The university community on Wednesday commenced its first Day of Giving, a 24-hour fundraising campaign focused on raising awareness for more than 120 of SIU’s colleges, programs and initiatives.

More than 900 gifts were donated as of 8 p.m., totaling nearly $285,000, according to the event’s website. This event gives parents, students, faculty, staff and friends from around the globe the opportunity to come together to celebrate and support SIU, said William Schefelbein, one of the event’s organizers and a development and alumni relations intern for the SIU Foundation.

“Our primary motivation is a continuing awareness of SIU,” said Schefelbein, a junior from Peoria studying business management.

The fundraising campaign consisted of social media posts on the foundation’s accounts under the hashtag #SIUDAY and student volunteers at tables set up around the Carbondale campus. Students were pictured in Twitter and Facebook posts holding signs with target amounts for various campus driven initiatives at the university’s schools and colleges.

The largest individual donation recorded during the day was a $75,000 gift for Campus Lake, which has undergone extensive excavation and cleanup work over the last two years.

Schefelbein said he hopes the university could “move to a more private donor base to provide for the programs we want to keep here on campus” considering potential budget cuts that could affect some programs.

With the priorities listed, Schefelbein hopes various donors take this opportunity to “give back to the programs they were involved in.”

The website’s donation link is active until 5:59 a.m. Thursday. Donations can be made on the SIU Foundation’s website, siuday.siu.edu.

Staff writer Francois Gatimu can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @frankDE28.

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