Tudors offer matching gift challenge for United Way lead donors

Members of the Rice community can get a turbo-boost to their United Way contributions, thanks to a generous matching gift challenge by Rice Board of Trustees Chair Bobby Tudor ’82 and his wife, Phoebe.

The Tudors’ matching gift challenge is focused on leadership-level donations — those of $1,000 or more. For each first-time lead donor who pledges, the Tudors will match $500. For renewing lead donors, the Tudors will match any increase over last year’s leadership-level gift, up to $500.

“Thanks to the Tudors’ generous matching gift challenge, Rice’s 2013-14 United Way Campaign is already more than halfway to its $175,000 goal,” said Director of University Relations Greg Marshall, who is the campaign manager. “There is $25,000 to be claimed in this matching gift challenge. A leadership-level donation of $1,000 works out to about $42 per paycheck when spread over all of 2014 using automatic payroll deductions.”

In the fourth week of the campaign, pledges and contributions total $91,983. Natural Sciences leads in contributions with $10,086. The Provost Division is a close second with $9,585, and Administration is third with $9,549. Investments leads in overall participation with 67 percent.

Rice employees can make cash, check or credit card contributions (for tax year 2013) by completing, print and mailing the pledge form found at www.rice.edu/unitedway.  A pledge payable by payroll deductions spread over all paychecks in calendar (and tax) year 2014 may be made using the same form, or by logging in to ESTHER (http://esther.rice.edu) and filling out the online United Way pledge form.

For more information on the 2013-14 Rice United Way Campaign, visitwww.rice.edu/unitedway.