Special Appeal to raise $25,000

This year is going to be a tough one for the Institute, so we need YOUR help. For the past eight years, since we bought the second apartment, the Institute has been sailing along through quite calm financial waters. But we’re in a bit of a gale now, and it’s going to get a little worse in the near future. Because of it, the Board of Directors decided at its 2013 Board Meeting to launch a Special Appeal, with a minimum goal of raising $25,000 over the two subsequent years, so we can weather the current storm.

The problem stems from several significant one-time expenses coming together all at once. Our building at Dionysiou Aiginitou Street needed a new elevator for safety reasons. You’d know what I mean if you’d ever had to travel up and down in it. When it works, it usually gets you to the right floor, but at a dangerous limp. The building’s “condo board” also voted to install special controls on all the radiators in the building, so each unit could control its own heating, and so reduce fuel costs that have skyrocketed. In the end, the elevator and radiator controls will cost the Institute around $3,600. On top of that there are renovations and re-painting to both our apartments that have been put off for some years now. Some renovations are absolutely necessary for safety reasons, especially to the electrical sockets. In total, the improvements are estimated at over $6,500.

On top of these, there are also the substantial costs of publishing the monograph containing the 22 papers delivered at the Colloquium in Memory of Frederick E. Winter, held in summer 2012. The Colloquium was a wonderful tribute to Prof. Winter, and the publication of the contributions will be a lasting and substantial tribute to his memory by the Institute. Furthermore, such publications are an important contribution to the scholarly life of Greece by the Canadian Institute, which helps us maintain our well-regarded position among the foreign institutes in Athens. With this kind of periodic publication of scholarly work, CIG is also able to reciprocate significantly in the exchange of publications offered by many of the foreign institutes in Athens and by Greek scholarly organizations. Our library will suffer without these publication exchanges. The cost of accepting papers from their authors, having them refereed, edited and published in a handsome format is about $15,000, with little hope of recuperating most of the costs, despite sales to university libraries and private individuals.

The Board of Directors has approved this fund-raising effort, and has shown its support by asking Board members to give generously themselves. So far, the appeal has raised over $12,500 in donations and pledges. Please consider a gift to the Institute, over and above your usual gift or membership renewal. A successful effort over the two-year appeal period (fiscal years 2013-2014 and 2014-2015) will help us fix the apartments, pay for the new book’s publication, and help us continue our efforts in sponsoring academic conferences and publishing their results.

Gerry Schaus
President, CIG