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United for Baylor Update* * * * *
Created in 2009 at the conclusion of the Baylor Alumni Association’s first 150 years of service, the United for Baylor five-year plan anticipates the next era of the BAA’s organizational growth, service to alumni, and support for Baylor. The five-year plan encompasses six goals from 2009 to 2014:
• Expand the BAA’s support of Baylor by becoming a major scholarship donor to students and actively encouraging members to provide $5 million in gifts annually to Baylor.
• Enhance the BAA’s annual revenue base by expanding membership giving and increasing fundraising.
• Achieve long-term financial self-sufficiency through the endowment of all programs.
• Increase the involvement and engagement of the BAA’s constituency while retaining the current staff size and scope of services provided.
• Maintain a balanced budget annually.
• Maintain the BAA’s role and prominence as an independent voice for Baylor alumni and as an independent source of information about Baylor and the Baylor family, serving Baylor and its alumni with integrity, candor, and credibility.
To learn more about the United for Baylor five-year plan, or to learn more about how your financial support can help achieve the alumni association’s goals, call the BAA at 1-888-710-1859, or go to Become a Member/Make a Gift.
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With its United for Baylor five-year plan, the Baylor Alumni Association (BAA) has set ambitious goals of service to the Baylor family. Key to the alumni association’s success is the financial support of Baylor alumni and friends, said Allen Holt, director of development for the BAA.
“While our five-year plan provides a road map for the BAA’s ongoing and increasing relevance and strength, it’s the power of our members’ and donors’ philanthropy that will enable us to arrive at our intended destination,” Holt said.
According to Holt, there are four primary ways to provide financial support to the BAA:
• Unrestricted annual giving
• Scholarships
• Endowments
• Planned giving.
A variety of options exists within each method of support, Holt added. The key, he said, is for alumni and friends of Baylor to learn more about the BAA to discover the particular program or area of service that best matches their interests and philanthropic goals.
“Making a gift is the important thing, not necessarily the size of the gift,” Holt said. “Now more than ever, the Baylor Alumni Association stands positioned to use gifts from alumni and friends in a dynamic way as a financially self-sufficient organization.”
Unrestricted Annual Giving
In 2001, the BAA created a membership plan that allows life members, annual members, and foundations to support the alumni association through a variety of annual giving levels, including the Torchbearers Society (starting at $1,000) and gold ($500-$999), silver ($250-$499), and bronze ($100-$249) designations.
The growth of the Torchbearers Society during the past nine years has been a particularly noteworthy success story, with around 150 alumni or organizations giving at the $1,000 and above level in recent years. In fact, during the 2008-09 fiscal year, five gifts of $10,000 or more were made.
Many of those donors were already life members who decided to directly assist the alumni association in meeting its annual giving revenue goal—on top of the portion of the BAA’s endowment proceeds that resulted from their initial life membership gift.
“These unrestricted annual gifts are the lifeblood of the organization,” Holt said. “They provide an immediate infusion of funds that we can use to strengthen our programs and to expand our operations in new areas, such as online communication.”
In addition to individuals, several foundations have generously contributed to the work of the alumni association through annual gifts and grants, including Christ Is Our Salvation and the Prichard Family Foundation.
And last year, the Baugh Foundation pledged a gift of $1 million to be provided over two years. The foundation was established by the late John and Eula Mae Baugh, prominent Houston philanthropists who were known for their support of a lengthy list of Baptist-related organizations. At Baylor, the Baughs were among the founding benefactors of Baylor’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary, as well as providing a wide range of other gifts to the school.
The Baughs’ daughter, Babs, a member of the Class of 1964 and president of the BAA in 2006, has been vitally involved in the alumni association for years. Both she and her daughter, Jackie Baugh Moore ’86, currently serve on the association’s Executive Committee and Board of Directors. Both live in the San Antonio area.
“We have a sincere love for Baylor, and we think helping the alumni association continue its role of support and service as an independent organization run with integrity and transparency is to Baylor’s benefit,” Moore said.
Moore, who serves on the board of the Associated Baptist Press and is vice president of the Baugh Foundation, notes that the participation of the Baylor family in supporting the BAA with annual gifts in recent years has been encouraging, but she adds that even more individuals and organizations should consider making such gifts.
“As the officially recognized general alumni organization, the Baylor Alumni Association is a central player in Baylor’s life,” she said. “It’s important for the BAA to be as robust and far-reaching as possible. And it’s also important for alumni to support the BAA because its self-governance has allowed us, as alumni, to speak with our own voice—an ability that has been important for Baylor’s well-being, especially during the last ten to fifteen years.”
Scholarships
BAA leaders contend that a critical element in the maintenance of “that good old Baylor Line” is keeping the cost of a Baylor education within the reach of middle-class families. And it’s just as important, they say, to recruit students whose families have multi-generational ties with Baylor in order to preserve Baylor’s heritage and traditions.
It has been a longstanding practice at the BAA to donate a portion of each annual membership to the Baylor University Alumni Association Endowed Scholarship Fund, which is managed by the University Scholarship Committee. This need-based scholarship is given to children of Baylor alumni, and more than $60,000 in scholarships has been awarded.
The United for Baylor five-year plan calls for the BAA to significantly increase this level of student financial aid with the goal of becoming a major scholarship donor to Baylor students. With funding from membership gifts, memorials and tributes, class giving funds, endowed scholarship gifts, and any budget surpluses, the BAA plans to award $30,000 in scholarships in fiscal year 2009-10, the first year of the plan. In subsequent years, the BAA aspires to incrementally increase annual scholarship gifts by $30,000 each year to reach $150,000 in awarded scholarships in the fifth year.
“We know that in these tough economic times and with Baylor’s tuition continuing to rise, many alumni are concerned that the kind of life-changing education that was available to them will be shut off to their children or grandchildren,” said Jeff Kilgore, executive vice president and CEO of the BAA. “That’s why the BAA is committed to dynamically expanding its scholarship program, so that families can have more hope that their children will be able to realize their dream of a Baylor education.”
As part of this effort, the BAA is establishing a fund for each reunion class at Homecoming, and the money will be pooled together into a general scholarship fund. Contributors will be acknowledged in the Baylor Line under the name of their class. Every gift dollar contributed will be used to fund a scholarship program to benefit future Baylor students, with preference given to children of alumni. That way, the love of Baylor can continue to be passed along from generation to generation.
“As the cost of education rises, especially private education, many alumni want to keep a Baylor education accessible to a diverse group of students,” said Bob Barkley ’78, JD ’80, who serves on the BAA’s Board of Directors and is a partner with the investment firm of Barrow, Hanley, Mewhinney & Strauss in Dallas. “The diversity of Baylor’s student body—both in an ethnic sense and a socio-economic sense—was important to me when I was at Baylor. Providing financial aid to students is key to maintaining that diversity as cost increases. We need to raise scholarships for deserving students.”
Barkley has been deeply involved with Baylor and the BAA for much of his life. As an undergraduate, he served as a yell leader from 1975 to 1977, including head yell leader for one of those years, and was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon. At Baylor Law School, he was a member of the Student Bar Association.
And in the years since graduating with his law degree, Barkley has made gifts to a variety of athletic programs, including membership in the Bear Foundation’s Championship Club, and served on Baylor’s Development Council. He’s also been president of the Baylor Law School Alumni Association.
“My life has been enriched in countless ways because I went to Baylor,” he said, “and I just want to see that same opportunity made available to a wide group of people. The best way I know how to fulfill that goal, that obligation, is to give money or to help raise money for scholarships. Virtually all of us were recipients of some type of aid when we were at Baylor. Maybe it was financial, or maybe it was in the form of guidance or encouragement. If we want to pass on our Baylor spirit, we can do that best by making it possible for kids who are not from privileged backgrounds, or who just need a little extra help, to have the same experience we had.”
A gift made out of gratitude is something that can itself have a large impact, Barkley said. “I encourage alumni to consider the difference they can make by providing a scholarship-designated gift to the Baylor Alumni Association.”
Endowment
Randy ’76 and Stacy Mays Sharp ’76 of Amarillo are past presidents of the Baylor Parents League and were named Baylor Parents of the Year in 2004. All four of their children have graduated from Baylor, the last in 2008. And Stacy is a current member of the Baylor Alumni Association’s Board of Directors.
They are also big believers in making gifts that have a long-lasting impact upon organizations and in the lives of others. In 2009, the Sharps helped the BAA take a step forward in its effort to create an endowment for each of its core services and programs. Such endowments, which can be created by a single large gift or the accumulation of many such designated gifts, provide a critical and predictable base of support as the BAA pursues the goals of its five-year plan.
In making their $90,000 gift, the Sharps singled out a program close to their hearts—Alumni by Choice.
Begun by the alumni association in 1986, the Alumni by Choice program provides a unique opportunity for alumni to honor their friends and family members who love and support Baylor even though they didn’t attend the university—designating them as an alumnus or alumna “by choice.” Stacy Sharp’s mother, Betty Lou Mays, was one of the program’s early participants.
“My mother just loved becoming an alumna by choice,” she said. Stacy’s father, Troy Mays, was a Baylor student when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred. Like many of his peers, he left school to join the war effort. He joined the Navy in 1942 and spent three years as a quartermaster on a landing ship. Betty Lou did not attend Baylor, but Stacy said she came to feel like a Baylor Bear.
“My mother fell in love with Baylor when my dad took her to football games,” she said. “She loved all the people she met and loved Baylor. Our gift is to honor her and the connection to Baylor that the Alumni by Choice program gave her.”
The Sharps’ gift came through the Mays Foundation, a private organization founded in 1965. “My grandfather started the Mays Foundation, and it has traditionally supported Baptist-related entities and local Amarillo entities,” Stacy said.
The Sharps’ gift to the BAA is only the most recent in the Mays family’s history of philanthropy. The family funded the Betty Lou Mays Memorial Soccer Field for Baylor athletics, and Troy Mays provided funds for the establishment of a professorship of entrepreneurship and a student scholarship and support for the Winfred and Elizabeth Moore Center for Ministry Effectiveness. In 2006, a few months before his death, Troy Mays was awarded the Founders Medal, one of Baylor’s most distinguished honors reserved for men and women whose service and contributions have been unusually significant to the life and future of the university.
“The BAA keeps alumni connected to the university and their friends, and we want to make sure the alumni association can be as financially strong as possible,” Stacy said. “We believe in annual giving, but an endowment gift secures the future of the program.”
Many people are scared away from the word “endowment,” Stacy added, because it sounds as if you need a lot of money at your disposal. But she said that prospective donors should remember that an endowment gift can be paid out over a few years—and, in the end, will have just as big an impact as a one-time gift.
“A gift to endow a program helps ensure the long-term viability of the alumni association, and a group of people can join together,” she says. “Plus, once we get these programs permanently funded, then the BAA will have more operational funds available to go to scholarships.”
Holt, the BAA’s development director, said that while several of the alumni association’s programs and awards have achieved full endowments, several larger areas of operations—such as the Baylor Line magazine, Heritage Club, and Homecoming activities—remain as opportunities for alumni philanthropy.
Planned Giving
Anther way alumni can provide support to the BAA, Holt said, is through planned giving, which can come in several forms. Alumni can direct a bequest to the BAA by preparing a new will or adding a codicil to an existing will. Alumni can also make a bequest to the BAA through life insurance policies or retirement accounts by naming the BAA as a full or partial beneficiary on the beneficiary designation form.
While individuals will certainly want to provide for their families in their estates, they also have an opportunity to engage in transformational philanthropy, Holt said. “Charities and non-profit groups, like the Baylor Alumni Association, are organizations that can put an individual’s wealth to work for good causes for decades to come,” he said. “For those with ties to Baylor, an estate gift will touch the lives of other members of the Baylor family in future generations. We’re able to facilitate this process for those who are interested in making such a gift.”
Another way of making a planned gift to the BAA is through a charitable gift annuity, Holt noted. The BAA is working with the Baptist Foundation of Texas in enabling alumni and friends to establish such annuities.
“Some folks may not be aware of charitable gift annuities as a means of philanthropy, but they are a great way to enhance an individual’s income while building up a gift that will form a wonderful legacy,” Holt said.
Charitable gift annuities can be created for one or two people, such as a husband and wife, and they afterward provide a guaranteed source of income for life. The rate of return that a person receives from the gift is based on his or her age. Donors receive an income tax charitable deduction in the year of their gifts, and for the first few years a portion of the annuity paid each year is tax-free income. Upon the death of the donor, the funds in the annuity are given to the designated organization.
Jerry Marcontell ’58, MD ’63, a retired physician from Houston who now lives near the East Texas town of Rye, is a member of the BAA’s governing board and a self-described “enthusiastic supporter” of planned giving. He and his wife, Mary, have created two gift annuities to benefit Baylor, and he recommends that other alumni consider such gifts as a way to support either the university or the BAA.
“Gift annuities are one of those rare win-win situations for both parties—you are able to put in place the makings of a significant gift while also creating a steady source of income,” Marcontell said. “The guaranteed interest rates were attractive when I made my first gift ten-plus years ago, and they are positively stunning now. The guaranteed return on the investment, coupled with the favorable tax benefits, make the charitable gift annuity particularly attractive from a financial standpoint alone. When one adds the considerable ‘feel good’ sensation in knowing that the gift will be used to help students or to strengthen Baylor’s alumni relations in the future, it is truly compelling.”
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