30 June, 2010

Dear Fellow Cardinal Alumnus,

Thank you as always for your energy and involvement with our local club.  You ARE the UofL Alumni Club of Southern California.  We are at the beginning of another fiscal year, which means it is dues time.  Please take a moment to fill out the attached form, scribble out your check for a measly $25.00, and pop it in the mail.  If you bank on line, after issuing the check, please email your information to gocards@uoflsocalcards.com so that we’ll be able to credit you properly. 

The past year has seen great changes in our club, and the year ahead is even more promising.  You can keep up to date by visiting the club website – and the club Facebook page, which you can link to from the website.  Please join our Facebook page by clicking the “like” button – you’ll see it when you get there.

There are over 1400 University of Louisville Alumni, Spouses and Friends in Southern California.  (Can you believe it?)  Membership and participation in the club has tripled over the past five years!  And we have events going on (some big, some tiny) every month!  We get the word out “on-line” to our email distribution list of over 700 participants.  Since we send only a few US Mailings a year, I urge you to take a moment, visit our local club website, join our Facebook page and send us your email address.  We’ll keep you notified of our growing list of events, and we NEVER give your information to any third party for any reason.

Our club dues are CHEAP.  While many schools’ alumni clubs are thinly veiled structures designed to squeeze money out of you, in our club, that is definitely NOT the case.  While you are (of course) always welcome to donate, the modest $25.00 annual fee is the only “hard sell” we present to you all year. 

Our funds come primarily from dues, and from a couple of our events.  For example, at our Derby Party, we auction and raffle donated items, and serve up a feast of food donated and prepared by caring folks who know how to rattle a pot.  Our Derby Party is the rockin’-est thing this side of the Mississippi!   As we are an all-volunteer group, we have virtually NO overhead.  All of the labor and effort in the club is donated by very cool people who share your Louisville connection.  Contact me if you’d like to be one of them.

So where does the money go?  Nearly 100% of it (other than checking account fees and things like that) goes right into our own William Caldwell Scholarship Fund.  So if you know a bright Southern California kid who wants to go to school in Louisville, you and I, via the scholarship fund, are here to help out.  (Maybe someone helped you out a little when you were in school.)  That’s what our club exists to do, and that’s where your dues payment goes.  It’s not much to ask.

And we’re not just coughing up bucks and wring our hands; we’re going out and having fun!  Whether you graduated in 2010 or 1939 – whether you like sports, game watches, winery tours, days at the track, parties, visits by faculty and administrators (like President James Ramsey who’ll return this winter to share his vision of where the University is going) – we’ve got something going on that you will like to do, and some mighty cool folks with whom to do it!

But as a reminder to those who do financially contribute to the University . . . when you give, please specify, in addition to your name, that you are giving through the Alumni Club of Southern California.  You will get full credit for your gift, but our account will be credited as well.  It is a “two for one” gift.  If you have any questions about this, please be encouraged to contact me directly and confidentially.

Thanks again for joining.  Please send your check for $25.00, payable to The University of Louisville Southern California Alumni Club, to our Treasurer:

Dr. Kelli Barnett

PO Box 25596
Los Angeles, CA 90025

A return envelope is enclosed for your convenience if you are paying by mail.   (Even if you are paying on line, you can still use the envelope to send in the data sheet if you like.)  Please feel free to contact me by e-mail (joseph@purewhitelight.com) or by phone (310-392-9395) if you have questions, concerns, or ideas for club activities.  On behalf of the University of Louisville Alumni Association and our local club, thank you in advance for your participation and support.

Sincerely,

Joseph Willenbrink. (AS '85)

President

University of Louisville Alumni Club of Southern California