Frequently Asked Questions

Question: How do the proposed Alumni Master Degree (AMD) and Alumni Mentoring (AMP) programs promote further fulfillment of the Academy Mission?

Answer: We pick up where Mother B drops them off. AMD will be a 2-part, on-line custom curriculum offered in cooperation with a host institution and as such our Alumni can continue their degree work anywhere, anytime, and at their own pace. Part One of the curriculum will convey practical skills like team building, self and team promotion, leadership and organizational politicking for more junior Alumni and will be acknowledged with a certificate of completion citing both the host institution and the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Master Degree Program; Part Two will include subjects like strategy, comparative political systems, leadership, and globalization for more senior Alumni and will be acknowledged by the award of a similarly branded master degree. We want to make our Alumni street smart and politically savvy so they can smartly navigate any organization of which they are a part. The whole idea is to equip our Alumni with knowledge and skills to put them first in line for the next promotion or best opportunity over the entire course of their careers. Participants in the AMD will assume an obligation to also participate in the AMP as both a mentor and a mentee. The AMP will also continue the Mother B practice of taking care of Midshipmen, now part of the Alumni Family. AMP will help Alumni set higher goals and then use Alumni connections and provide Alumni coaching/counseling to help Alumni achieve those higher goals. These combined programs available to the Extended Brigade will produce more Admirals, Generals, CEO’s, congressmen, senators, etc…as well as other leaders in positions to make policy and promote Academy core values.

Question: How are these programs going to be funded?

Answer: We are targeting $100 million, a significant portion of which is expected to derive from benefits available to Alumni under the New GI Bill. We expect the balance to come from our Class, other Alumni and friends, significant individual donors, corporations including corporate matching gifts, and grants from other educational foundations. As the proposed programs are outside of the scope of the USNA Alumni Association and Foundation, we expect to obtain most contributions and grants from new donors…untapped sources. Think of AMD and its supporting New Foundation as a means to systematically harvest donations and grants that are currently available but going untapped. We can harvest these funds and put them to work for our Alumni Family to the purpose of greater achievement of the Academy’s Mission Statement. Further, all three of the core ideas we have proposed are totally scalable meaning that they each can be ratcheted up or down depending on how much money is actually raised. Based on the experiences of other projects, we expect that once we demonstrate the worthiness and viability of the proposed programs, individual donors will come forward with significant contributions. At the end of the day, we will scale our programs up or down based on actual funding.

Question: How will the $100 million be used?

Answer: Please appreciate that the following projections are early estimates based on very limited information at this time. An estimated $45 million dollars would be used to fund mainly as many as 100+ AMD and 20+ VESS scholarships per year, infrastructure, and operating costs of VESS, AMD and AMP. In addition, we would expect to provide financial support for certain USNA programs like professorships and special endowments for selected programs and chairs. The remaining estimated $55 million would fund a New Foundation that would endow this level of activity into perpetuity. For the purpose of these projections we conservatively have assumed each scholarship would fund 24 credit hours of study and would cost $25,000.

Question: How will these Class Legacy Project ideas be received by USNA Alumni Association and Foundation?

Answer: Our proposed Legacy Project is both large in scope and a break from tradition, both of which present challenges to the Association /Foundation and our Class, including the goal of working jointly together on this Project. On the other hand, our Proposals are completely complementary to the important work of the Association and Foundation, and together will provide a more complete effort to support the Academy’s Mission.

We have formally reviewed our proposed Legacy Project with the Association and Foundation, including with the new CEO, Byron Marchant and the Chairman of the Board of Trustees. The Foundation has formally responded with a letter in which they characterized our proposal as being “unquestionably worthy” but reported that “neither the Foundation nor the Alumni Association can accept the proposal in its current form, as it runs contrary to the organizations' respective charters.” Nonetheless, our hope and expectation is that we can and will work cooperatively, if not jointly, with the Association and Foundation as we both work to support the Academy, its Mission, and the Alumni Family. We will endeavor to revise and align our plans with the Association’s and Foundation’s charters and the Supe’s Master Plan but we must also be prepared to proceed without the Association’s and Foundation’s active participation in support of our proposed Legacy Project.

Two additional points: First, we hope to minimize cannibalization of Alumni donations by attracting new donors with our Proposed Programs that have not and could not have been offered by the Association and Foundation because of the limitations of their charters. Second, we are prepared to contribute a percentage of Alumni donations to our Legacy Project, with our donors’ concurrence, to the USNA Foundation as is the protocol for class legacy gifts. We think this would bring our plans into financial parity with other classes’ legacy projects.

Question: The scope of the proposed Class Legacy Project encompasses potentially all Alumni: Is this something that reasonably can be done by the Class of 1969 alone?

Answer: We could implement and fund our Proposed Programs, scaled up or down as appropriate, without the participation of any other class or classes. However, the purpose of the AMD and AMP is to launch more of our Alumni upon more prolific careers, all in concert with the Academy’s Mission and to disperse core Academy values to more positions of influence across society. That ambition is bigger and more important than the Class of 1969. VESS, AMD and AMP are Class of 1969 ideas and we plan to kick them off with our 50th Legacy Project but we plan to at least explore the possibility for other classes to join us by participating in planning, implementing, funding and staffing efforts. Specifically, the Alumni Mentoring Program will need active involvement of all Alumni. The long-term vision is for this to become an all-Academy program at some point in the distant future…it’s all about service and core values; it’s in our Academy grown DNA; and it’s about who we should be.

Question: How can I help?

Answer: This one’s pretty simple. Obviously, we need your financial support but so does the Alumni Association and Foundation. If you are or plan to be a contributor to the Association/Foundation, we encourage you to continue your financial support. If you are motivated by these new Programs we are pursuing, we invite your incremental or new donations to our Legacy Project.

We need volunteers now to help flesh out our plans and to manage implementation. Once these programs become operational, we will need a cadre of volunteers to support ongoing operations. For now, we are seeking 100 volunteers to drive specific project elements and/or to become Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) for VESS, become mentors, define graduate curriculums, identify supporting programs and network their resources with ours, etc. We are seeking commitments from our volunteers of at least 10 hours a month beginning in January 2010 through June 2010. We will assess our progress at the four month checkpoint and realign accordingly.

Similarly, we need you to tell us if you have subject matter expertise, applicable knowledge, relevant experience, pertinent connections, etc. that you are willing to “volunteer”. We need to know what we don’t know.

Finally, we want your feedback. Let us know where you think we are on track and where we are in left field.

There is a provision on the website (http://usnaProject50.org/feedback/) for you to volunteer, to provide your feedback or to make other comments.

Question: Who should I contact?

Answer: Please feel free to contact Stephen Leaman or Steve Comiskey, or any other Class officer or Legacy69/Project50 team member, on any topic at any time.

Contact email: info@usnaproject50.org