Episode summary
Ironclad Giving Day starts at midnight on Tuesday, April 7, 2026 and closes at 7:33 a.m. on Wednesday, April 8 — 1,893 minutes, one for each year since the Porter Manual Training School opened. Hollis Vang explains where the idea came from (“a whiteboard, a calculator and a bad night’s sleep”) and what the first two years taught the UW–Porter Falls Foundation.
The numbers so far: the first Giving Day, in April 2024, raised $611,200 from 2,390 donors. The second, in April 2025, raised $903,850 from 3,206 donors across 104 funds, and 488 of those donors were giving to Porter for the first time in their lives — most of them graduates of the last ten years. The student emergency fund, which covers sudden costs like a car repair or a lost paycheck, drew 871 individual gifts, more than any other fund. The largest dollar total, $148,300, went to the simulation hospital (see episode 4).
Pete Odegaard explains the laps. Every time the running total crosses another $50,000, a member of the cross-country team runs a lap of campus. Last year that came to 18 laps, the last at 6:51 a.m., by three runners the team describes as “the ones who were awake.” He has a plan this year involving a sign-up sheet and a sleeping-bag rotation in the Welcome Center, where student volunteers staff the phone and text bank all night.
Update, April 8, 2026: the third Giving Day raised $1,184,320 from 3,947 donors, including 612 first-time donors. The team ran 23 laps.
Chapters
| Time | Chapter |
|---|---|
| 00:00 | Cold open: the 3 a.m. phone bank |
| 01:00 | Why 1,893 minutes |
| 05:20 | Year one: nobody was sure anyone would notice |
| 10:45 | Year two: 488 first-time donors |
| 16:30 | The emergency fund, and why small gifts go there |
| 21:10 | Pete Odegaard on the lap rule |
| 27:35 | How a gift gets to a fund (and how to change it) |
| 32:50 | What to watch for on April 7 |
| 35:40 | Credits |
Selected transcript
An excerpt, lightly edited for reading. The full speaker-labeled transcript is in your podcast app’s transcript view, or email podcast@uwporterfalls.edu for an accessible document.
Corinne Lacasse: Hollis, the campaign ends at 7:33 in the morning. Whose idea was that?
Hollis Vang: Mine, and I regretted it by about four a.m. the first year. We wanted it to be one minute for every year since 1893. Do that math from midnight and you land at 7:33 the next day. Nobody wanted to round it off. That’s a very Porter conversation, by the way. People would rather be up all night than be imprecise.
Abe Tollefsrud: What did the first year teach you?
Hollis Vang: That people don’t give to “the university.” They give to the thing they remember. The welding lab. The cross-country team. The time the emergency fund paid for their transmission in 2019. Last year 871 people gave to the emergency fund, and a lot of those gifts were twenty-five dollars. I’ll take that over any single big check.
Corinne Lacasse: Coach, explain the laps.
Pete Odegaard: Every time the total crosses fifty thousand dollars, somebody runs a lap of campus. It started as a joke. Then it was on the livestream, and then alumni started timing the gifts so they’d cross the line at weird hours and make us run in the dark.
Hollis Vang: Which we do not discourage.
Pete Odegaard: Last year the last lap was 6:51 a.m. Three runners. Two of them had a nine o’clock chemistry exam.
Corinne Lacasse: How did they do on the exam?
Pete Odegaard: One got a B. One got an A-minus. I tell recruits that story now. You can do both. You just have to be the one who’s awake.
Links mentioned
Fictional information
UW–Porter Falls is a work of parody. Ironclad Giving Day, its totals, donors and funds, Hollis Vang’s whiteboard and the 6:51 a.m. lap are invented; no gift made because of this episode reaches anyone.