To: Lancaster University Alumni & Development Office

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for your letter dated 13th May 2008, in which you notify me that you have been attempting to contact me at my parents address.  Firstly, I feel that I must congratulate you at your success in writing to me in order to notify me that you are unable to write to me due to the fact that you do not have the correct address.  Many people wouldn’t have tried this strategy, presuming that it would be doomed to failure, but the fact that you have persevered against all odds and, may I say; against all reason is indeed a credit to you and to the university.

I am also thrilled at the opportunity you are giving me to donate money to the university.  I often lie awake in bed at night and wish I could contribute something, so that other students may benefit from the experience of attending university at Lancaster without having to pay those awful fees and whatnot that require the taking out of a student loan.  Indeed I often come up with new and novel ways of getting into further debt in order to finance these charitable donations, but alas the Student Loans Company say I am only eligible for another back-breaking loan if I am actually in full-time education, and presumably do not consider your cause worthy enough to make an exception for.

I am heartened however to hear that the 2007/08 Friends Programme telephone campaign is generating an excellent response already – perhaps it is the case that you do not in fact require my help? It will certainly make it easier for me to obtain some funds for you – instead of working to pay off additional loans I could instead perhaps work to pay off my other bills and original student loan? I am certainly pleased to hear that my fellow alumni are doing much better than me financially, in any case.

Still, it will be saddening for me not being able to get that warm happy feeling inside, knowing that the beneficiaries of my charitable donations “really appreciate” my generosity, and “enjoy getting in touch with their predecessors”.  I’m sure I would have really appreciated a donation when I was studying for my degree, if it wasn’t for the fact that no-one felt like donating anything to me.  To this day I regret this fact, and can only imagine the opportunities this general lack of donations led to me being derived from.

May I ask what subject it is that the students involved in the campaign are studying at Lancaster? I can only assume it is telemarketing, and while I’m sure the telephone donation campaign provides valuable “real world” work experience for students, I do worry about the long term future career prospects of these students as more and more of these kinds of jobs are outsourced to places like India and Malaysia.  Speaking as someone who works in an industry plagued by this “outsourcing” trend I would want your students to learn from my experiences, and perhaps switch their degree from Telemarketing to Management Science or something so they can be the people managing these Indian callcentres and perhaps in the future be in the financial position of being able to donate to your future campaigns themselves.

Unfortunately as it seems that I won’t have paid off my student loan until at least the beginning of the next century, and as of yet have neither won the lottery nor obtained a highly-paid job in stockbroking, I’m afraid there isn’t much chance of me being able to contribute anything to your worthy cause for the foreseeable future.  I would therefore appreciate it if no further “easy and convenient” direct debit donation forms were to land on my (and indeed on my parents’) doormats in the future, and if you would also refrain from contacting me by telephone every year.  I promise you will be the first people I approach should I receive any large sums of money in the future – any starving orphans and whatnot in Africa who might have been the beneficiaries of a donation will just have to make do in the case of this unlikely eventuality.

Thank you for your time, and please update your records.

Yours sincerely,

.david