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As we focus on strengthening our Kappa Chapter so its legacy will continue well into the future, we recognize that we will continue to have capital needs.

Our Capital Campaign was very successful, but we know that infrastructures in heavy use buildings such as our Chapter House will need to be periodically updated and refurbished. For instance, hotels and restaurants update their bathrooms every four or five years or so, and kitchens get refurbished on seven year or similar cycles.

We want to avoid, as much as we can, letting our beautiful Chapter House deteriorate to the point where, due to lack of funds, needed improvements are either not done or "band aid" type fixes are used that really don't look good and are not long term solutions. We also know how much time and effort the Capital Campaign took, with the extensive efforts needed in part because the physical facility degraded so greatly over time without real periodic improvements. We likely can't go back to the well for such a Campaign, and if we plan well, hopefully a large scale campaign won't be needed in the foreseeable future.

To help ensure we have access to funds for future renovations at the house, we hope that our Alums will remember Kappa Chapter in their wills/trusts, as some have already done. So when we enter the Chapter Eternal, we can help out Kappa Chapter one last time. Recall that Bear Koehler's very generous estate gift of over $ 185 K helped boost our fundraising efforts and put us "over the top" so we could qualify for a sizable enough loan for a complete renovation of the House. We are working with our National and potentially with a State College law firm to have form will/trust codicils or amendments, to make it easy for you to name Kappa Chapter in your estate documents.

As part of this effort, we would like to know if anyone already has named Kappa Chapter for an estate gift. Please let Bill DeGrandis know, I will be keeping a Master list of such estate gifts. A list of such future funds is very good for the House's financial position, and is taken into account by lenders we may call upon when we refinance our mortgage, which has a balloon payment due in 6 years (December 2018).

Our tentative plan is to place the estate gifts into a Capital fund, which will be supplemented with any extra funds we have left after paying our mortgage and other fees. The Board at the time would determine what the pressing improvement needs are and allocate the funds accordingly. We could also allocate funds to specific projects or areas that you designate in your will.

Please let us know if you have any questions at all, as well as ideas on how you think the Chapter Eternal legacy program should be administered. We are especially interested if you have any experience with similar legacy programs for other organizations or associations. Any thoughts on how best to roll out our Chapter Eternal legacy program would also be greatly appreciated.

Also, please let us know if you already have Kappa Chapter in your will or trust agreement, and if so, would you mind if we listed you in our Chapter Eternal legacy program benefactor list. This list would only be for internal purposes and will not be made publicly available.

We are deeply grateful for everyone's help during the Capital Campaign, and we hope to count on your continued support of our Annual Fund (which defrays fixed expenses such as the web site and other communications related services), as well as this new Chapter Eternal program for Kappa Chapter.

Fraternally,

Bill DeGrandis
Vice President, Alumni Board
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(202) 551-1720 (office)
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