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

• AgriTECH Park
  • Proposed Atlantic Centre for Agri-Innovation is gaining momentum; steering committee continues to seek funding commitments from government; presented the Agri-business incubator/accelerator concept to  NS Federation of Agriculture executive;
  • Attended International Assn of Science Parks meeting in North Carolina, home of Research Triangle Park which had its beginnings 50 years ago; Jo Ann Fewer, CoRDA also attended;
  • Participated in Assn of University Research Parks – Canada AGM via telecom; AURP annual conference is being held in Vancouver in October and research parks across Canada will be hosting an opening reception;
  • Attended CoRDA AGM; Gerald Post brought greetings from NS Dept of Agriculture;
  • Toured bio-science cluster in PEI including Food Tech Centre, Canada’s Smartest Kitchen, PEI Bio-Alliance and NRC’s Institute;
  • Met with Dr. Kenny Corscadden, Dept of Engineering, re energy conservation research program ideas
• External Relations
  • Jim and others attended the annual Orchard Tour in the Kentville area This is an excellent opportunity to meet with alumni and potential donors.
  • Jim worked with our lawyers on an extension to our agreement with TD Insurance Meloche Monnex to allow students to be part of the insurance program.
  • Activity for the Hall of Fame is heating up.  Invitations have been sent out and citations are in the process of begin developed.  The portrait reformatting project was placed on hold until after the induction ceremony.  
• Marketing
  • Conducted consultation with campus members to further develop brand activities for this year;
  • Began photoshoot project for VPs;
  • Presented on NSAC sustainable document management case study at CoRDA's first annual eco-symposium;
  • Began paperless office project with Financial Services and Research;
  • Approved tactical plan and budget for brand activities for this year;
• Communications and Alumni
  • Jim and Alisha went to an Alumni meet and greet event in Kentville. About 25 were in attendance
  • Alisha organized the first Ice Cream Social as a means to bring staff and alumni on campus together
  • Staff helped with a booth at the provincial Exhibition.  Jim visited with vendors and exhibitors.
• 739 Found/changed alumni records this month as we did major updates to the new database.
• Alisha assisted with planning for the Class of '54's reunion (Sept 11-12^th)
• Alisha coordinated alumni family photo shoot for Alumni Family Bursary promotional purposes
  
• Development and Fund Raising
  • Jim had meeting with several donors on new scholarships and they have been set up in our system.
  • The major portion of the month was spent in cleaning up data in the alumni Database in preparation for mailouts. The conversion had not be 100% and a lot of issues needed to be resolved.
  • The thank you letter and receipts for the golf tournament were processed. This was the first time they were done without Joanne so staff had to relearn the process.
  • Jim prepared a fund report for the poultry project for Derek Anderson and B MacDonald. The project is winding down.
  • Jim attended a reception sponsored by TDIMM in Halifax along with his counterparts at other universities.
  • Alisha attended CCAE New Comers to Advancement Conference in London, ON.

• Website
  • my.nsac.ca is ready to be launched in September
  • Digital signage will be placed in the athletic centre and haley. Two new channel players have been ordered.
  • The new RSS feed is online and now the frontpage is automatically updated from our RSS feed from the portal. Very convenient.
  • PHP has been installed on the webserver. MySQL has been installed on the portal database server. These technologies will be used for the embraceyourworld.ca website.
  • Library update will be released in September.