Rowing Alumni Update: Red Fox Navy Campaign Kick-off 2023
January 6th, 2023
Dear Marist Rowing Alumni Family and Friends,
I wanted to start today’s email thanking everyone for a fantastic 2022 season and to wish you all a late happy holiday. We hope that all of you had a fun and happy holiday season filled with family and friends. The team will be returning this Monday as we prepare to ship out for our winter training trip to Deland FL. The organization for the trip this year has been a challenge with rising costs of travel and lots of changes on our teams but Josh and I are excited to have some great young talent lined up to train hard in Deland and possibly get eaten by an Alligator! We’ll be sending some posts and some messages from the water while we’re there. The team will be in Deland from Jan 10th to 15th
I am writing today to kick off our 2023 giving campaign. We owe you an apology for our lateness in getting our campaign started this season. Our program has been held up by some small structural changes at the college in athletics giving AND by some small changes of our own that we have made to the Red Fox Navy. To that end, I wanted to provide a few notes about our 2023 campaign
Fundraising Goal
We are still blown away by the incredible generosity shown by this group in our 2022 campaign. Rowing at Marist has clearly been a formative force in many of our lives and the Red Fox Navy stepped and showed their strength and support raising over $55,000 beating our fairly aggressive goal for increased activity. We also had roughly 195 unique donors. For 2023 Bob and I have increased the goal just slightly to $60,000 and we’re hoping you’ll join us in tackling this goal as a group. Along with that new goal I want to encourage you to reach out to old team mates and team members who weren’t with us in 2022 and get them to join the Navy in 2023. We’d love to see an increase in total donors to get us up into the mid 200’s!
How to Donate
This year, we will once again be using the Marist GiveCampus.com platform for raising funds online. You can access our Men’s Rowing page at the following link
https://www.givecampus.com/schools/MaristCollege/marist-athletics/pages/men-s-rowing
There you will find a brief address from myself and some of our athletes; You can donate in a number of different ways AND you can see our progress towards our goals. I want to thank the 9 great donors who got on the board this fall and who have got us to $8k mark already! If you’d prefer to donate via check you can make checks out to “Marist College” and make sure they say “Marist Men’s Rowing Shell Account” on the memo line. Checks can be mailed to:
Marist College Advancement Department
3399 North Rd
Poughkeepsie NY 12601
Structural Changes in GiveCampus.com
We wanted to briefly mention some changes in the GiveCampus.com system. Most importantly you may notice from surfing around that our Marist Men’s Rowing page is listed alongside the pages of other Marist Athletics teams under a single “Marist Athletics” tab. In part due to our own successful campaigns, other Marist teams have begun using our same system to help raise money from their alumni and so the site has gotten rather busy. Please note that in spite of the new appearance, 100% of your donation is still going directly to men’s rowing and the site will prompt you to specify which team exactly you are supporting when you make your donation. (if you go to the link above there will be no confusion either). Last year we were by far the largest and most active fund-raising group within athletics and we hope you’ll join us again in 2023 by showing all the other teams who’s boss!
Updated Giving Levels for the Red Fox Navy
On the Give Campus page you will once again see a listing of giving levels based on year. The Red Fox Navy is first and foremost a challenge gift for the team and we hope you’ll join us in giving $20 for each year since you’ve graduated up to $300. Those who do will be considered current year members of the Red Fox Navy AND will have your name listed as such on our Navy website.
NEW for 2023 we have updated the standards for RFN members to include family members OR friends of the program who can achieve Navy membership status with a $100 or greater donation. ALSO new for 2023 we are excited to introduce some new honorary rankings for RFN members who either make a large one-time donation or have consistently supported the team as an RFN member over time. These ranks you can also see posted on the Give Campus page. A Summary of the giving levels and a listing of ranks is shown here. Your RFN ranking will be duly noted on the Navy webpage as well!
Other Notes on Giving
Our alumni board has asked me to remind all of you who are giving to the team to check with your employers who may have charitable match funds to match your donations to the team. We also have several new ways to challenge team members within the Give Campus page AND we have the ability to make group donations under the honorary name of one fellow team mate (something asked this year). We recognize that some of you many be eligible for a higher ranking in the RFN based on past giving. Bob and I will be working to update this over the course of 2023 but we encourage you to reach out to either of us via email if you think you should be eligible for a higher rank than what is currently shown on the site.
Bob Missert can be reached at
Final Note
I wanted to thank again everyone who made last year’s giving campaign so successful. Your continued support to the men’s rowing team has contributed to ongoing improvements of our equipment. Along with the purchase of 2 used pairs, a used 4x/- and a brand new eight in 2022, the team rolled over nearly our entire fleet of C2 ergometers over the summer and replaced them with new machines while also adding 2 excellent C2 ERG bikes to our pre-existing 4. In the fall we replaced all of the boat racks in the Cornell Boathouse with the help of the Red Fox Club which are soon to be matched with a set on the south wall in Martin BH. This year the team is looking to add our first wakeless launch to the mix which will not only make life easier on coaches and passing crews but increase our level of safety on the water AND provide a more stable and comfortable platform for important alumni to come out and roast the current athletes 😉 We are also finally investing in an exciting heart rate monitoring system from a company called FirstBeat that is going to help us monitor how our athletes are responding to our training program and gauge our improvements in fitness. All of these great improvements are made possible by our Red Fox Navy members and you should all feel proud for being a part of a really special transformation that has been happening in our program. As usual I also want to thank Bob Missert and his team of alumni organizers who have continued to work tirelessly for the team. Both Bob and I would love to hear from you with any questions and comments as we proceed into this year’s campaign. GO RED FOXES!
Sincerely
Campbell Woods
Head Coach, Marist Men’s Rowing