Events Planning & Development
Purpose: Plan events to connect alumni and raise funds for the Alumni of Color Initiative
Objectives:
- Increase participation in charitable donations by black alumni to 35% (currently at 28%).
- Raise funds to endow at least one IPC scholarship ($250,000 goal).
- Lead online fundraising campaign to encourage black alumni to contribute to the Alumni of Color Initiative.
- Increase attendance at All Class Reunion 2010 by 50%.
Update:
Over the past four years Inman Page Black Alumni Council, spearheaded by the Development Committee, has been a driving force behind many of the changes that are taking place on Brown’s development front, and will continue to do so.
>The Slavery and Justice fundraising initiative, for example, kicked off in 2007 with IPC members of the class of 1982 providing the lead gift of $76,000. For the first time in Brown’s history, funds were allocated to specific areas of meaning to Black Alumni—85% to fund programming in the Africana Studies Department, including a proportional share for Rites and Reasons under the Africana Studies budget, and the remaining 15% to the Brown Alumni Fund Investment in Diversity. (Special thanks to Harold Bailey and Steve Jordan.)
>Going forward, Myra Traylor of the University’s Development Department is committed to including this “Slavery and Justice Program Funding Initiative” as an option in all fundraising campaigns. Many of us want to continue in this tradition, which we started last year.
> Another historical first, the Boldly Brown Alumni of Color Initiative of April 2008 in New York City was another historical first, with several IPC members serve as Vice-Chairs on the Alumni of Color Boldly Brown campaign: Bernicestine McLeod, Harold Bailey and Brickson E. Diamond.
IPC played a very significant role every step of the way in “laying the early ground work” for designing the options for giving. In the Fall of 2005, Co-chair Lianne Merchant '82 wrote and submitted an overall development plan, identifying a wish list of themes of giving opportunities in which we, as the African Diaspora, have an interest. The ideas proposed in the document were shared and considered with Brenda Allen, Director of Institutional Diversity, and Bernicestine McLeod, at the time a Brown Corporation member.
The April 2008 Boldly Brown Alumni of Color event in New York introduced the new classifications of giving for Alumni of Color (to date) with some tweaking to come, which will include the addition the Slavery and Justice funding initiative.
