Finance Update: "Recaudación de Fondos: Fundraising Results!"

IEDP is a program that brings the entire school community together for learning and launching this program each year. For the past 17 years, IEDP has relied on generous donations, grants, and fundraising events to make the study trip portion of the trip occur. Last October, we only had a rough (lean) budget and general idea of how we were going to raise money. I can now safely say that over the past 4 months, the five members of the Finance Committee, and many others on IEDP, successfully raised the funds required to go on IEDP. (Thank you to all of your hard work!)

The experience of fundraising, which includes clearly explaining the program and how those align to the various missions of funders, is an integral part of the experiential learning objectives of IEDP. Post graduation, many of us will be in positions at organizations that require fundraising on an annual or ongoing basis. Grants and external sources of funding can make the difference between successfully achieving the mission of an organization. In our case, this was certainly true.

IEDP secured the support from the following departments within the University of Michigan:

• Ford School Dean's Strategic Fund;

• International Institute's Experiential Learning Fund Grant;

• Teaching grant offered by the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching;

• Rackham Dean's Discretionary Fund;

• Zell Lurie Institute at the Ross School of Business;

• Central Student Government;

• Individual Mary Sue Coleman Award(s);

• School of Social Work Individual Award(s);

• Giving Blue Day participation and fundraising efforts;

• Selling "Ford" sweatshirts to the school community;

• Fundraising events; and

• Student donations and participation fees.

We would not be able to complete the study tour portion of IEDP without the organizations listed above. We are incredibly grateful for the support of the entire University of Michigan community. Now, we have the next two weeks to ensure all of our "i"s and "t"s are dotted and crossed and head to Cuba!