It is Friday night and instead of getting ready to hit the clubs, a group of eight Sacramento State students are a block away from the university in a brightly decorated room with pale green walls.

Strawberry tea is brewing in the coffeepot and a radio plays Snoop Dogg and Destiny?s Child in the background.

Each student is seated at a computer placing fund raising calls to Sac State alumni to raise money for the university.

When a call pops onto the computer screen it lists the name of the alumni, the year they graduated, what degree they received, how much money they have donated in the past and other relevant information.

Kymica Brewer gets the first pledge of the night for $25. Everyone claps and the donation is written on the whiteboard. Each night a different goal is set, and the goal for tonight is $1,050.

“I love talking on the phone so this is a good job for me,” Brewer said. She is a freshman majoring in psychology, and has been working as a student fund-raiser for two semesters.

The students all work without scripts, instead they casually chat with the alumni about upcoming events related to their degree, or what is going on at campus. The students have no quotas or time limits, and they tailor each call to the individual they are speaking with before asking for a donation.

“We don?t have scripts like telemarketers,” said Patricia Phare-Camp, the annual fund personnel manager. “We have a training period of one week and we teach them how to have a conversation to ask for donations. We used to hire telemarketers, but it is more charming for alumni to talk with students.”

The students start their work on weeknights as early as 5 p.m. and can end as late as 10 p.m.

Brewer places a call to an alumnus with a business degree. They talk about his career, the dorms, his college-age daughter and what business classes he would recommend. After 10 minutes, she asks for a donation of $1,000. She laughs at his response, and then offers lower levels of donations. At the end of the call he ends up donating $100.

Dheeraj Panjwani is an electrical engineering major and originally from India. “One night I was talking with someone about India for half an hour and then he donated $200,” Panjwani said.

Maggie Elkin, the annual fund director, said that there is a strict screening process for the job. Last year, only about one out of five people passed the initial test, and then they must pass two interviews, both over the phone. The number of students working in the center can vary from 10 to 38 students. The students get paid an hourly wage, plus bonuses.

At the end of the night the students had collected $415 dollars in pledges, falling short of the original goal of $1,050 dollars.

The students all agree that there is a lot of rejection, but it is part of the job. “You get used to it,” said Stephanie Gil, a criminal justice major.”You realize they are rejecting the offer and you don?t take it personally.”

“These are the front-line people,” Elkin said. “They are starting a relationship and building a foundation for bigger gifts in the future. A lot of big gifts start out small and get bigger and bigger over time. They could start a relationship with someone who might later donate $1 million to the school.”