UI Foundation/UI Advancement Weekly Update 02.25.22

Dear Team:

The month of February is wrapping up like it started for me…planes, trains, and automobiles. While not wanting to suggest we are over the pandemic, being able to travel to see donors and visit with professional colleagues in person was incredibly energizing. The month began with professional association meetings and donor visits, followed by Board meetings, and this week I joined a contingent of university leaders on a visit to another university to share ideas about our UI innovation ecosystem. 

The University of Illinois is known for being a place that does things first.  Innovation is what we do, and we are an institution that attracts trailblazers who are passionate about changing lives and making the world a better place. As an advancement enterprise, our work and capacity to succeed is directly related to the strength of our universities.  Engaging philanthropists is much easier when donors see the impact of their gifts on the next generation of leaders, scholars, and innovators.

While visiting with our colleagues this week, we not only discussed the importance of public higher education and the need to address the changing expectations of our students, faculty, and many other stakeholders, we acknowledged the need to be bold and to challenge convention.  In the context of our work, I started thinking about how our Foundation organization might serve the University System and our three university development programs differently. What can or should we be doing to make our development programs more effective, efficient and productive? Asking probing, provocative, and reflective questions must be a priority exercise if you are going to create a culture that values innovation.

Several years ago, the UI Foundation established the UIDEA accelerator to put action behind one of our stated values, to “Inspire Innovation.” Since its inception in 2018, more than 80 participants from 16 different teams have spurred new and better ways of doing business for us and for others in the advancement industry. If you have an idea, I encourage you to share it through the accelerator.  For more information, visit the Foundation’s Strategic Innovation website. Or, if you have some general thoughts or brainstorms about how the Foundation can enhance our development programs, feel free to send me an email.

My closing thought on innovation is also a nod to the end of Black History Month. One of our greatest American innovators was an African American scientist named George Washington Carver. Dr. Carver is responsible for making our lives better in more ways than you probably know. When you have a minute, I would urge you to learn more about his many inventions and discoveries. In addition to being a great scholar, Dr. Carver was also quoted quite regularly, and the following is one of my favorites: “Start where you are, with what you have.  Make something of it and never be satisfied.” I have also seen it written, “Take what you have, with what you are make something of it and never be satisfied,” but in either case, you get the point.  It’s up to us to keep striving to get better and to never be satisfied with the status quo.

Make the best of your weekend and I look forward to seeing many of you soon when we return to our offices sometime this spring.

Regards,

Jim