FACES Fundraising Challenge!

Dear FACES Alumni,

It’s hard to believe thirteen years have passed since FACES’s founding. During this time, FACES has served as the gathering ground for over 500 delegates. Many of our former delegates are now leaders in government, academia, finance and various non-profit endeavors. One feature throughout these years, however, has remained constant: interest in US-China affairs and a belief in the importance of this relationship.

The 2014-2015 FACES team has worked hard to ensure two things: first, that we continue to attract bright and accomplished students to our conferences and second, that the upcoming Annual Conferences at Stanford and Peking University are of the highest quality, such that our delegates can benefit fully. Some of our speakers will include Tino Cuellar, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford and nominee to the California Supreme Court, William Perry, former Secretary of Defense, and Karl Eikenberry, retired United States Army lieutenant general.

To preserve the quality of our conferences in the years ahead, we want to be able to cover the cost of air-travel and transport for all our delegates in need of aid. In the past, some of our most accomplished delegates have had to drop out last minute because they were unable to afford the travel costs. While FACES has traditionally sought financial support from Stanford University departments, we are now reaching out to FACES alumni to join us in our endeavor to achieve financial sustainability.

One of our goals for the upcoming year is to better engage our vast and impressive network of alumni. We launched a new website this year to help facilitate this (http://www.stanfordfaces.org/). We have since reached out to several alumni in Beijing, Silicon Valley and Hong Kong through alumni interviews and gatherings. Visit our blog or Facebook page to hear about past and future alumni events!

Thanks to a generous anonymous donor, we are launching The FACES $10K Fundraising Challenge! Our challenger will match your donations up to $10,000. Gifts of $150, $500 and $1000 will be recognized in the FACES Annual Report as Silver, Gold and Platinum donations respectively. Our goal is to achieve $10,000 from alumni so that we can receive our challenger's full match. While we do not expect every donor to give these suggested amounts, we encourage as many people to participate in our Fundraising Challenge as possible. Your donations are invaluable to us. Every contribution is important and will ensure that any promising student can become a delegate without financial worry.

Finally, the Stanford FACES team has published an Annual Report on FACES’s progress. The report can be viewed on our website. Reading the report will give you a good idea of what we’ve been up to and what we have planned.

On behalf of the entire FACES team, we want to thank you for your generosity and support. We deeply value our alumni and will work hard this year to foster a stronger relationship between FACES and all our affiliates.

Yours Sincerely,

Caitlin Lu and Chuan Xu
Co-Presidents, Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford