Fundraising driving Scotch’s Indigenous Program 2018 Educate Plus Award Winner: Best Fundraising Event: The Tony Briggs Indigenous Scholarship Fundraising Day, 19 October 2017. How is it that an Old Boy of Scotch College can still command such respect that an entire community can be galvanised to part so happily with their hard-earned dollars in a 24-hour burst of feel-good philanthropy many decades after he has left school and when many of the donors have never actually met the protagonist himself? Who is Tony Briggs? And why was he the perfect candidate to spearhead a live fundraising campaign? As it happened, the campaign raised sufficient funds to establish, in perpetuity, a fully-endowed scholarship bearing the Tony Briggs name as part of the School’s Indigenous Scholarship Program. Tony Briggs (’85), Scotch’s pioneering Indigenous student, was not only a charismatic figure and gifted athlete while at school (indeed, many of his track records still stand today) but he went on to become a celebrated actor, director and producer. He wrote the original script for The Sapphires. That was the script which explores his mother’s experiences in Vietnam as a member of the Indigenous singing group. The Indigenous Scholarship Program at Scotch ensures that during their most influential years, some 1800 Scotch boys have the opportunity to interact with, learn from, and develop friendships with, Indigenous students. The 23 Indigenous boys who have participated in the program since its inception in 2004 are now as much a part of the fabric and psyche of Scotch as the tartan, bagpipes, and the cardinal, gold and blue. The 2017 Fundraising Day provided an opportunity to reinforce how much we value their contribution to the esprit de corps of our School. It simultaneously gave permanence to a program that advocates education as the key to, and hope for, the future of Indigenous Australians. So the challenge was on and much was at stake! . . How to raise $750,000 in the timespan of one day? . . How to conduct a live campaign using a digital platform and ensure the technology held firm; . . How to appropriately harness the longstanding goodwill extended to our Indigenous students; . . How to personalise and give contemporary profile to an albeit inspiring figure, but one far removed from the current generation of boys; . . How to strike the right chord in all promotional material; and . . How to ensure through this high-risk, matched-giving exercise (whereby an initial donation is quadrupled using a pool of pre-committed funds) that all money raised is not returned forthwith to donors because the target is not achieved and the whole deal is embarrassingly off? 1 8