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Give 4 Garnet includes campaign to honor Pastides

Staff Report //April 9, 2019//

Give 4 Garnet includes campaign to honor Pastides

Staff Report //April 9, 2019//

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The University of South Carolina’s second annual donor campaign will feature a campaign to honor retiring president Harris Pastides.

Give 4 Garnet: A Day of Giving will take place Wednesday. Among the 22 campaigns donors can support is one to name the university’s Alumni Center in Pastides’ honor. An anonymous donor will match up to $1 million in donations to that campaign, according to a news release from the university.

Pastides is retiring in June after 10 years as USC president.

The one-day event, which runs from 5:59 a.m. until midnight, seeks 6,500 donors to make gifts. The giving day time of 18 hours and one minute is a reference to the university’s 1801 founding.

There will be on-campus events including food giveaways and photo opportunities with Gamecock women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley and South Carolina director of player development Marcus Lattimore from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. in front of the Russell House on Greene Street. Campus organizations will also be accepting donations of clothing and canned goods.

In its first year, Give 4 Garnet raised more than $3.7 million, drawing more than 4,200 donors worldwide who made an average online gift of $126.

Donations last year included more than $200,000 raised to outfit the College of Information and Communications’ new social media monitoring and analytics classroom and research lab. The lab is home to the UofSC Insights Initiative, which uses social medial data to generate reports on key issues in the 2020 presidential race.

“Give 4 Garnet is a great illustration of how smaller gifts can make a difference for a big institution,” Jancy Houck, South Carolina vice president for development, said in a news release. “Last year, we were thrilled to see how those gifts turned ideas into realities, like our new Social Media Insights Lab at the College of Information and Communications. We look forward to even more participation this year.”

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