Raising money to send ambulances to the front was a popular fund drive for college communities. Hunter College by June 1917 had collected $5000 to equip three ambulances and maintain them for a year. In November of 1917 there was a concert for the benefit of the Italian American Ambulance Fund. The ambulance was to be known as the Helen Gray Cone Ambulance, in honor of Helen Gray Cone, a poet and Professor of English Literature at Hunter College.

Not to be outdone by Hunter College, the alumni of The College of the City of New York donated an ambulance which served in France as Section Sanitaire Americaine 32. Malcolm B. Schloss, class of 1916 was the driver and after the war he was decorated with the Croix de Guerre for distinguished bravery.