Level of difficulty: Advanced Cost to attend: High Award Winner: 2019
Project: Awards Dinner by YaleWomen, bestowing Lifetime Achievement Awards (3) and Impact Awards (5), accompanied by a panel discussion, and held in partnership with the YAA.
Lifetime Achievement Award winners, Anita Hill ’80 JD, Catherine Lhamon ’96 JD, and Ann Olivarius ’77, ’86 MBA/JD, along with panel moderator Joanne Lipman ’83.
Lead time: Nearly 2 years — from start (forming a committee, and developing award criteria), to issuing the call for nominations, to vetting the nominations and determining the awardees, to the production of the physical event (location, logistics, budget and fundraising). Date of event: 3/9/19 Ongoing:
Resources:.
Lead volunteer spent 900 hours over 18 months.
Organizing committee of ~ 10. Work was largely done by a few alums and the YAA consultant
Each volunteer spent about 10 hours of individual time in reviewing the applications submitted and determining the awardees, which was confirmed by March 2018.
Each spent another 10 hours a month from August 2018 through January 2019, planning the event.
Some spent 20 hours a month in the months immediately preceding the March 7th event.
Permissions required: The event was held at a prestige location (National Press Club in Washington, DC.) Awardees were kept in the loop about many aspects of the event — because of the high possibility of extremely sensitive issues being raised/discussed, the press were not invited.
Funds required: Ticket sales and sponsorships (neither of which came to us as easily as we expected they would, given the stellar cast of awardees and the conversation) and YAA support as partner
Results: 170 attendees. Many others were engaged in other ways. Significant sponsorship dollars were raised. Written criteria were developed for future awards. The panel discussion was videoed and archived on the group’s website.
Why a success? The event was intended to not only celebrate the lives and achievements of specific individuals, but to prime members of YaleWomen to continue that conversation and build on past successes with renewed energy. Follow on activities in the group’s newsletter, on its Facebook group, and within its chapters demonstrated that.
Background: The event was titled YaleWomen Award for Excellence: Working Toward Gender Equity. The follow-on activities exemplified YaleWomen’s vision: “Connecting women, Igniting ideas, Transforming the world.”
Details: YaleWomen’s overarching goal is to maximize the engagement of Yale women alums, so the call for nominations engaged alums from the get-go — and their nominations introduced the group to alums who are making a difference in the world in many different (and not always so visible) ways.
Vetting nominations with full due diligence was very time consuming. Advocating for women is still politically sensitive, so determining awardees, setting the program, writing the citations, etc., required being mindful of “what ifs” and possible unintended consequences.
The panel discussion featured the Lifetime Achievement Award recipients, Anita Hill ’80 JD, Catherine Lhamon ’96 JD, and Ann Olivarius ’77, ’86 MBA/JD. The panel was moderated by Joanne Lipman ’83.
Impact Award recipients were Araceli Campos ’99, C’Ardiss Gardner Gleser ’08, Kamala Lopez, Rebecca Reichman Tavares ’78, Vera Wells ’71.
Possible improvements: REMEMBER, even if honorees agree to speak without a fee, “speaker costs” can still mount quickly. If the organization is going to cover honorees’ expenses (travel, hotel, incidentals, perhaps the same for a spouse/partner), the more honorees you have, the greater the expenses in the budget and the greater need for fundraising (sponsors and donors)!
