The Catholic Alumni Partnership

Connecting Yesterday's Students to Tomorrow's Leaders.  For more information, please visit www.clickyes.com 

Ever wonder what happened to your best friend from elementary school? The teacher you had in 5th grade whom you credit with teaching you how to write? Thanks to the Catholic Alumni Project (CAP), you may be able to track these people down and help sustain Catholic schools at the same time.

CAP is a groundbreaking initiative that is currently helping to create sustainable alumni programs in 303 Catholic elementary schools in New York and Connecticut. The campaign is strongly anchored in social media, built around the CAP website, clickyes.com.

The site features a video appeal from Catholic Schools Alumnus Regis Philbin, urging alumni to come together to help assure a strong future for Catholic schools. As Regis puts it, "we need to take some action now to keep Catholic education strong and alive in America."

Since the inception of the partnership in November 2009, thousands of alumni have signed on, raising over $1.4 million for participating schools. The project has also connected these generous former students through the school Facebook pages that CAP has helped create.

This summer, CSF became the first diocese outside of the pilot phase to expand the CAP Program nationally. 49 elementary schools in the Archdiocese of Boston were awarded grants enabling them to participate in CAP. As of this publication, over 150,000 alumni records had been captured by the schools and are in the process of being screened for accuracy.

"Generations of people benefitted from Catholic Schools thanks to the commitment and sacrifice of the sisters and parishes. With very few sisters and challenging parish finances, the alumni of the past have an opportunity to provide the same opportunity that the sisters and parish provided them" said Michel Reardon, CSF's executive director. "Today Catholic elementary schools continue to play a vital role in the education system, especially for low-income and less resourced students and families."

"Our hope is that CAP will create a movement within the Archdiocese of Boston by reconnecting the tens of thousands of students who benefited from these superb schools in years past with the students of today. In doing so, these alumni will secure the future of Catholic elementary education for generations to come.".

As we try to connect as many alums to their Catholic Grammars schools, we would like to hear your thoughts. Please, take a couple minutes and  click here  to take our survey.