Fordham community strong.

“Father McShane, from his first day talking to us, said, ‘We’re going to make Fordham the number one Catholic university in the country.’ And he hasn’t stopped,” said Will, referring to Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. “In order to continue that, [we wanted]to give back.”

But at heart the Corrigans’ reasons for giving are personal.

“We had such a good experience at Fordham, and it is so close to our hearts,” said Angelica. “Our relationship, our marriage, our friendships … just to give kids who might not have the opportunity the extra help to get there. That’s why we give back.”

And while Will is still lamenting that Nino’s impending birth caused them to miss Homecoming last fall, and that Angelica has not yet let him bring Nino to visit the Rose Hill campus because of all the cold New York weather, he still feels that there might be a bit of the Ram in his son.

“I’m not saying that Nino will go to Fordham,” said Will. “But maybe he will meet his wife there someday.”

Now that would be some Fordham love story.

—Maja Tarateta

Since graduating in 2007, Catino and O’Brien have been loyal donors to the University, giving each year “to show our gratitude and school pride,” says Catino. “We choose to give, to help make [Fordham] even better and give other students the opportunity to attend this great university.”

A native of Minneapolis, Catino came to Fordham because she wanted to study in New York City, preferably at a Catholic university that offers a dance program. She had been training as a dancer since she was 3, and applied to Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. in dance program at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, but after visiting the Rose Hill campus, she transferred her enrollment to Fordham College at Rose Hill, where she majored in communication with a minor in business.

She also found a creative outlet for her passion. For four years, she was a member of the student-run dance company, Expressions Dance Alliance, and Fordham’s dance team, Ram Rhythm. She now volunteers as a dance instructor at Liberated Movement, a nonprofit, donation-based dance company in Tribeca.

Greg O’Brien, GSB ’07, and Bridgette Catino, FCRH ’07,
in front of Keating Hall

Catino says her Fordham education, coupled with the support she received from the University’s Office of Career Services, helped her earn a job at CBS Corporation. She started working there as an intern in the research department during her junior year, and is now a director in the advertising sales department. “CBS is situated within the communication world,” she says, “but I do read balance sheets and annual reports, so the [business]minor has been helpful.”

Her junior year at Fordham was especially memorable for another reason. It’s when she met her future husband, Greg O’Brien, on the fourth floor of O’Hare Hall Residential College. They started dating during their senior year and married in September 2012.

“Fordham was the best four years of my life,” says O’Brien. “I have friends I’ll have forever. I met my wife there. [It’s great] what it has done for me in my life.”

O’Brien, who is from Edison, N.J., grew up familiar with Fordham. His grandfather Thomas Garrubbo is a 1942 graduate of Fordham College at Rose Hill, and one of his cousins, Kimberly Spiessbach, graduated from Fordham Law in 1998. “That was a big decision factor in attending,” he says, “but [it was also about]falling in love with the look of campus.”

After graduating with a B.S. in finance from the Gabelli School of Business, O’Brien started working at Allied Irish Bank, where he soon discovered several Fordham connections. In fact, he has counted Fordham alumni among his colleagues and supervisors at all three of his post-college jobs, including his current position as an assistant vice president in U.S. Bank’s Education and Nonprofits Division.

Active students at Fordham—O’Brien was in the Sixth Man Club and played intramural softball, and Catino was in the Fordham University Emerging Leaders Program and the Fordham Club—they find many ways to give back to their alma mater.

“Fordham helped reinforce the Christian values we grew up with and provided opportunities for us to get involved in the community and around campus to give back,” says Catino.

They attend football and basketball games, Expressions performances, Homecoming, and other alumni events. They also give back as members of the Young Alumni President’s Club (YAPC).

YAPC, a donor recognition society at Fordham, recognizes recent undergraduate or graduate alumni who give back to their alma mater. For those graduates from the classes of 2004 to 2008, membership is based on an annual gift totaling $500 or more; from the classes of 2009 to 2013, it is $250 or more.

Catino and O’Brien support the University’s annual fund, the Fordham Fund, and the Fordham College at Rose Hill and Gabelli School of Business funds. And, as part of YAPC, they receive exclusive invitations to professional networking and social gatherings.

“Ours and other alumni donations demonstrate our collective appreciation for what Fordham has and will continue to provide us throughout our careers and lives,” says O’Brien.

“We think it’s important to help Fordham maintain its esteemed academic status and to continue to provide the same kinds of positive experiences for students that we had, for years to come.”

To learn more about the Young Alumni President’s Club, visit www.fordham.edu/yapc.