Hurrah!! We have just won a $30,000 award from this world renowned Graphic Processor Technology leader, after a keenly competitive process among dozens of Charity organizations competing for the 5 equally-amounted grants the Company dishes out annually.
On May 27th, 2009, the SOAR fund raising team received an email from our beloved Chairman Ben, informing us that there is a Request for Application package arrived at SOAR from NVIDIA. The deadline for responding to the RFA is June 1, 2009.
It all started with the kind heart of Mr. Kai Chen, a NVIDIA employee, who just happened to have watched a KTSF-San Francisco TV interview of Siu Chang and Davy Kao promoting the SOAR Annual Fund-Raising Dinner in late May of 2009. Mr. Chen spent a lot of efforts locating SOAR, and sent us the RFA via email.
SOAR volunteer team members receiving this RFA are to be commended for dispatching the package timely to the right persons, to still give us 5 days to work on it. The fund raising team became very busy immediately, and with the help of SOAR-wide cooperation, primarily from Suey-ju, in providing the needed legal and financial documentations, we were able to complete the seemingly “mission impossible” in time.
We answered all the 10 questionnaires in the RFA as a first try, forwarded them to Mr. Chen, and got in touch with him over phone for all later iterations of modifications. Our telephone conversations with Mr. Chen seemed never end from there on, until the final submission of the application on June 1, 2009.
In these telephone conversations, Mr. Chen told us that there can be as many as over 50 applicants this year for the grant. The first run of a NVIDIA Company-wide all-employee tally of vote would eliminate all but 10 candidates, to finally screen out another 50% of the finalists to leave only 5 organizations to be awarded with the $30,000. In a year like this year, when all purses got tightened up like clams, 30-grand turns a lot of heads of charity organizations. Thus the competition can be even tougher.
As a nominator of SOAR to compete for the resources, Mr. Chen has been holding our hands all the way in coming up with the best possible answers and documentations as SOAR responses. We are deeply in debt for his tireless cooperation and carefulness to details that “forced” us to work equally hard and prudently, to perfecting our package to eventually win the award.
By mid-July, Davy received an email from Mr. Chen and the NVIDIA steering committee for the grant, advising us that SOAR has passed the first cycle of elimination to become one of the 10 finalists. That added severity to Davy’s heart condition to make it beats even faster, until the $30,000 check arrived at Suey-ju’s desk just a few days ago.
NVIDIA is the world leader in research, development, manufacture and distribution of Graphic Chips, which is believed to be the future of the computer industry. With $5 Billion revenue and at 20% net income, the Company is well positioned for the next Graphic Presentation revolution that is soon to arrive. We wish them all the best in their venture for the best in the near future. “It will be GPU in the place of CPU.” (The Company’s information can be view in more details via : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia).
We thank the Company for their philanthropic generosity and spirits. We thank their Company-wide employees for their share of charity-minded kind deeds to participate and become instrumental in the selection process. Of course, our sincere thanks goes to Kai Chen for his initiation and leadership to finally make SOAR one of the honored recipients.
The only regret left is that until now, nobody in SOAR has ever had the opportunity meeting Mr. Chen in person yet. We are sure Mr. Chen will quickly remedy this regret of ours by responding to our invitation to meet with him soon.
Davy Kao - September 2009
