Foundation Gift Guide!
Thu. Dec. 16, 2021
Season’s Greetings from the Foundation family! As wish lists from friends and family members begin to swirl in the heads of our community members, I’d like to take this opportunity to cut through the festive glare and let you know about a handful of unique gift ideas offered by the Foundation—which unlike most toys or your average pair of unwanted socks, have the ability to help transform the lives of our students, our staff, and our surrounding neighborhood for the better.
Looking for a way to make an impact and give a gift? Look no further than this year’s installment of our popular Teacher’s Pet calendars! A great way to learn more about UWinnipeg’s faculty members, each month features a different professor, their loving pet, and a short story about each pair. In addition to being the perfect gift for any animal lover, every calendar purchased helps support the Opportunity Fund, which specifically supports Indigenous students, new Canadians and refugees, and students from inner-city neighbourhoods by providing fast-track bursaries and tuition credits. The goal of this fund is to bridge the graduation gap and support a university-bound identity for everyone.
If you’re more of a reader, chances are you might be more interested in one of our special edition copies of Carol Shields’ Protein Dust—which features a collection of previously unreleased and never before published stories written by Shields throughout her professional career. Discovered during a search through Shields’ papers at Library and Archives Canada by Dr. Nora Foster Stovel of the University of Alberta, this novel is both delightful and profound. Proceeds from each novel go towards the Carol Shield’s Writer-in-Residence program, which selects an emerging or established Canadian writer to hold office in the English Department at The University of Winnipeg and provides authors with an office to work on their own projects while also meeting with community members and University students to read and advise on a variety of written works. Each donation of $100 to the program qualifies for one copy of Protein Dust, after which a copy will be mailed to your specified address.
Gift-givers looking to honour a loved one have the option to make a tributary donation, a bookplating, or a gift in memory to one of our many funds. Celebrating personal milestones or ensuring a friend’s legacy continues at UWinnipeg are perfect occasions for any of these gifts. Those looking to make a gift in the form of a bookplating choose both the book and the plating information which the Library then inscribes. All three of these gift types not only help recognize the family’s who contribute to our campus, but aid in growing the community-lead funds stewarded by the Foundation. Acknowledgements of these gifts are sent to receiving families immediately after the gift is processed. Click here to start making your tributary gift!
While most of these gifts seem to have little in common, there exists a unifying theme that links each together—each have the potential to transform our campus by funding initiatives close to the hearts of our community members while also providing recipients with a unique link to our campus while the gift-giver receives a tax receipt for their efforts.
On behalf of the Foundation, we hope you and your family enjoy the rest of the year as 2021 comes to a close and wish you all the best in 2022!
Happy Holidays!
Javier Schwersensky