Alumni Letter- draft

Here is the draft of the email for alumni -

Dear Lawrence University Alum,

We are a group of Lawrence juniors and seniors currently enrolled in an economics class titled “Entrepreneurship in the Arts and Society”. For this class we’ve been given the task of developing and putting into action an entrepreneurial endeavor of our choosing and we need your help to make it all work! Here’s what we’re trying to accomplish –

For starters, our project is called, the poor musician. Having watched our musician friends from past years graduate and move out into the real world, and facing the prospect of graduation ourselves (and thus the loss of the ever-convenient conservatory facilities), we are working to develop a network that connects graduating musicians with alumni currently living and working in the biggest cities in the Midwest (Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, and the Twin Cities). We received your contact information from the office of Alumni Relations and wanted to make you aware of our project with the hope that you might be willing to participate in building this network.

It is our mission to connect Lawrence graduates seeking practice space and/or, in the case of pianists, an instrument on which to practice, with more established alumni that might have the resources to help a fellow musician continue to hone their skills by welcoming them into their home or studio. This way, musicians who might otherwise have to spend extensive amounts of time searching out appropriate practice space can instead settle into a consistent and productive practice schedule with the help of this network of “poor musicians”.

We are currently in the very earliest phases of this endeavor and for now your participation is mostly “digital” in nature. We encourage you to reply to this email with an thoughts, suggestions, or simply with a few words of support for our project. If you are involved with Facebook you can also join our group, “the poor musician”, and jump into the discussions and networks we’re building around musicians in Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, and the Twin Cities.

Finally, we hope that you might visit our project blog at: http://practicespacenow.blogspot.com to follow our progress developing a networking event that will take place on campus in the next weeks. If you’re in the neighborhood we hope that you might stop by to chat with some soon-to-be graduates and start really building this network and spreading the word! Music is around us!

Thanks for you time and please feel free to contact any of us with questions, comments, or words of wisdom!

Caitlin, Aubree, Sammi, and Tam