Celebration on July 14th for Opportunity Fund Phase I Campaign Completion, Deadline Extended to July 13th

We (Rena Zieve and Lloyd Knox) are delighted to report that we appear to have met our goal! According to our unofficial tally, we have, together as a department, given or pledged to give, $215K. Our goal was to reach $200K by July 1. We seem to have comfortably exceeded it, thanks to gifts from 98 individuals. These gitfts come from undergraduates, graduate students, staff, researchers, faculty, grad group faculty, emeriti, and our advisory board members. Seventy-four percent of our active faculty have given! That is a strong showing of internal support for this Fellowship.
 
Five things to note:
 
(1) Celebration on July 14th. This community accomplishment is one very much worth celebrating. We plan on having an informal celebration, in person, in Davis, on the early evening of Wednesday, July 14th. Details will be forthcoming. Please mark your calendars.
 
(2) Extension to July 13th. To make our accounting more robust prior to the July 14 event (see (3)), to make sure everyone has a chance to participate, and to give us an opportunity for an even stronger showing from Phase I, we are extending our Phase I deadline to midnight on July 13th. What we have already will send a strong message of internal support, that is part of a powerful story we can tell to draw in gifts in Phase II from friends and alumni of the department. But we can do even better. We hope to increase from ~75% to over 85% the percentage of active faculty who are supporting this Fellowship Fund with a gift. Please see (5) below for an inspiring example from emerita Professor Ling-Lie Chau for new donations in this extended period.
 
(3) Please get those gift and pledge forms in, and let me (Lloyd) know so I can count them in our tally, by July 13th. Let's get those gift and pledge forms in, if you have not already. And then please let me know that you've done it as it would take up to six weeks for me to find out otherwise.  I may have tallied your donation already based on hearing of your intention to fill out a gift and pledge form. By July 14 I will share our total based on actually submitted forms, or actually already-given gifts. Especially if your total of pledges and gifts is $1K or larger, please confirm to me in email that your gift has been made and/or your gift and pledge form has been submitted, and how much you gave/pledged. If you have not yet submitted your gift and pledge form, you can email it to me or put it in my mail box on campus and I will mail it in. Of course, you can send it in directly, but let me know you've done that and the total you gifted/pledged. I don't need a receipt or scanned form; your emailed statements to me by July 13th will be fine.
 
(4) Privileges of donating $1K/year or more. Professor Chau recently pointed out to us that donating over $1K/year entitles one to membership in the Davis Chancellor's Club . Please follow the link for a description of the associated privileges.
 
(5) A Source of Inspiration. Professor Chau also reached out to us recently to offer her support of the Opportunity Fellowship via a donation of $20K. Professor Chau has already established one graduate fellowship and is working on establishing an endowed chair, both for our department. We were already very fortunate to have such energetic support from Professor Chau, and now we are very pleased that she sees the Opportunity Fellowship as well aligned with her own goals, and is delighted to join our effort, and that she is doing so in such a substantial way. We very much appreciate Professor Chau getting us over the finish line and hope that her generous contribution will inspire more giving.

This has been the work of many hands. We are particularly grateful to our fellow campaign committee members
 Daniel Cox, Markus Luty, Eric Prebys, Bob Svoboda, Tony Tyson, and Gergely Zimanyi
 for generously providing their treasure, time, and talents to this project.
 
We hope to see you all on the 14th to celebrate what we’ve accomplished together as a department!

Published: July 2, 2021, 4:40 pm