The Hopkins Center for the Performing Arts will be jumping next week with the annual Alumni Fund Telethon starting Jan. 22 and continuing until Feb. 2.
The theme of this year's telethon is "Call Heard 'Round the World,'" according to Lisa Koestner '95, one of four student interns organizing the event.
During the telethon, student volunteers will call as many alumni as possible and solicit donations.
"The telethon has come to be a great Dartmouth winter tradition," said Adriana McGrath '95, another student intern.
"For nine days we invite students to come out to the Top of the Hop to eat pizza, call alumni and win some great prizes in the process," she said.
This year the College hopes to raise $500,000 and get 5,000 pledges, said Joe Whitworth, the Alumni Fund's assistant director.
Last year the telethon raised more than $517,000, and received about 4,600 pledges, he said.
The money raised in the drive goes to Dartmouth's Alumni Fund, which normally contributes almost 10 percent of the College's annual operating budget.
"It is sometimes called the College's 'Margin of Excellence.' There are a lot of things we would have to do without if it weren't for the fund," Whitworth said.
The fund raises about $13 million every year which "goes straight to the College's bottom line," Whitworth said.
"Things like teacher salaries, financial aid ... are all helped by the fund," he said.
"The telethon is entirely student-run. There is a steering committee of about 35 students from all classes and of course the volunteers are all students," Koestner said.
This year's telethon marks the 19th anniversary of the event. In 1977 the first Telethon raised $13,000 dollars.
The telethon, "is really about the students working in concert with the alumni, though," Whitworth said.
"The best stories you hear are those you hear about alumni we've contacted saying how great it is to hear that the College is still going strong."
"We intend to contact 15,000 alumni this time around," Whitworth said.