Supporters Line Up to Champion UA in Third Annual Giving Day Event

 

February 17, 2023

The stakes are high, and so is the enthusiasm and excitement as supporters of Alaska’s three public universities put more than $900,000 on the line during the University of Alaska’s third annual UA Giving Day - 49 Hours for Alaska, taking place online February 22 and 23. 

This year more than 75 donors, representing alumni, community members and business supporters, are offering a record-setting amount in challenges and rewards to encourage broad community participation in giving to UAA, UAF, and UAS. 

Faculty, staff and student Champions are important to the success of UA Giving Day, and there’s still time to sign up! Champions help unlock matching gifts, and ensure that more people will see, hear and read messages about UA and its impact on students and on our state. 

A few examples from the nearly 100 challenges include: 

• When 149 people make a gift to the Troth Yeddha’ Indigenous Studies Center, it will unlock a collective gift of $30,000 from Heather Kendall-Miller and Lloyd Miller and the Legacy Committee.
  
  
• When ten donors support UAA’s ConocoPhillips Integrated Science Building Planetarium Support fund, one anonymous donor will chip in $5,000.
  
  
• UAS employees and alumni Michael Ciri and Jeri Cary will match up to $10,000 in donations to the new UAS GED Achiever scholarship. Ciri and Cary, both GED recipients, want to build a welcoming path to higher education for those with a GED. 
  
  
• Helga and Bill Watterson and Watterson Construction are challenging Alaska’s construction industry statewide to match their $50,000 for Construction Management Workforce Development Support, a fund that benefits construction training programs at all three universities.

The full list of challenges is available at the UA Giving Day website http://givingday.alaska.edu/. 

To promote social media sharing, UA President Pat Pitney is awarding $500 per university and a round-trip travel voucher on Alaska Airlines, courtesy of Alaska Airlines, in a random drawing from among those who share the #49HoursforAlaska hashtag on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter or TikTok in a public post tagging UAA, UAF or UAS. 

The UA Giving Day website, givingday.alaska.edu, has tools to help faculty, staff and students share messages about their support of their favorite programs and track dollars raised in real time.

Last year, participation in UA Giving Day was worldwide, raising more than $1.06 million from more than 1,690 donors from 42 states and 12 countries. The global outpouring of support demonstrates the UA system’s reach through its alumni, faculty, staff, donors and friends.