Development and External Relations Update

The Development and External Relations office UPDATE is a monthly summary of activities in the section and is published for your general information. If you have questions, please contact Jim Goit or call at (902) 893-7950

• Jim had a meeting with alumni living in Alberta while he was there attending a conference on fund raising, marketing, communication and alumni relations.
• The NSAC Foundation held their annual meeting on June 14th. There was a lot of work by staff before and after meeting to complete the reports and post them. We had a clean audit and an excellent year end.
• Jim met with representatives of the Class of '56 on their fund raising project for their 50th year.  He also helped the class of '59 plan the project for their 50th year.
• The alumni e-Newsletter was sent out to 2500 graduates and friends.  There were the lower than the usual number of returns and bounce backs.  E-mail is fast becoming the communication method of choice for many alumni.
• The team developed a PowerPoint on the new website for presentation at Faculty Council.  We want to share some of the new features of this important tool with campus. Sarah, Stephanie and Tim gave the presentation to Faculty Council, where we gave an overview of our respective roles and a brief summary of the marketing plan, our PR/Communications efforts and the new website.
• Sarah, Stephanie and Jim were part of a meeting to discuss the residence renewal project.  Sarah is part of a follow up group developing more complete business case for a modern residence.
• Joanne and Jim visited with their counterparts at Mount St Vincent to trade experience with the Benefactor Donor management system.
• While visits to the website are down a bit this month, it is typical of this time of the year. Unique visitors to the site are also down from May, but are still up 5% over June 2004.
• Tim and René Wall of IT-CSU organized a 2-day Dreamweaver course for our departmental web editors. René and Billie-Ann MacDonald facilitated the program which had 21 participants. Tim will be doing a follow-up session in July to provide on-going support.
• Tim met with several web editors and assisted them in updating their websites to the new template.
• Tim, Sarah and Stephanie met with representatives of Allura Communications to discuss technical implications of marketing the university through our website.
• Tim updated the AAU Teaching show case website.
• Jim represented NSAC at the launch of Springboard, the Atlantic Universities' new commercialization organization.
• Jim attended a two day workshop on Privacy management in Halifax on June 27-28.  The newest trends in legislation and public attitude to the protection of privacy were presented and discussed. The role of Privacy officer is rapidly becoming a mainstream profession.
• The NSAC Centennial Amphitheatre was officially opened on June 29th. about 200 people attended the event organized by the Development office.  The Class of '44 was recognized for their contribution to the project.  It will be highlighted in the next alumni news magazine.
• There were 75 found/changed alumni records in the month of June.
• There was limited donation activity during the month. Outstanding pledge payments were processed. Plans for the various fall appeals were begun.
• A very successful event was held on June 7th celebrating NSAC's stellar research capacity. The Canadian Centre for Fur Animal Research was officially opened and two CFI awards as well as a Canada research chair position were announced in the afternoon. Tours of various research programs and facilities on campus was also a highlight.
• A front-page promotional policy was developed for the website in an effort to promote the key successes of the university. These Photo-links seem to be working quite well to date.
• Planning continues for Open House on July 28th as well as Homecoming weekend to be held October 14th and 15th, 2005.
• The second centennial edition of the Agricola News is wrapping up and should be mailed to alumni early in August.