By: Elaine Best, Editor

Teaching Annual Giving to Students (TAGS), a program from the Office of Annual Giving meant to teach students about how the Annual Fund affects campus and about annual giving, has rebranded to become the Benefactors.  Unlike TAGS, the Benefactors will be completely student run and hopes to have a bigger impact on campus.  President of the Benefactors Jamie Inabinet along with Assistant Director of The Wofford Fund Erin Hunter teamed up together to discuss what these changes mean for the Wofford community.

“It was discovered…that students respond better to other students and having students take ownership would really breathe new life into the program,” the team says, regarding the structural change of the Benefactors.  “The name reflects our purpose and pays homage to our founder, Ben Wofford, who demonstrated his philanthropic nature in giving $100,000 to found our great school.”

The Benefactors hopes to show students the power of giving back to Wofford and how others’ generosity has helped make current students’ experiences what they are today.

“Our mission is to build a tradition of philanthropy and a culture of gratitude on campus. Wofford and its students are already investing time, talent and money in our community, and we want to highlight that thousands of alumni, parents and friends of the college have been doing the exact same thing to make Wofford what it is today. We wouldn’t be able to do half the things we do if it weren’t for generations of generosity,” the team says.

Some elements of the Benefactors will remain the same, but Inabinet and Hunter stress there will be a stronger emphasis on student involvement.

“With our new name we have a new logo and have organized to hold meetings every other week on Tuesdays at 11:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in addition to the events we will hold on campus. Two of our events include Wofford Gives Thanks and a young alumni speaker series. We also hold a senior giving campaign every spring that has been highly successful – last year, 50 percent of the senior class made a gift,” Inabinet and Hunter say.

The formal launch for the Benefactors will be held on Monday, Feb. 8 at the men’s basketball game. The group will be handing out “be a Ben” stickers to every student in attendance as well as having a raffle for t-shirts for anyone who follows all of their social media accounts.

“We hope to see a lot of people at our launch, [our] meetings [held at] 11:30 a.m. every other Tuesday… and events this year. You can also follow us on Snapchat ‘WOCO_BeABen’ or Instagram ‘Wofford_Benefactors’ or Facebook ‘Wofford Benefactors.’ We want all of Wofford to ‘Be a Ben!’”

“We truly want to show students how other people have made their education possible,” Inabinet and Hunter add, “and how they can pay it forward.”