|
By Jayne Spencer
Indiana University brought home a number of awards from the 1999 Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Circle of Excellence Awards program, including an all-time high harvest for the IU Foundation.
IU won an award for overall fund-raising performance, and the foundation's president, Curt Simic, received the highest honor in service awarded by CASE.
 Douglas Dibbert (left in picture), chair of the CASE board, congratulated Curt Simic, president of the IU Foundation and winner of CASE's Frank L. Ashmore Award for service to CASE and the advancement profession, at the CASE International Assembly this summer in Boston. Dibbert is also president of the General Alumni Association, University of North Carolina. |
Awards were announced at the CASE International Assembly in Boston July 17-20.
IU was one of six universities nationally to receive the Overall Fund-Raising Performance award for educational fund raising. IU has increased giving from about $50 million five years ago to nearly $80 million in fiscal 1998, the year on which the awards are based. A record number of donors‹more than 92,000‹made gifts in that year. IU has ranked in the top 20 among all colleges and universities in the last seven out of nine years in "total voluntary support," the aggregate of gifts and non-governmental research grants coming to IU. In fiscal 1998, that number was $144.9 million.
Awards are based on a survey conducted by the Council for Aid to Education, now an independent subsidiary of the Rand Corp., and co-sponsored by CASE and the National Association of Independent Schools. Other universities honored along with IU were Texas A&M, College Station; University of California, Berkeley; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; the University of Virginia; and the University of Washington.
Simic was presented with the Frank L. Ashmore Award for service to CASE and the advancement profession. His 35 years of experience in higher education includes work in philanthropy, alumni relations and communications. He has served both public and private institutions, including the universities of Tennessee, Alabama, Oregon and California-Berkeley, as well as Yale University. He started his career at the IU Foundation in 1964 and returned as its president in 1988.
He has held a variety of leadership positions with CASE at the district level and has served on the board of the national organization. He has been a faculty member for the Big Ten Fund Raising Institute for the past 10 years, and he was named its dean in 1997.
The IU Foundation additionally received a gold medal in the CASE Circle of Excellence Awards program for alumni relations and communications for Update, a newsletter for the Endowment Campaign for Bloomington in the category of fund-raising publications; a silver medal for the design-in-print category and a bronze medal in the fund-raising publications category for the IU Foundation 1997-98 annual report; and a silver medal for a brochure done for the Friends of the Kinsey Institute in the in-house publications category.
Two IU winners were named from the Division of Public Affairs and Government Relations. The broadcasting and electronic media unit of the Office of Communications and Marketing won a silver medal in the category of video PSAs and commercial spots. The winning video was titled Wa Ga Indiana and featured the IU basketball team at half court singing the fight song, Indiana, Our Indiana, in Japanese. The spot was shown primarily during televised IU basketball games. The IU Home Pages received a CASE bronze medal in the category of internal audience tabloids.
Return to Table of Contents