Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 21:38:20 -0400
From: Dick Breakiron <dbreakon@sccoast.net>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en]C-CCK-MCD NSCPCD47 (Win98; I)
X-Accept-Language: en
To: Corps@West-Point.Org
Subject: WP-ORG Announcement: Fund Drive 9 Starts Today
Reply-To: feedback@West-Point.Org


Fellow graduates and parents,

Today we begin WP-ORG's ninth fundraising drive. 

The WP-ORG Advisors are grateful for the great support you, our members,
have provided in past fund drives. That support has enabled us to build
an unparalleled communication system and volunteer network to tie
together the West Point community and, since 1999, the USNA parents'
community. Since 1995, WP-ORG has grown from 400 to 20,000 members. We
owe a huge debt to the hundreds of volunteer moderators, webmasters, and
programmers that have made this happen.

We operate from donated funds collected semi-annually from you, our
users. We are asking you to assure the future of these services and
continue WP-ORG's growth. In the next few weeks we will tell you more
about WP-ORG and its services. If you are a USMA graduate, we hope you
are here as part of an active and supportive class forum. If you are
parents of a cadet, we hope you are getting all the information you need
from our parent forums. Most of you know there is much more to WP-ORG
than these class and parent listservers. We also support West Point
Societies, West Point Parent Clubs, and forums dedicated to cadet sports
and activities. Finally, we support personal home pages for graduates
and forums.

I would like to take a moment to mention some accomplishments and
changes since our last fund drive.

The best news for all of us is the approval of our request to be
designated a 501(c)3 organization for tax purposes. This means that
all donations from individual members are now 100% deductible. This
organizational designation also permits us to accept matching gifts from
your employers. We strongly encourage you to pursue this with your
employers. Anyone needing more information may contact Jack Price, our
CFO at <CFO@west-point.org>.

WP-ORG also transitioned to a new CEO. Bob Magruder, '64, who had
served us so well for so many years stepped down and I took the reins. 
Bob is still involved with us as an advisor and provides his valuable
input and insight into our decisions.

WP-ORG's Board of Advisors expanded from eight to eleven volunteer
members as we added Fred Black, Mike Lyman, and Paul Werner. Their
contributions have already been felt. If you missed the announcement
earlier, you can view their brief resumes at:

        http://www.west-point.org/service/advisor/

WP-ORG provided the e-commerce support for the WPS of Annapolis'
Army-Navy Tailgate party. We hosted the web site and processed about
$50,000 in credit card collections. The lesson learned and knowledge
gained will help WP-ORG serve the West Point community in a similar
manner in the coming year. WP-ORG is also helping with the beta
testing of Virtual West Point. This project will go a long way toward
educating the public about the Academy. We hope all were able to watch
the Founders Day dinner at West Point.

With the help of one of our new advisors, Paul Werner '83, WP-ORG has
begun a significant network upgrade. The first component of this
project involves the recognition of critical upgrades to increase
reliability, fault tolerance, and/or capability. The second component
deals with a systematic documentation of the existing network, with a
planned growth for the future to include enhanced network services and
capabilities.

WP-ORG's new-look main page is an informational portal page which allows
access to many areas, including military related news and needs. We
focus on items of interest to older and younger grads, as well as
parents. It can be seen at:

        http://www.west-point.org

WP-ORG has an ongoing project with the class of 2000. Newly graduated
graduates rapidly lose contact with their classmates as they move around
the world. We are trying to alleviate that with a proactive approach to
maintaining good e-mail addresses. With the cooperation of the AOG and
permission of the class, we now have 669 addresses for the class of
2000. This represents a major step forward--most classes struggle to
get this percentage of graduates online after years of being out of
touch. WP-ORG has already contacted the responsible cadet in 2001 to
explain the process to him and smooth the transition when they soon
graduate.

In addition to adding three more volunteer advisors, we rehired Megan
Price as our second paid employee. She had been employed for the last
year with Vignette, the same organization that employs our Chief
Information Officer, Ditus Bolanos '90. During this time, she
was training in and working with the software that provides much of
WP-ORG's web infrastructure. As such, she can provide valuable support
to WP-ORG. Dian Welle continues with the responsibility for the daily
operation of user requests and system administration/maintenance. 
Increasing workloads on Ditus have resulted in less time for his
volunteer efforts, and we are having to fill this deficit with
additional technical input from advisors and paid staff. This is not all
bad, as we are now training individuals to be backup for Ditus' critical
skills, which did not exist before.

And finally, WP-ORG has negotiated with and secured the approval of the
AOG to have them act as custodian for any funds that may be endowed to
WP-ORG as they become available.

Our budget for this campaign is $95,000 and covers our requirements for
the next 6 months:

        https://www-secure.west-point.org/wporg/budget_fd9

For individuals donating, use of our secure credit card capability
reduces our costs in time and labor. Please consider making your
donation using our secure site at:

        https://www-secure.west-point.org/wporg/donate/

If you prefer to make your donation using a check, please make it
payable to WP-ORG and mail to:

        WP-ORG 
        PO Box 2108
        Abingdon, VA 24212-2108

For those of you who are new members of WP-ORG, both graduates and
parents, and may not be familiar with what WP-ORG is and its
relationship to the USMA and AOG organizations, we suggest you go to
the following site and spend a moment there:

        https://www-secure.west-point.org/wporg/why_donate

On behalf of the Advisors and volunteer moderators, please accept
our thanks for your enduring support. You make WP-ORG possible. 

Dick Breakiron
Chairman
WP-ORG, Inc.

-------------------------------------------------
WP-ORG Inc. gratefully recognizes Armed Forces Insurance 
(http://www.afi.org) as the sponsor of their fourth consecutive WP-ORG
Fund Drive.

*** CORPS post by: BREAKIRON Richard 1951 18197 A1 <dbreakon@sccoast.net>