Dearest members of the Notre Dame community, There are four days until our ninth annual celebration of Notre Dame Day. You may have seen the giant countdown display in LaFun or scrolled past a Notre Dame Day Instagram post on your feed. Like most Notre Dame students, you may have wondered, what even is Notre Dame Day? This one-of-a-kind celebration of all things Notre Dame is an opportunity to recognize the various clubs and organizations that make student life possible.Notre Dame Day is most known for its 24-hour broadcast filled with special guests and demonstrations of the work of our organizations. However, at the core of this special day is raising awareness for the initiatives that directly impact our student community. Since 2013, Notre Dame Day has evolved into the ultimate fundraising event. Before establishing Notre Dame Day, campus organizations would individually communicate with the Development Office to reach out to interested parties and potential donors. However, our community has developed so rapidly we now have more than 900 organizations making the prior system unthinkable. Thus, the Development Office created Notre Dame Day as a way to facilitate this process. Despite the difficulties of the pandemic, the Notre Dame community was able to raise four million dollars for 733 causes throughout the two fundraisers held in the 2020-2021 academic year. For this academic year, we seek to do more. Notre Dame Day will begin on April 24 at 6:42 p.m. EST and wrap up on April 25 at 12:11 a.m. EST but the actual fundraising starts much earlier! Starting now, our organizations can receive funds and gifts through their own unique Notre Dame Day link that can be shared with anyone. The funds given to your causes will go directly to your dorms, club sports teams and service groups. These donations will help fund the amazing work of our student organizations and all the projects and events your club envisions for the next year can be made a reality. Thanks to our generous donors, we will also have prize money awards totaling $500,000 available to all causes. The prize fund is separate from the individual gifts to each organization and can be accessed through different challenges. The largest prize is the $250,000 Challenge Fund, which will be available to all causes. With each unique donor, the organization earns a share of the fund. The more individual donations an organization receives relative to others, the higher the share of the $250,000 Challenge Fund. The remaining prize money can be attained by accomplishing different challenges such as the We Are Notre Dame Challenge and Notre Dame 100 Challenge. For more information on prize money or Notre Dame Day in general, please visit the official website at notredamday.nd.edu. Notre Dame Day is the most important opportunity to direct resources and raise awareness for your causes. People can give through each organization’s unique referral link or directly on the Notre Dame Day website. Motivate your peers to share these links and keep in the mind the potential bonus prizes through specific challenges. For this Notre Dame Day, let us improve student life, continue our march towards excellence and rally behind the causes that make Notre Dame our home. The Social Media Team,
Gracie Simoncic
first year
Elysa Ng May May
sophomore
Shannon Garrity
sophomore
Jorge Blasini Frontera
junior
April 14
