Boone County Alumni Chapter
2008-09 Newsletter
What We Do
Greetings from the Boone County Chapter of the Mizzou Alumni Association! Throughout the year, we’ve been working hard to represent Mizzou in our community. Most of our activities focus on two things: fundraising efforts to support our scholarship program and social engagements to bring local Mizzou alumni and friends together. We are proud to announce that our Chapter will once again be the recipient of the Capstone designation, the highest honor achievable from the Mizzou Alumni Association. Our Chapter is required to complete a variety of tasks and programming initiatives in order to attain this status. We’ve successfully done so for the last 9 years (since the program’s inception), thanks to the hard work of our dedicated board of volunteers and involved Boone County alumni like you.
A Sampling of the Year's Events
The Boone County Chapter is involved in dozens of activities throughout the year in support of MU and locally-based Mizzou alumni. We kicked off the academic year in August, as several of our board members volunteered at Tiger Walk, welcoming incoming freshman to Mizzou with Tiger Stripe ice cream on the Francis Quadrangle. What a wonderful tradition! In September, we celebrated the blufftop fall foliage at Les Bourgeois with a wine tasting and delicious appetizers. In October, we hosted a student recruitment event at Southern Boone High School in Ashland, to introduce students to the idea of attending Mizzou and answer their questions about admission and life as a prospective MU college student. Member families attended a free Mizzou Women's Volleyball game in November. January brought our annual Legislative Forum, which provides an opportunity for our members to meet and visit informally with local legislators. We celebrated Mizzou Founder's Day with a basketball watch party at Harpo's in February, which also serves as our annual membership meeting. Throughout the year, we hosted a number of “Mizzou Update Luncheons” at the University Club. These luncheons, which are open to the public, include unique presentations from Mizzou's schools and colleges and will continue throughout 2009. We also nominated a number of local business leaders, educators, and volunteers for recognition through a number of Alumni Association-sponsored award programs. Finally, we partnered with MU’s graduate student organization to host a family bar-be-que event before a Mizzou baseball/softball double header in April and wrapped up our year with a celebratory Spring Fling at Boone Tavern in May.
Scholarship Fundraising
Each year our Chapter holds two major fundraisers to help send Boone County students to Mizzou. Our “Mizzou Night with the Arts” event was held at the Missouri Theatre Center for the Arts, and included food, drink, and live entertainment from the Missouri Symphony Society's Youth Orchestra program. In addition to an impressive display of local art in a variety of genres, the live and silent auctions included dinners at local restaurants, getaways to St. Louis, tickets to theater and athletic events, and Mizzou Memorabilia. We also partnered with the Thompson Center for Autism, allowing them an opportunity to showcase art pieces created by some of the children they serve who have been diagnosed with autism. Many of the local artists were on hand for the live portion of the auction, emceed by Joe Moseley.
Our second fundraiser consisted of a mail appeal, which was distributed to local alumni. In this letter, we took the opportunity to tell the stories of Lauren Fischer and Jacob Blount, our 2008 local scholarship recipients. Lauren, a Rock Bridge alum, and Jacob, a Hickman alum, have just completed their freshman year at Mizzou. Last year they were the recipients of $5,000 scholarships from the Boone County Chapter of the Mizzou Alumni Association.
At many of our social events, we also host raffles to generate additional funds in support of the scholarship.
The support generated by these fundraising activities made it possible for us to award three more $5,000 scholarships this year. Amy Trader, Stacy Massey and Benjamin Abbott are the 2009 recipients of our scholarships. Each received their scholarship at their high school’s senior recognition ceremony. Amy and Stacy attended Rock Bridge High School, while Benjamin attended Hickman.
How You Help
The only limitation in the number of scholarships we are able to award is the amount of contributions we receive from supporters of our scholarship program. If you are interested in making at tax-deductible contribution to our scholarship program, you can mail a donation directly to the Boone County Chapter's mailbox: PO Box 413, Columbia, MO 65205 or to the Boone County Chapter in care of the Mizzou Alumni Association: 123 Reynolds Alumni Center, Columbia, MO 65211-2100. Questions? Contact Ashley Moore, the Boone County Chapter’s Mizzou Alumni Association's liaison, at (800) 372-6822, or contact any of our officers or board members.
Another component of our Chapter work is recruiting and retaining members of the Mizzou Alumni Association. Currently, over 25% of our local alumni have a membership in the Mizzou Alumni Association and we dedicate our time and effort to help provide value to your membership. In addition to the outstanding retail discounts that members receive as benefits through the national association, we host at least two events each year that are free to our members. All other events that we plan include substantial discounts for being or becoming a member. Any Boone County resident that is a member of the Mizzou Alumni Association will receive e-mail invitations to all of our events, as well as periodic updates, such as this one, with information about what your local Chapter has been up to. Finally, membership dues are partially tax deductible, and the funds benefit a wide variety of student programs on campus. If you are currently not a member, please consider joining - not only as a way to renew your personal connection to Mizzou, but also to support current and future MU students.
If you would like to get involved with our local Chapter as a volunteer, or perhaps contribute goods or services to one of our many events, please contact our President, Jill McIntosh.
We appreciate your active engagement with our Boone County Chapter, and your ongoing affection for our dear alma mater, Ol’ Mizzou. Go Tigers! |
