2020-2021
ANNUAL REPORT UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY ALUMNI ASSOCIATION
Dear Wildcats, As I begin my third year as the Executive Director of the UK Alumni Association, I want to share with all of you something that I’ve learned in my rather short tenure: change is constant. But managing change — and the anxiety that often accompanies it is far easier with the support of a community of committed alumni, donors, students, university personnel and alumni relations professionals. During this past year’s challenging, uncertain and change-filled time, I was motivated by the many, many ways in which the Wildcat community came together to continue to promote the values and vision of the UK Alumni Association. As you’ve heard me say before, teamwork makes the dream work. That was never more true than during the COVID-19 pandemic. I am so proud of the ways our staff and alumni quickly pivoted and changed our programming and events to ensure that we were still building community as we kept our alumni and friends engaged and connected. Here are a few of the ways we did it: • Our Great Teachers on Great Challenges series served our community through virtual conversations designed to demystify the pandemic. It was wildly successful with more than 650 individuals joining us as we shared the expertise of our university’s alumni, faculty, staff and students in an effort to help all of us better understand our changing world. • Through virtual outreach on a global scale, we established a UK Alumni Club in China. • We transformed our connection with prospective Wildcats in a letter writing campaign in which more than 4,000 personal letters were written by alumni. • Through the expansion and virtual format of Job Club, our bi-weekly Alumni Career Services program, we reached a record number of alumni and friends from 30+ states. • Throughout the pandemic, philanthropic gifts, including membership contributions, continued to generate critical resources to support our mission. We changed, we learned, we grew, we persevered, and we moved forward under circumstances that were immensely difficult at times. On behalf of the University of Kentucky Alumni Association and our board of directors, thank you for your unwavering support during these changing times. Sincerely,
Jill H. Smith ’05, ’11 Associate Vice President for Alumni Engagement Executive Director UK Alumni Association
OUR VALUES & VISION
THE VALUES OF THE ASSOCIATION ARE: • Building Community • Promoting Diversity and Inclusion • Achieving Excellence
THE VISION OF THE UK ALUMNI ASSOCIATION IS TO: Enhance the lives of alumni, the university, and its students and provide opportunities for increased engagement by current and future alumni in service to each other, to the university, and to the communities that the university serves across the Commonwealth and beyond.
TOTAL GIVING TO UK BY ALUMNI
35,489 Total Mobile App Sessions
2.4M
WEBSITE VIEWS
40,032 life and active members
$18.1M
IMPACT
$ 55.7M
Life Membership Endowment Fund
22,907 Facebook Likes
PERFORMANCE 400
SCHOLARSHIP GIFTS The UK Alumni Association continues an upward trajectory in successfully raising funds toward scholarships. Between 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, the association saw a 56.4% increase in gifts received.
$ IN THOUSANDS
375
$378,762 $372,535
$368,145
350 335 300
$285,815
275
$242,216
250 235 200
2016-2017
2017-2018
2018-2019
2019-2020
$ IN MILLIONS
2
LIFE MEMBERSHIP ENDOWMENT COMPARISON In 2019 the UK Alumni Association adopted a new giving based membership model but kept our Life Membership program intact. Since then, the number of Life Members continues to increase and the Life Membership Endowment Fund has grown 30.1%.
6/30/2017 6/30/2018 6/30/2019
4
6
12,466,457.33 12,910,066.84
$
13,883,360.30
$
6/30/2021
MEMBERSHIP GROWTH LIFE
ACTIVE/1 YR/3YR
2016-2017
34,941
17,776
17,165
2017-2018
33,418
17,984
15,434
2018-2019
32,239
18,501
13,738
2019-2020*
46,783
2020-2021
40,032
10 12 14 16 18
$
6/30/2020
TOTAL MEMBERS
8
18,617** 34,521** 26,543** 18,702** First year of Active Member deactivation
*New membership model began. **Some Life Members are also Active Members because they give to UK annually.
13,919,929.37
$
18,115,845.47
$
2020-2021
ENGAGEMENT During the summer of 2020, the UK Alumni Association partnered with the Provost’s Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) to host a series of conversations designed to demystify the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects both locally and globally. These webinars featured UK faculty who had previously won the Association’s Great Teacher Award. Five different programs were offered to alumni, faculty, staff and students around the following topic areas – economics, food, public health, college sports
SUCCESSES & W and history – and attempted to make sense of the enormous amount of information, news, narratives and effects related to the pandemic. Each 60-minute session was recorded and is available for viewing at ukalumni.net/GreatTeachersOnGreatChallenges. More than 650 individuals participated in these virtual conversations that showcased the university’s intellectual leadership in better understanding the world we share and supported its mission as a landgrant and state flagship public research institution. The Great Teachers on Great Challenges Webinar Series won the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) District III Gold Award in the Alumni Engagement on a Shoestring category.
CAREER SERVICES The COVID-19 pandemic has been a historic crisis that has forced us all to quickly pivot, prioritize and reinvent services. UK Alumni Career Services (ACS), along with our dedicated team of colleagues, rose to the occasion and provided a record number of crucial job search, professional development and employment support services for UK alumni and friends around the country.
18,000+
CONTACT POINTS
through programming efforts and individual career counseling services
170 INDIVIDUAL
CAREER CLIENTS
96
career-related programs featuring alumni/ community content experts and ACS staff
553
CONTACT POINTS LOGGED
WINS DIGITAL MEDIA
SOCIAL MEDIA
• Launched From the Blue podcast with 754 downloads
• 22,907 Facebook Likes • 1,024 LinkedIn Page Followers • 10,110 Twitter Followers • 4,839 Instagram Followers • 29,008 YouTube Views • 2,417,087 Total Website Views
• 35,489 total mobile app sessions
• Sent electronic newsletters to more than 120,000+ recipients
ALUMNI STUDENT LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGN
DIVERSITY
UK alumni have long played a key role in promoting the university to prospective high school students in their local communities through a variety of programs including book awards, college fairs, preview nights, and summer sendoff events for incoming freshmen. More recently, the UK Alumni Association has partnered with the UK Office of Enrollment Management to invite alumni to send personal letters to students who had been accepted to the University of Kentucky but not yet made their final decision about where to attend college in the fall.
• The UK Alumni Association was recognized with a CASE District III Platinum Award Honorable Mention for Best Practices in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for “70 Years of Integration.”
During the most recent recruitment cycle (winter/spring 2021), more than 350 alumni volunteers sent nearly 5,700 hand-written postcards to these prospective students in their area. These alumni letters often described personal, transformative experiences during their time on campus and helped reinforce the special, powerful community that is UK. While it’s difficult to prove a direct correlation between these alumni letter writing efforts and a student’s decision to attend UK, Enrollment Management did report a higher confirmation rate in key areas such as Louisville, Northern Kentucky, Atlanta and Chicago than in prior years, suggesting the campaign did have a positive impact.
• To honor the work of Lyman T. Johnson and his effort to open the door for thousands of minority students to attend UK, the Lyman T. Johnson African-American Alumni Group established an undergraduate scholarship in his name. The Lyman T. Johnson Scholarship was endowed. • The UK Alumni Association in partnership with the UK International Center and the Office for China Initiatives (OCI) launched the China UK Alumni Club. The club will engage, connect, serve and celebrate UK alumni and friends living in China.
GOVERNANCE
A strategic objective of the 2015-2020 UK Alumni Association Strategic Plan was to “maintain efficient sustainable governance, membership, and funding models that optimize the association’s service to the university, its alumni, and its students.” Large governing boards tend to impair the decision-making process, making it challenging to respond quickly to situations or opportunities that may arise. With 135 board members, the UK Alumni Association had one of the largest board memberships of any university and more than twice that of the nearest SEC alumni association. Due to the membership model change in 2019 from one that focuses on alumni dues to one that focuses on alumni engagement, in addition to the need to focus on diversity and inclusion, a better board governance model became a priority. The final model included a total or 50 voting members of the Board of Directors and the creation of the Leadership Advisory Council, a group comprised of alumni connected in their local communities, through the academic colleges or through special interest groups that assists the association with feedback, opinions and ideas on the effectiveness of engagement activities. The UK Alumni Association approved the resolution to begin transitioning to a new board structure beginning July 2020, that would take several years to complete. The final structure will include a board of 50 voting members in the Executive Committee, the Engagement and Diversity Committee, the Awards Committee, the Investments and Finance Committee, the Nominating for Board of Directors Committee, the Nominating for Officers Committee and the Governance Committee. The governance model change also led to the creation of the Leadership Advisory Council (LAC) which is composed of alumni members involved and connected in their respective communities, colleges or alumni groups that offer feedback, opinions and ideas on the effectiveness of engagement activities. EXCELLENCE • The association won the CASE District III Bronze Award in the Writing for the Web category for its series of stories on how the pandemic affected University of Kentucky alumni and students. The three stories were focused on how the university and alumni responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. The stories were published on the UK Alumni Association’s blog, News from the Blue, which can be found at www.ukalumniblog.com. • The video, “Stronger than Ever,” won the CASE District III Silver Award in the Video, General Information Short category. The video was shared in January 2020 to thank members for their dedication and share excitement for the coming year. The video shows familiar faces from campus and encourages members to reflect fondly on their time at UK. It also gave members an understanding of what their gift to the University of Kentucky supports and how they are furthering the mission of the institution. CAREER SERVICES AWARDS •
National Career Development Association (NCDA) publication in Career Convergence Magazine
•
NCDA Leadership Academy
•
Two NCDA conference presentations
•
Job Club presentation for Alumni Career Services Network (ACSN)
•
ACSN Mentor to peer at SEC school
STRONGER THAN EVER BECAUSEOF YOU
4
CASE AWARDS
269K+ 269K ALUMNI
55
COUNTRIES
$6.6M
SCHOLARSHIP ENDOWMENT
$18.1M Life Membership Endowment Fund
1
UK
ALUMNI ASSOCIATION