Dear Alumni, When Overseas Nanjing Medical University Alumni Association (ONMUAA) was organized, it was felt that a strict membership registration process including a mandatory membership due is too restrictive because nobody was sure at that time whether ONMUAA can really function well. After several months' test running, ONMUAA is clearly progressing very rapidly in linking alumni from every corner of the world. More and more alumni have participated our activities, including several local reunions, several homepages integrated under the ONMUAA's name, formal registration in California, an official newsletter and a number of e-mail alumni directories with different emphasis. However, one major weakness of our organization is that we heavily rely on e-mail communication. There are many alumni without e-mail access or have not connected to our e-mail network even though we may have their addresses or telephone numbers. In order to contact them and hear their voices, it is important for ONMUAA to reach out by sending our information via postal mails to more alumni who either have not joined us or not frequently used e-mails. Because of the financial constraint, very little has been done on this. For the same reason, we don't know when we will be able to publish a nice alumni directory despite we will have over 300 overseas alumni on the list. Up to now, many activities of the association were supported by volunteering from many alumni, which otherwise could be costly. However, no associations would be surviving without any financial support. We will explore all kinds of opportunities to raise funds for our operations including some simple business activites, such as making some sourvenirs about NMU or memorable items that alumni can purchase. We will also look for corporate sponsors. We hope alumni to contribute more ideas on this issue. At the same time, we have already set up our account under the strict management of our finance department. We sincerely hope our alumni can make your donation to our association. >From now on, each year the Executive Committee (EC) will issue a financial report as well as a call for donation from alumni. Every year's fundraising letter will state its main spending purposes of the money. This first year's objectives are: 1) to send out postal mails to alumni who do not have e-mail access; 2) to print an alumni directory. The EC pledges that at least 80% of the donated money will be used for the above two purposes. There will also be clear rules that the donated fund can not be used for certain expenses such as travelling, dining, and telephone fee incurred by ONMUAA officers. Each year we will list on the ONMUAA homepage of the alumni names who have made their donations. At this time, the donation is completely voluntary and you can decide the amount. Please make your donation payable to "Oversea Nanjing Medical University Alumni Association (ONUMAA)" and send the check to Ben-Quan Shen 2055 32nd Ave. San Francisco CA 94116 or Bei Chen ms#19 Genentech Inc SSF, CA 94080". A painless donation of $10-20 will go a long way toward supporting the ONMUAA, and uniting our alumni. You couldn't make a more meaningful donation than contributing to your own organization! Department of fundraising