Stanford is beaten!

This year, the SSE Riga donation campaign Let’s Rock created by DDB Latvia has achieved what it didn’t succeed in doing last year. Thanks to donations from 35% of its graduates, the school finally overcame the globally renowned institution of Stanford University which is widely considered to be the best donation magnet in the world. This only means one thing – for the second year in a row, in collaboration with DDB Latvia, SSE Riga’s community of graduates has become the biggest donor in Europe!

Thanks to daily donations averaging more than EUR 1,000, a record sum of EUR 112,783 was collected during the campaign, which 23% more than last year. This year, the donated funds will be used to award grants to 25 students while EUR 30,000 will be reserved for next year’s grants. 

The main star of this year’s campaign, SSE Riga’s star Hardy Rock challenged and proceeded to beat one after another of the talismen representing the most prestigious universities in Europe and the United States. Each time that the donations of SSE Riga graduates exceeded those of the university challenged, a message of good wishes was sent to the beaten university, while its talisman was added to Hardy Rock’s wall of trophies!   

Hardy Rock also helped to collect funds for the renovation of SSE Riga’s main auditorium. By first donating EUR 200, everyone had the chance to visit the SSE Riga homepage and reserve one of the auditorium’s seats on which the donor’s name would be immortalised. As a result, during the course a campaign, out of 124 available chairs, 118 were reserved!

Hardy Rock also organised the first charity Hardy Rock Music Festival in the history of SSE Riga, at which bands performed made up of students and graduates from the school. Of course, the event was also attended by Hardy Rock himself, who entertained guests and encouraged them to pool their resources and make donations, in order to beat Stanford.