We just held our Alumni Volunteers Weekend (AVW) in Charlottesville. For those of you who don't know, AVW is the one time of year when we invite all of our volunteers -- class agents, class managers, regional managers, firm managers, and reunion committee members -- back to Charlottesville for two reasons.
First, we celebrate the prior year's annual fund campaign success. Second, we prepare everyone for the year ahead by setting expectations and goals for this year's annual fund campaign.
The weekend began on Friday evening with a reception and sit down dinner. We had a lot to celebrate given the new record of alumni participation rate last year - 52.7%. More than 130 people joined us for dinner.
Saturday morning was highlighted by a series of meetings. Our volunteers heard from (1) National Appeal Chair Sharon Owlett '75, who discussed the state of the economy and our goals for this year; (2) Dean Paul Mahoney, who discussed the current state of the Law School and (3) Professor Ted White, who provided insightful commentary on the Supreme Court case Boumediene v.Bush.
Most of the Saturday morning discussions focused on the tough economic times we are experiencing. We try to maintain as much optimism as we can in the presence of our volunteers, but we need to also be realistic in setting our goals for this year's annual giving and reunion giving given the current state of the economy.
We reiterated the importance of annual giving for the Law School. And, we put greater emphasis on participation and on thanking donors. The loyalty of our alumni has provided us with security during economic storms in the past and we know that it will be the same for us during this economic turmoil.
After the Saturday morning sessions, we had lunch with next year's reunion committees (the classes ending in 4 and 9) and then took everyone to the football game. If you haven't seen the result yet, take a look at the picture below and try to guess what happened. This picture was taken from the Law School seats by one of our volunteers.
Yep, Virginia won. They upset the 18th ranked Tar Heels 16-13 in OT. If you told me on October 1 that Virginia would be 4-3 on October 20, I would have laughed. I'm not laughing anymore. I'm just cheering now. Go Hoos!
By the way, any alumni of the Law School can be a volunteer for our annual giving campaign. If you are interested, please let me know or Helen Snyder know. We'd love to have the help and you'd get some free meals and a UVA football game as a thank you. I can't guarantee that next year's football game will be as exciting as this year's, but at least you won't have to pay for the ticket.
