Sonoma State University has just been gifted $10 million through the generosity of Don Green, a successful Sonoma County entrepreneur, and his wife Maureen, an SSU alumna. The Greens have designated the gift for the building a choral center on the SSU campus.
The Greens have been involved as singers with the Sonoma County Bach Choir and other Sonoma State University choir groups for many years, which is why they chose to invest in the campus. Because there are no acoustically-appropriate facilities for choir groups at SSU, the choirs generally perform off campus, at local churches for the most part. Don and Maureen Green wanted Sonoma State University to have a choral center so its students would be able to perform where they study on campus. The Sonoma County Bach Choir also has members from the community, such as the Greens.
The Greens gifted $5 million worth of Advanced Fibre Communications stock to the University; $1 million is available for current use and $4 million has been placed into a charitable remainder trust. The second $5 million is available to the university as a matching gift.
Don Green, well-known in the telecommunications field is owner of Advanced Fibre Communications that he formed in Petaluma four years ago has played a major role in bringing telecommunications companies to the area. In 1969 he began Digital Telephone Systems. That successful company was sold almost 20 years later to Harris Digital Systems. Green then began what turned out to be a short retirement.
Optilink, his second technology company, was formed in 1987, only a year after breaking with Digital Telephone Systems. Then, in 1990 he sold that company to the Texas-based DSC Communications for over $50 million.
Advanced Fibre Communications makes a telecommunications platform, designed to handle from 6 to 600 telephone lines. Their product can be used in rural areas where the customers are a great distance from the central office, like the southwest part of the United States or Mexico and China.
