Employees give for KU First University Family Campaign

LAWRENCE -- Employee participation in the University Family Campaign at the University of Kansas reached a landmark level during the past year, Dale Seuferling, Kansas University Endowment Association president, announced today. More than 1,000 KU faculty and staff members have given to the campaign since September 2002, bringing total employee participation since the beginning of KU First to almost 2,600. Counting toward the goal started in July 1998.

Conducted by two groups of volunteer faculty and emeritus faculty members, administrators and students, the University Family Campaign is a part of KU First: Invest in Excellence, KU's $500 million fund-raising campaign. KU First, the university's third and largest campaign, is raising support for scholarships, fellowships, capital projects and programs.

Seuferling said that achieving this level of participation in one year is impressive.

"I'm very pleased with the number of responses we received, especially in a year with no pay raises for state employees and an ailing national economy," he said.

Walter Racker IV, an enthusiastic employee-donor, used the payroll deduction plan to give for Kansas Public Radio. Racker joined the KU staff in 1991 as a procurement officer in the comptroller's office. He said he and his wife, Adele, discovered KPR while he was attending graduate school in Emporia in 1970 and have been fans ever since.

"I like benefiting KPR because it's one of the units that gives a human voice to the university -- a nonacademic unit that adds a lot of sparkle to KU's reputation," Racker said. "Even though the individual amounts of my deductions are small, they add up to more than $150 a year."

Racker said that donating to KU Endowment has an important personal benefit as well.

"By contributing for KU, I feel that I am partnering with my company," he said. "My work becomes more than just another job because of the extra dimension created by giving back."

Beginning Sept. 22, Lawrence campus faculty and staff members and retirees will receive letters inviting them to participate in the University Family Campaign. Seuferling said that many KU employees give for the units where they work.

"Employees already have a personal investment in their own school or department, and the University Family Campaign provides them with the means of taking their caring a step further by making a donation," Seuferling said.

KU First seeks to advance KU's position as one of America's leading state-assisted research, service and teaching universities, serving the state of Kansas, the region and the nation through excellence in research, service and education. KU Endowment is conducting KU First on behalf of the university through December 2004.

KU Endowment is an independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fund-raising and fund-management foundation for KU. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment is the first foundation of its type founded at a public university in the United States and one of the largest.