Dial up and hammer down: The students of Purdue’s Rally Line

We’ve all been there. You’re sitting at home, the phone rings, and five minutes later you’re singing the second verse of “Hail Purdue” with a stranger.

That’s not an unusual day at the office for a member of the Rally Line, the campus phone-calling program composed of more than 100 Purdue students who call alumni, parents and friends of their alma mater for much more than donations. Those Boilermakers report to the Dick and Sandy Dauch Alumni Center to engage with the Purdue community, sometimes in song.

Amanda Desimowich, a senior student supervisor at the Rally Line, recalls singing Hail Purdue along with an alumnus of Purdue Musical Organizations last year after he learned she was a Purduette. Margo Takehara, a recently graduated pre-med student who also happened to be a Purduette, said she called someone who didn’t believe she was really from Purdue and asked her to sing the school fight song to prove her campus credibility.

“The students’ job here is not to raise money – they of course will, but the point is to reconnect with parents and alumni to make sure we’re able to get in touch with them in the way they want to be spoken to and they have a personal touch from a student,” said Audrey Lewis, the Rally Line program director from Ruffalo Noel Levitz, the consulting firm that has run Purdue’s phone-calling program for the past three years. “It’s different from telemarketing. We’re not trying to sell printing toner, we’re selling hopes and dreams at the Rally Line.”

Lewis’s teams have indeed raised more than $2 million annually, successful enough that Ruffalo Noel Levitz has taken strategies to other schools that it consults for. “Purdue produces good ideas,” Lewis says. One of areas the Rally Line has been particularly successful is outreach toward Purdue parents, including 7,693 Boilermaker moms and dads reached last school year.

“We call all Purdue parents, and we want to update information and make sure that you’re heard. We know your own student might not call you as often as you’d like, so if there are any resources you want to hear about we can fill you in,” Lewis says. Student callers are trained to share their campus experiences and offer up useful resources that parents or even other students might not know about. “Parents want to feel involved, and they want to make sure they’re doing everything they can to make sure their student is successful. The best people to tell them about that is a student who’s already gone through it. They can give advice about the advising process, what residence hall to live in, or tips to make friends.”

Rally Line employees call everyone from astronaut alumni to their friends’ parents, but every conversation and every gift makes an impact on students, especially those on the other end of the phone who take such an active role in supporting their school.

“No matter your gift to Purdue, your love for Purdue is the more important thing. If you’re supporting it at all, it helps in the long run,” Desimowich said. “This last year we made over $1 million in gifts of increments under $100, so those smaller gifts really help out a lot – you don’t have to give a building to help students.”

Gifts to the Purdue Parent Fund generally go to student-focused programs like the Campus Food Pantry that provides meals to food insecure students or the Purdue Career Closet, which provides students with business attire for interviews or jobs.

“Parents are significant in their contributions to Purdue – it makes a huge impact not only on our phone-calling program, but also on the University as a whole. When we ask parents to give, we’re not asking them to give to faculty research or student scholarships, we’re asking them to give to something parent-specific, funds that tuition doesn’t cover,” Lewis said. “Parent giving really focuses on the health, safety and well-being of our students.”

In addition to helping the University and engaging parents and alumni, the calling center also provides a dynamic job opportunity for students. The Rally Line offers flexible hours, employs domestic and international students from various backgrounds, develops key professional skills, and presents students with vast networking opportunities.

“I was a senior, so I was job searching and called some alumni who say, ‘If you want to email me I can help you out,’ or they’ll give me career advice or have an opinion on grad school,” said Htoo Thein, who just graduated with an electrical engineering degree. “And before I worked here, I hated talking on the phone. It’s made me so much better at phone interviews for jobs.”

“The transformation that happens for student workers here is phenomenal,” Lewis says. “Everyone is terrified of this job. There is no one who thinks, ‘Gee it’d be fun to call up some strangers and ask them for money.’ No one is excited about that, but the students who graduate from here, no matter what they go on to do they’ll have so much confidence. Phone interviews? Talking about money? Negotiating salaries? No problem.”

Find more information on giving and other opportunities, visit the Rally Line website or email rallyline@purdue.edu.

Writer: Matt Watson

Student Life Marketing, Purdue University