GLBTA Online Giving

Make a Gift Online to one of UMD's three existing GLBT Funds:

• UMD Cruden-Riggs Scholarship: awarded to students who actively contribute to GLBT people and issues, and who have a financial need. This scholarship, created in 2002, is named after two students who lead the campus lobby effort to create the GLBT Services office and directorship. Karin Riggs and Ben Cruden were two students who created the very services they were so much in need of themselves.


• UMD GLBT Leadership Fund: used to assist GLBT students in gaining valuable leadership skills. Opportunities arise each year such as “activist training camp,” Gender Political Action Committee conferences, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s annual “Creating Change” conference. It’s been our experience that students return to the UMD campus with great ideas, honed leadership skills, expanded networks, enhanced self-esteem, and positive feelings about their own identity. The GLBT movement needs leadership, and leaders need skills! This fund will help fulfill these needs.


• UMD GLBT Program Fund: these gifts support programs such as films, lecturers, workshops, training and development, and important resources such as books, pamphlets, and videos.

If you would like to make gifts to these funds, please specify which UMD Fund you are supporting. Thank you for your generosity! Yes! I would like to give online.

Otherwise, you may make a gift by mailing a check payable to "UMD" with "UMD GLBT Leadership Fund," "UMD GLBT Program Fund," or "UMD Cruden-Riggs Leadership Fund" written on the memo line. Mail check to:

University of Minnesota Duluth, Development Office, 315 Darland Administration Building, 1049 University Drive, Duluth, MN 55812-3011.

Commentary from Alumni/Staff

We have all heard stories of students who were disowned because they came out of the closet. To a student, being disowned doesn’t just mean a loss of family support, it means no tuition, no housing and having to leave school. Any one of these reasons is reason enough to donate to this fund --Cheryl Reitan, M.A. 1997, M.L.S. 2004, alumnus UMD Staff Member, co-founder of Q &A: UMD GLBT Queer Alumni and Allies

“Today we value and honor the contribution that every UMD student makes to the social, cultural, and academic life of this school in ways I would have never though possible when I attended UMD in the mid-1960s.” --Bill Shipley, B.A.,1966, alumnus, co-founder of Q &A: UMD GLBT Queer Alumni and Allies

“I became a graduate student at UMD after the GLBT Services Office and the Cruden-Riggs Scholarship was started. I feel my graduate experience was much more positive than my UMD undergraduate experience because of these new support mechanisms.” --Luther Hans Christensen, M.S.W., 2000, 2004 alumnus, Consultant, HIV Case Manager/Prevention Specialist

For more information on giving to any of these GLBT Funds, estate planning, or starting a new fund, please contact any of the following professional staff at UMD:


Diane Skomars, Director of Development

(218) 726-7467
(866) 726-7110 toll free
dskomars@d.umn.edu

Maryann Soleim, Associate Director of University Relations & Development
(218) 726-8993
(866) 726-7110 toll free
msoleim@d.umn.edu