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Your Membership Matters

Like the alumni associations at the universities of Michigan, California,Virginia and others, the alumni association of which you are a member is self-governed. The UNC General Alumni Association belongs to you — our dues-paying members. Your support has made the GAA one of the strongest, most effective alumni associations in the country. We need your help to become even stronger.

At most institutions, alumni associations primarily focus on helping raise much-needed private financial support. At Carolina, we recognize that alumni are a source of great strength for our University and that we can give much more than money. An alumni association that is owned by its members, whose officers and directors are elected by dues-paying
members, and whose programs and services are developed for alumni has a vitality that can best serve the entire university community — students, faculty, staff and alumni.

Last fall, your alumni association and its Tar Heel Network played a critical role working with administrators, students, staff and faculty in securing the much-needed public support for the $3.1 billion bond package for the entire UNC System and the N.C. Community College System. When the Tar Heel Network advocates to the public and to the N.C. General Assembly, it is effective not only because of its strong volunteer leadership but also because of the nearly 64,000 Carolina alumni who are members of the GAA.

We work hard to keep our dues low while continuing to expand our services and member benefits. We recognize, as do our trustees and development colleagues across the campus, that it is the GAA’s records, publications and programs that provide the essential foundation to identify, inform, interest and involve alumni so that they will want to make important financial investments in Carolina’s future. And the most generous Carolina alumni contributors consistently are you — General Alumni Association members.

If you are a life member, we thank you. If you are an annual member, we hope you will renew your annual membership every year; and if you have sons or daughters, other relatives, neighbors, colleagues or friends who also are Carolina alumni, we hope you’ll ask whether they, too, are members. If they are not, please encourage them to join. As a Carolina Alumni member, you can even check on the membership status of any Carolina alumnus or alumna by going to the GAA’s online directory of all alumni on our Web site: alumni.unc.edu. You also can renew your membership or join online. We also welcome membership in the GAA from “friends of Carolina” who may not hold a UNC degree. You might even consider making a gift membership in the name of a friend or loved one.

Beyond your continuing membership, we hope you’ll be an active member. We hope you’ll attend local club meetings, vote in the elections for the GAA Board of Directors (ballots were mailed with this magazine to all dues-paying members), volunteer to help with student recruitment or with reunions, nominate alumni for GAA awards, join the Tar Heel Network or our Alumni Advisor Network, participate in any of our scores of programs, and explore our Member Rewards (Member Rewards are summarized on page 95).

Your membership matters — not just in outside rankings but in the day-to-day service of your alumni association and in sustaining the excellence of the nation’s First State University.

Yours at Carolina,

Doug signature

 

 

 

Douglas S. Dibbert ’70

doug_dibbert@unc.edu

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