Saturday 1/15 -- 2:30

Sunday 1/16 --   3:30pm

THE ORGANIZATION
Founded in 1976, originally as the Reunion of Black Graduates, the AAAC is the central alumni group responsible for keeping U of M's African American alumni connected to the University, executing educational programs to benefit University stakeholders & American society, and building a tradition of African American commitment and leadership to the University. The organization, with a database currently of 8000 contacts, is led by a ten (10) member board of directors and has alumni stakeholders throughout the United States and world. The AAAC currently holds five (5) regular events annually in southeastern Michigan (a student-alumni exchange, a reception for new grads, a golf outing, a homecoming reunion weekend, and the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. scholarship "urban tailgate" benefit). In addition to continuing to administer MLK Scholarship Fund awards, the AAAC aims to triple the number of regular alumni & student events it holds by February 2006 and expand beyond southeastern Michigan to a nationwide effort.

THE POSITION
Under the direction of the Board, the Development Director (a contractor, not a salaried employee) will work 20 to 30 hours per week to raise funds required to meet AAAC needs as determined by its' Board of Directors. Highly competitive salary and terms based on experience and performance. The ideal development professional will have experience in two or more of the following areas: fundraising/ development; sales/ marketing; relationship management; community/ public relations; event planning/ coordination.

DUTIES
The fundraising duties are to include but are not limited to: fundraising program development, generation of all fundraising related communications, marketing budget development and administration, development and supervision of student support staff, recruitment and retention of volunteers.

Identify, cultivate, solicit, and steward individual & business donations utilizing but not limited to: point of entry events, follow-up, cultivation, newsletter, email, reports, feel-good events, donor & volunteer recognition, and ask events. Plan, organize, and manage all external communications relating to fundraising including but not limited to: newsletters, e-news bulletins, press releases, annual & periodic reports, direct mail, websites, presentations, and media advertising. Identify and work with potential corporate donors, sponsors, and donors of goods and services. Plan and coordinate fundraising activities including annual giving, major gifts, and planned gifts. Be a resource for donors who call with questions about their gifts or recognition, or who need help or information about the University or AAAC.

Note: Ability to work a flexible schedule is essential since it may be necessary to work some evenings, weekends and/or holidays. Travel may be required at times from overnight to a few days and may occur any time of the year including holidays.

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS
Experience working in a higher education environment; knowledge of fundraising processes in higher education; proven track record of successful fundraising for educational or other nonprofit organizations; experience in direct marketing techniques and projects; management and data analysis skills; experience in vendor relationships.

MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS
Bachelors degree in Marketing, Communications, Business Administration or an equivalent combination of education and experience; minimum of three years professional experience in nonprofit or higher education environment; demonstrated experience in Microsoft Word, Excel and publishing tools; demonstrated analytic and problem solving skills; demonstrated experience in direct marketing and data analysis; ability to work independently towards meeting project schedules on time and within budget; excellent interpersonal, public speaking, and written communication skills; demonstrated ability to initiate and manage projects and work within a team setting; ability to relate well to African American alumni, families, business leaders, and celebrities; reasonable knowledge of the University of Michigan.

TIMELINE
Candidate resumes/cover letters DUE FEB. 19; first round interviews Feb. 21-27; second round interviews Feb. 28-Mar. 5; begin as Development Director no later than Mar. 28.

CANDIDATE INSTRUCTIONS
Email cover letter and resume to:
Michael L. Henry, Chair, University of Michigan AAAC Development Search Committee, AAACsearch@umich.edu by
FEBRUARY 19, 2005. Candidates of cultural backgrounds other than African American strongly encouraged to apply.

GreatStuff editor must hold frequent meetings with arts and cultural organizations, members of the community, as well as with the staff. Must be able to work creatively with sales. The work is highly demanding and requires flexible hours. Send a cover letter expressing why you're a fit for this position, along with a resume and extensive short-form writing samples to:

Georgeann Herbert,
Operations Manager, WWJ Newsradio 950,
26495 American Drive,
Southfield, MI 48034.
No Phone calls.

Second Baptist Church - 850 Red Oak -
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48103
Ms. Karensa Fitch, Director of the Singles' Ministry
Reverend Mark J. Lyons, Pastor

The Center for the Education of Women
THRIVING FINANCIALLY: LIVING BETTER WITH A BUDGET
Saturday, January 29,
9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
CEW, 330 East Liberty

Presenter:
Kathryn Greiner,
Director of Credit Education, First of Washtenaw

Does living on a budget bring up images of self-denial and a “no frills” life? Or is there a way to create a personal budget that cuts spending while allowing you to still enjoy life? Kathryn Greiner offers techniques for thriving financially, explains the cost of credit and how to improve creditworthiness and demonstrates how even a tight budget can include a savings plan. Ms. Greiner, long known as Ann Arbor’s “Budget Guru,” returns to CEW by popular demand.
Registration and materials fee: $15.00. Space is limited.

To register, call 998-7080.
Sponsored by UM Center for the Education of Women and UM Credit Union.

The King We Need

The great problem facing modern man is that
the means by which we live have outdistanced
the spiritual ends for which we live.

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

When most of us think about that American apostle of nonviolence and peace, Martin Luther King, Jr., even some who marched beside him in demonstrations nearly fifty years ago, we do so with an almost deliberate forgetfulness and precious little understanding of the specific “content of character” (to borrow one of King’s most famous phrases) displayed by a man who insisted in his sermon “Three Dimensions of a Complete Life” that, “Somewhere along the way, we must learn that there is nothing greater than to do something for others.”

Despite the overwhelming presence of this man in our lives, King in his magnificent fullness—as this nation’s Socratic “gadfly of the state” and our most prominent moral philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century---is strangely absent. Too many of us, especially those born after his assassination thirty-seven years ago, see him only in the oversimplified terms of race—as an eloquent, segregation-era “voice of his people,” frequently and falsely compared in political conversations with his very different (and philosophically antithetical) contemporary Malcolm X, whose daughter’s observation in the 1980’s about her father’s popularity applies equally as well to King: “He’s getting attention, but I think he’s misunderstood… Young people are inspired by pieces of him instead of the entire man.”

In other words, these two iconic and long-dead Americans suffer from the curse of canonization, which progressively over four decades has airbrushed away the sweat and scars, the pores and imperfections, and the polyvalence both men exhibited during their highly influential journeys among us. This is tragic, for it is in such personal minutiae that we find the very foundations from which a memorable public life arises. Moreover, this forgetfulness is a tragedy in 2005 for all of us as Americans, because what is at stake in the Martin Luther King, Jr. story are not only questions about race relations but also deeper issues, older conundrums, about what it means to be civilized in the political and social world, about how one confronts social evil without creating further evil, division and enmity, even questions about what Buddhists call pratityasamutpada (dependent origination) that resonate beneath the surface of King’s remarkable and too brief thirty-nine years of life.

Clearly, these are matters of urgency—especially the demand for civility—when in our spiritually bankrupt world awash in pop culture vulgarity and terrorist acts (consider the Russian children of Middle School 1 killed by Chechen rebels and radical Muslim beheadings of noncombatants like Egyptian Mohammed Abdel Aal in 2004) our leaders during the last presidential campaign, on both the left and the right, shamelessly employed in their desire to “win” such tactics as mud-slinging and character assassination. (Prescient, King once stated: “We shall have to create leaders who embody virtues we can respect,” and also counseled, “We must be sure that our hands are clean in the struggle.”) Would that today’s arrogant, thersitical, ankle-biting and so often short-sighted politicians, with their red-meat rhetoric, might remembered what King told Freedom Riders in 1960: “Our ultimate end must be the creation of the beloved community.”

Sadly, today few if any of King’s admirers can list all his campaigns through the South and North, each a drama in itself. (Most only recall Montgomery, Birmingham and Selma, but what about the battles for equality and justice he led in Albany, Chicago and St. Augustine, Florida?) Nor can they sketch the complex yet ethically coherent philosophy---part social gospel, part Personalism (the belief that God is infinite and personal), and part Gandhian satyagraha---that led him triumphantly from the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955 to the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and produced that breathtaking fusion of scholarship and idealism known as “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” one of the great political documents in American history, which King composed in a darkened cell without a single note or textbook to refer to, writing first on the margins of a newspaper, then on toilet paper, and finally on a legal pad from his lawyers.©

Charles R. Johnson is a novelist and essayist who has won numerous awards, including the Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships and the National Book Award. He is a Professor of English at the University of Washington. His 1998 novel, Dreamer, is based on the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Excerpted from The King We Need by Charles R. Johnson, Shambhala Sun, January 2005.