Pamela Bishop: Hello, everyone. I am Pamela Bishop. I’m the director of marketing and communications for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and I am pleased to be joined today with our colleagues from Advancement. These colleagues specifically support student initiatives, and so we are pleased to be talking to you today about U Giving Day. We have with us, Maria Mullahi, who is a major gifts officer, as well as Nataly Bumphis, who is an advancement officer, and she is responsible for putting together U Giving Day.
U Giving Day, if you don’t know it, is on March 1 and 2. This is an opportunity for you to sponsor and support all of the student initiatives here at the university. So I want to start off with you, Nataly. Please tell me, why do we even sponsor U Giving Day?
Nataly Bumphis: Thank you, Pamela. U Giving Day is a great chance for U alumni, parents, friends, students, faculty, and staff to celebrate, engage, and make an investment to the U. U Giving Day challenges the community to imagine more for the future of the students and patients at university and as a whole. So for U Giving Day to be a success, the university will need support and participation from the entire U community.
Pamela Bishop: Awesome. So Maria, tell us a little bit about what are some specific initiatives that people can donate to as a part of U Giving Day?
Maria Mullahi: Yes, absolutely. The best part about U Giving Day is that you can support any EDI initiatives, and it’s actually a terrific opportunity to do so. So you could support American Indian Resource Center, Black Cultural Center, Center for Student Equity and Belonging, our Dream Center, New Leadership Academy, or the LGBT Resource Center as part of this Giving Day. And actually, what makes this opportunity especially wonderful is that we have some matching grants from donors who will help your gift go twice as far. So if you, for example, donate to one of the centers with a matching grant, it helps you double the impact of your gift and helps that center raise twice as much money. So what a wonderful opportunity to get involved and support those equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives. There is a lot of important and incredible work that happens within these centers.
So once again, to support any of the areas within equity, diversity, and inclusion, you simply need to visit the U Giving Day website, which is givingday.utah.edu. And from there, you should be able to easily navigate to, specifically for the area that you are looking to support.
Pamela Bishop: That’s awesome. Well, this sounds very thorough with opportunities to give to all the different centers and their initiatives. So beyond donating, what else can people do, Nataly, to get involved with U Giving Day?
Nataly Bumphis: Yes, there are several great ways to participate in U Giving Day: becoming a social media ambassador and sharing your giving story to your personal network, your social media, sending it out to your personal email links, that’s a great way. You can also become a challenge or matching donor, which Maria touched on a little bit. That can double the impact of a gift. That can be anywhere from $50 to $5000. Becoming a challenge or matching donor is great. And of course, just giving a gift on the Giving Day website, which is givingday.utah.edu.
Gifts, no matter how small or how large, it all makes an impact for us.
Pamela Bishop: Absolutely. Absolutely. I want to emphasize, no gift too small and no gift too large, of course.
So thank you guys for just sharing with us what’s going on in U Giving Day, which again is March 1 and 2. To make a donation or find out how to become a social media ambassador please visit the website, givingday.utah.edu. And thank you both for joining us today.
