Development and External Relations Update

The Development and External Relations office UPDATE is a monthly summary of activities in the section and is published for your general information. If you have questions, please contact Jim Goit or call at (902) 893-7950

• External Relations
  • Jim attended the annual national conference of the Council for the advancement of Education (CCAE). This conference bring together all the professionals in the advancement field (fund raising, alumni, communications and marketing) at Universities across Canada. A number of excellent ideas were brought home.
  • There were several discussion on Protection of Privacy issues in June. Jim worked with Kathy Hartlen on resolving them.
  • The AgriTECH park board met and discussed future growth at the park. There are exciting things happening with the BioVenture centre.
  • Jim attended a meeting with CORDA staff and others to celebrate the success of several community initiatives.
• Marketing
  • Sarah attended annual ICE Awards where NSAC's marketing campaign had been nominated for an industry award
  • Jim attended the CCAE national conference in Ottawa and accepted a national Silver Prix d'Excellence award for NSAC's 2005/06 marketing campaign, a peer reviewed award
  • Sarah coordinated the design and printing of refurbished New Student Handbook. It looks great.
  • Sarah facilitated Advanced Connections customer service training on behalf of Enrollment Management Committee
  • Sarah and our communications firm conducted focus groups of NS and NB teens to market test last year's marketing creative and gain insight for this year's strategy
  • Work began on strategic planning for 06/07 marketing campaign
• Communications and Alumni
  • A special dedication of the Centennial Amphitheater was held on June 23rd. The various donor groups were recognized. Class of '44 members including Peter Hamilton, Ken Siddall and Clara Galway attended. Our resident fiddler provided much enjoyed entertainment.
  • Plans for the Open House were progressing. Most departments will be participating and a new event will be held during the Open House - a variety show. Let's keep our fingers crossed for good weather on the 27th!
  • Plans for Agrifest are well underway. Alisha was successful in getting enough volunteers to staff the booth.
  • Development staff worked with Alumni classes on activities for both the summer and the fall reunions. Laurel has been in touch with George MacKenzie who is planning the 50th Anniversary dinner for his class on July 28th.
  • A simple on-line survey was developed and distributed with the Alumni e-Newsletter in mid month. Response rate was not very high, however for those that did respond, satisfaction with the newsletter was high.
• There were 64 Found/changed alumni records this month
• Brainstorming of story ideas and interviews have begun for the 2006 summer publication of Agricola News. Agricola is expected to go to print and be released early in August.
• Laurel and Alisha have been sitting on the publicity committee for the Halifax 2006 event, providing the committee with communications advice. We have provided some NSAC materials to be given to participants.
• The NSAC Photo of the Week was added to the e-bulletin.
• Development and Fund Raising
  • Jim worked with Bruce Rathgeber on a process to collect outstanding pledges for the poultry research facility.
  • Much of the month was spent getting the final reports etc ready for the Foundation audit and annual meeting. There has been excellent progress in getting accounts into a more easily managed form.
  • The account balance for the Foundation stood at over $5.55M at the end of the fiscal year. The full annual report of the Foundation is also on-line.
  • Jim consulted with several people about new scholarships this month. If the donors move ahead it will mean new support for students.
  • Jim has discussions with a financial planner on potential programs for planned giving at NSAC.

• Website
  • Mike met with the registry to start implementation of student online registration by utilizing cold fusion.
  • A lot of housekeeping was done this month, deleting many unused files and templates off the webserver, talking with web editors, etc.
  • Bookstore web page update is close to completion.
  • Our web stats software has been updated to include a visitor origin database. This database was purchased to allow us to see exactly where our visitors are coming from. Before the new origin database was implemented we could only see the countries that visited the website, now in most cases we can narrow that down to the city.
  • Mike tested out various RSS feed creators to see which one would work the best with our news articles. So far there is no clear favorite for ease of use by staff.
  • Mike met with the staff of the AgriTech park and they are excited to start rebuilding their website using the templates provided. AgriTech's updated website should be live by the end of summer.