A plan for Rebbetzin Assaf and Mrs. Weinreb · prepared 30 Tishrei 5787 · October 11, 2026

Hi Five

Fifteen years of girls. Five days. One hi from each of them.

This page explains the whole campaign in plain words, with pictures of exactly what an alumna will see on her phone and what the office will see on its screen. Everything here is a sample: the names, the amounts and the photos are placeholders until we put in the real ones.

1

The idea in one minute

Rebbetzin Assaf sends every alumna of the last fifteen years a short email: “Miriam, this is Rebbetzin Assaf. I just wanted to say hi. Please say hi back to me.”

The link in that email opens a page made for that one girl. It greets her by name, plays a 30-second video of Rebbetzin Assaf, and right under the video is one small box to give. Nothing else. No menus, no fancy buttons.

When she gives, she is asked to send a hi to classmates: she types a classmate’s name, picks a sticker (“Role model”, “Miss you!”, “Thank you, Sem!”), and when her gift goes through, that classmate gets a text and an email saying “Miriam says you’re a role model” with a link to her own page. The classmate is curious, opens it, and the whole thing starts again with her.

That chain is the campaign. The email from Rebbetzin Assaf is the match; the stickers are the fire.

And it is for one thing only: not a building, not a renovation. Keeping the seminary financially steady, so it can keep accepting every girl who belongs here and keep paying the teachers who give everything to them. The review that rated every department of the seminary top marks rated the finances low. Hi Five is the answer to that one line.

2

The numbers

Your math is right. Here it is laid out.

Why we ask every girl for $555 when we are aiming for $200

Most girls will not study the website. The few who do will see a big goal and aim for it. A girl who sees $500 and gives $200 or $300 has given double what she would have given if we had asked for $100. Here and there someone will actually reach $500. The average lands in the middle, which is where $300,000 is.

One honest refinement

$300,000 needs every girl to give $200. In campaigns like this, usually around a third of the people give. So the stickers matter: they are what pulls in the girls who never open the first email. Three ways the week can go:

The surest way to close the gap is a matching gift: two or three larger supporters who put up, say, $50,000 between them before the week starts, so every alumna sees “every hi is doubled.” Campaigns with a match reliably raise more. This is worth a few phone calls in the first week.

3

The dates

Work starts tomorrow. Three weeks to prepare, then five days of campaign, Sunday morning to Thursday night. The whole stretch falls in Cheshvan, so there are no holidays in the way.

The three weeks of preparation

The five days

All week, stickers go back and forth by email and text, girl to girl.

Nobody receives more than one message a day from the seminary. The sticker messages are different: they come from a classmate, and girls like getting them.

If you would rather have a full fourth week of preparation, the campaign moves to Sunday Nov 8 – Thursday Nov 12 (28 Cheshvan – 2 Kislev). Everything else stays the same.

4

What an alumna sees

Almost everyone will open this on her phone, so that is how it is shown here. Scroll inside each phone to see the whole page. Tap any picture’s title to open the live sample.

On a computer. The same one screen, side by side: the video on the left, giving on the right.

1 · She taps the link. One screen, no scrolling: her name, the video, the amounts and card line, and the “Send a hi” area right there. My class, Campaign and About open as popups.

2 · She picks an amount, then who. She types a name under “Send a hi”. The list offers her own class, “everyone in the class”, and the teachers. Each pick becomes a line: name, sticker, note.

3 · One sticker, one note, many girls. Each line has a sticker button that drops down a grid of tiles, a note box, and an ×. The small + adds more girls to the same line so one sticker and note go to all of them; names flow around the sticker for two lines, and the rest sit behind a round “+9” that opens the same list. A teacher always gets her own line, with only the stickers that suit a teacher, marked “in her honor”. The name box moves below the lines once the first girl is in.

3b · Her own address, her own goal. Every alumna gets the site’s address with her name on the end, and a $555 goal of her own shown under “Say hi back”. A small “for my page ▾” pill beside “Say hi back” shows where the gift goes; tapping it lists the other girls with their page totals, so she can point the gift at a friend instead or split it between pages in whole dollars. The campaign’s main link has no page chosen, so the giver picks one. The campaign total starts at zero.

4 · The quiet limit. Each sticker counts $5 of her gift. Nothing says so until she reaches it: $36 covers 7 stickers, and only then does the page tell her, and nudge her to raise the gift.

5 · Done. Her gift goes through, her stickers go out by text and email, she gets a receipt.

Stickers count $5 each against the gift, but the price is never shown up front; it only appears when a girl has used them all, as a reason to give a little more. The stickers so far: Role model · Thinking of you · Miss you! · Thank you, Sem! · Got to know you because of Sem · You made my year · Still laughing about it · Seat partner forever · Best roommate · Bus buddy · Just saying hi. For teachers only the fitting ones are offered (Role model, Thinking of you, Miss you, Thank you, You made my year) plus two of their own: In your honor · You still teach me. We can add any you like, and the office decides which teachers appear.

5

Class pages and the main page

Every one of the 15 classes gets its own page with its own $20,000 goal, the class’s memories and jokes, the list of who gave, and the stickers flying around the class. Tapping a girl’s name opens a small window (not a new page) with her gift and the stickers she sent and received. The main page shows all the classes together.

My class. A popup over her page: goal, memories, who said hi, stickers.

Tap a name. Her little window: what she gave, stickers sent and received, and a button to send her one.

Campaign. The total, every class, every sticker, in a popup.

6

What the office sees

One screen, on the office computer, that only the seminary can open. Every gift as it comes in and how it was paid. Every class and how close it is. Every email: sent, delivered, opened. A box to type in a Zelle, QuickPay or check gift so it counts for the girl’s class and she gets a receipt. A button to download everything as a spreadsheet.

The office’s screen. Numbers here are sample numbers.

7

The emails and texts

The first email is deliberately tiny. The sender name is Rebbetzin Assaf, the subject is “Miriam, this is Rebbetzin Assaf”, and the whole body is three lines and a button. Nothing in it looks like a fundraising letter, which is why it will be opened.

All six messages. The first email, the sticker text and email, the Tuesday class email, the last-day text, the thank-you, and the receipt.

8

Every way to give

A girl should never have to leave the page to give the way she likes to give.

Every gift, however it came, gets an automatic tax receipt by email with the seminary’s EIN on it. Card money is paid into the seminary’s bank account every two days.

9

What we need from the seminary

This is the list of things to hand over, in the order they are needed. The first group is needed this week.

This week

• The alumnae list: every girl of the last 15 years, her class year, her name then and now, email, cell phone. A spreadsheet is perfect, even a messy one.
• Branding: the logo file, the colours, the fonts the seminary uses, and a few photos (building, girls, Rebbetzin Assaf).
• The 30-second video of Rebbetzin Assaf. I will write the lines; it can be filmed on a phone.
• Tax papers: the seminary’s EIN and its 501(c)(3) determination letter. Needed to open Stripe and PayPal at the charity rate and to print on receipts.
• Bank details for payouts: account and routing number, and who at the seminary is the authorised signer (Stripe asks for that person’s name, date of birth and last four of their social).
• Existing PayPal / Zelle / QuickPay details if the seminary already has them, or permission to open them.
• The dedication: the girl’s name, her class, and the family’s blessing on how she is mentioned.
• A matching gift: names of two or three supporters we may ask.

Next week

• Access to the seminary’s web domain (wherever it is registered, often GoDaddy or Google) so the campaign can live at an address like hi5.nyseminary.org and the emails can truly come from Rebbetzin Assaf’s address rather than landing in spam.
• Rebbetzin Assaf’s email address for the “from” line, and who replies when girls write back (they will).
• One class rep per year to send in the memories, jokes and photos for her class page.
• A phone number to appear on texts and for girls to call.
• Who in the office will watch the dashboard during the five days and type in Zelle and check gifts.

What I will set up and the seminary will own

• Stripe and PayPal accounts in the seminary’s name.
• The email-sending service and the text-message number, registered to the seminary (the carriers require this and it takes up to two weeks, which is why it is a week-one job).
• The website and the office dashboard, with the logins handed to the office at the end.

10

The web address

Three choices, best first:

11

Who the alumnae are

Girls come to seminary the year after high school, at 18 or 19. So the Class of 2012 is now about 32 or 33, and the Class of 2026 is 19. The alumnae are between about 19 and 33, most in their twenties, most married, many with small children, nearly all living on their phones. That is why every screen here is built for a phone first, why the first email is three lines, and why texts matter as much as emails.

12

Decisions for you

With a yes on these and the items in section 9, the real site is built in week two and the first email goes out Sunday morning, 21 Cheshvan.