Dear Marymount Community:

We are pleased to present to you the 2008 Marymount Annual Fund.  As Co-Chairs of the 2008 Annual Fund, we respectfully seek your financial support of this year’s Annual Fund campaign.  As parents of two Marymount children, we seek much more.  We ask you to join with us in providing our children with a lifelong gift that none of us can furnish alone and that will bloom within our children well beyond our own years. 

The Annual Fund campaign is a yearly endeavor that, to some, is just a business proposition relating to tuition revenue, operating expenses, and the gap between the two.  To be sure, the success of the Annual Fund campaign is a very important business matter and is critical to the school.  The success of the Annual Fund, however, also draws upon a human element underlying why any parent would contribute their hard earned money to the school beyond the required tuition.  The simple fact is that education is expensive, and a great education is even more expensive.  Educational experiences are not fungible from school to school.  The kind of education we yearn for our children is one that will manifest in them the very qualities aptly expressed in the Marymount Mission Statement: the fulfillment of their academic, moral, physical and creative potential, the cultivation of a lifelong passion for learning, and the confidence, courage, integrity, and responsible citizenship that all great people possess.  Is there a parent among us who would not do just about anything or give any dollar amount to see his or her child become the very embodiment of these attributes?  We firmly believe that Marymount is on a path that affords us the best opportunity to see that happen for our children.      

Studies will show that the K-8 years will have the greatest impact on the future success of our children.  It is the work done and the values acquired in these years that, with great predictive force, will determine whether and where they seek higher education, the form and quality of their family lives and social networks, the strength of their spiritual commitments and civic pursuits, and their attained socio-economic level.  Assuring the future success of our children is the single most important objective in our adult lives, not just for our own sake as parents, but for the sake of the entire community.  So it is only fitting that we place our financial commitment to that objective on the same level.  It may sound trite to say that we support the Marymount Annual Fund because we love our children, but we cannot imagine a better reason.

Please help us make the 2008 Annual Fund campaign the most successful ever.  The dividends will be ours.    

Sincerely,

CeCe and Kirk Borchardt