Latest award honouring long-time high school coach Daun Daum
The University of Calgary is increasingly tapping into the city’s business and corporate communities to raise money in support of its athletics programs.
And one of the more popular ways of doing that has come through endowment funds.
The latest, announced Tuesday, was in honour of long-time high school coach Daun Daum of Bowness High School. About $40,000 was raised which will go towards an annual scholarship for one or more student-athletes.
“It’s obviously an honour and what it means most to me is that the kids that have been under me and that I have coached over the years are a big part of this award and the reason this award is given. If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be here today,” said Daum, who taught at Bowness High School from 1979 to 2003, winning four city football championships and four provincial basketball titles.
Funding for the award came from various friends and graduates of Bowness High School.
Endowment funds operate where a pot of money is raised. The university holds onto that endowment which generates interest and that interest is distributed in the form of scholarships each year.
Currently, the university has $4.75 million in endowment funds. Awards from endowed funds were $188,965 in 2011/2012.
Norm Minor, a long-time friend and colleague of Daum’s who helped raise funds, said a major part of Daum’s life was making a difference in the lives of young people.
And that’s exactly the purpose of the endowment funds.
Blake Nill, head football coach for the Dinos, said the corporate community is important to the success of the sports teams at the university.
“One of the strengths of the Dinos program is their connections within the corporate community,” said Nill. “That’s a very attractive part of the Calgary program, a very attractive component of the program. We’ve got people who will go to bat to try to generate the revenue that’s required for football as well as people who will donate.
“I’ve always said your ability to generate funds directly parallels your success on the field and that’s a formula for collegiate sports anywhere.”
Nill said the corporate sector is an area the university will continue to target in fundraising efforts.
“You’ve got people with deep hooks in the community that are able to draw off the interest from corporate Calgary,” he said.
Ron Wuotila, director of athletics at the University of Calgary, said there are two ingredients to successful Canadian Interuniversity Sport programs.
“One is leadership from the head coach and the other is third-party support,” said Wuotila. “The reality is in this country there’s very few programs that are able to operate independently where they just generate enough revenue at the gate that everything hums along.
“If you look across the country, every successful program has that third-party element and the Dinos are a classic example of that. We have lots of programs on campus that benefit from that third-party support. So it’s critical.”
Wuotila said a key is to generate interest from downtown corporate Calgary by getting executives up to the university to witness what’s going on.
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