Video Transcript
[Moises Ramirez]:
Welcome and thank you for joining us for the second installment of our Train. Grow. Global. webinar series, creating social impact opportunities for good business. Part two.
Coming up this next month on the 13th, on the 13th international World Give Day, which started as a celebration to give back and serve as a reminder to help those around us. By celebrating generosity, we encourage more acts of kindness, give others a chance to make a difference, and leave behind a legacy. Corporate social responsibility, also known as CSR, is rooted in the opportunity for businesses to give back and to create a positive social impact in their local community. CSR is broken up into four types. Environmental, ethical, philanthropic, and economic. Yesterday's session discussed environmental ethical resources as part one. Today's session for part two, will be exploring philanthropic and economic impact potentials with Dallas College. In anticipation for World Give Day, which falls on May 4, and economic development week in Texas, which is May 8th through 12th. It is our goal in these first two sessions to inspire you to partner with Dallas College over the next month to celebrate your commitment to get back on May 4th.
My name is Moses Ramirez and I'm the Director of Business Engagement at Dallas College on the economic impact strategy and relations team. We've organized this Train Local. Grow Global. series to showcase the 50 plus business services and resources that Dallas College offers over the next several months. Please feel free to add your questions and comments to the Q&A space by clicking on the Q&A button that you'll find at the top of your screen.
As we go along, if your slides aren't moving, be sure to select the "sync to presenter" option to follow along with the slides. We've reserved 10 min for questions at the end. We'll also be sharing all contact information and any questions that we can't get to; we'll email you all the responses, the recording, and the presentation so that you can click on. So, you can access any links that you might see through the presentation. Now, it's my pleasure to introduce to you today's speakers.
We're going to go ahead and start off with Marisa Patlan. She's actually our Director of Sponsorships in Advancement and Development in the Advancement and Development division. Marisa began her career at Dallas College in 2008, where she worked in professional development, becoming an expert in developing the necessary resources and relationships to help Dallas College employees grow their skills. Marisa specializes in securing resources and funding to expand Dallas College programs for employees, faculty, and staff. Our primary focus is using her skills and experience to help departments achieve their goals through sponsorship programs.
Next, we're going to also have Tim Samuels, he's the Senior Director of Corporate Partnerships. Tim has worked with higher education for more than 17 years as Executive Dean, Dean of Academic Programs, including several recent years providing leadership of Dallas College career and technical programs. Currently, Tim is functioning in his role as a Senior Director of Corporate Partnerships of the Ascend Institute at Dallas College. Tim has earned for college degrees which include a master's degree in science from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, and a master's degree in education from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. Tim has gone on to complete his doctoral studies from Walden University and along the way has picked up a business and industry certifications in project management and change management with the latter focus on the on the people side of change. Despite the lengthy career thus far in higher education, Tim has other unique work experiences which include owning and operating two different and successful businesses. Nine years working in the mental health arena as a clinical diagnostician, three years as a Chief Operations Officer for a moderate size health care practice, and three years as a general manager and general sales manager of the Fort Worth metropolitan radio station. And to this day, Tim enjoys moonlighting as a radio broadcaster of high school and college games. Pretty much anything you can imagine.
And last but certainly not least, we have Jeff King. He's the Senior Director of Development at the Dallas College Foundation Office. Jeff was born and raised here in Dallas, Texas. He went to the University of Texas at Austin and graduated with a Bachelor's in government and Communication Studies. Jeff served as a Director of Corporate Giving at United Way for the Greater Austin, the Director of Individual Giving at North Texas Food Bank and the Director of Development at KIPP Texas, before joining the Dallas College Foundation. So, with all that, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Marisa. Marisa, go ahead and take it away.
[Marisa Patlan]:
Thank you. Let's see here I'm going to take control of the screen. And let me know if everyone can see that. We're good. We're good. Excellent, Excellent.
Well, thank you and welcome to our presentation on sponsorship opportunities here at Dallas College. As Moy said, I am the Director of Sponsored Programs, which is part of Advancement and Development here in our college structure.
So, one thing that lots of people ask is “What's a sponsorship? Is it a scholarship? Is it a donation? What exactly is a sponsorship?” What you can do is think of it as a mutual benefit between Dallas college, us and you are partners. It could be a company or an individual to establish a relationship for an agreed upon, direct or indirect benefit. And that benefit is for both parties. And we'll go further into that as we proceed. Three foundational components of our sponsorship model.
So, the main three things, that we want to emphasize today is to connect, to build and to provide. So, we want to make sure that we're connecting you, our partners to us, Dallas College, our employees, our students, our staff and faculty. And the way you do that is by supporting our programs. There can also be a fence like, we're having one coming up on April 16th, which is called Bits and Bites, which is an event that is supporting our culinary and culinary pastry and hospitality program.
We also want to build these long-lasting relationships with you. We don't, we'd like to have you along for the long haul as we grow Dallas College in the future years to come, right? Because our goal is to keep bringing in students of different generations, etc., and help them grow. So, our plans just keep growing and we want you to be involved in that. We also want to provide internal and external opportunities for you to expand your network and our network. So, by working with us, you're now associated with a community college that has seven campuses plus three or four sub campuses attached to them. Were one college now individually accredited. We want to make sure you can have that as something you can attach to your business model or personal model. You can always say we are currently working with community colleges such as Dallas College. For us. We want to make sure that we are getting to know what you do, what you offer, and be able to expand our network. So, through you, we're growing our relationships and what we can do. And oftentimes you'll find that we, through connecting with you, get to sometimes connect to other partners and vice versa. We're learning that through some of our events where our partners are connecting to other partners to benefit them. So, keep that in mind as we move forward.
So, our sponsorship types. So luckily, we've only got three. And I'm very grateful for that because between myself and to other folks, we process all of the sponsorships like create the packets, etcetera. So right now, a prearranged benefit sponsorship. What you can do to kind of understand that is think of different monetary levels that you've seen maybe in the past or events where you either have like a platinum level, a gold level, a bronze level. And at each of those levels there could be 10,000 at the platinum, 5,000 at the gold, and maybe 2,500 at the silver. So those are set, right? And under each of those monetary levels, there's going to be benefits for you. So, some of those benefits can be something like advertisement or on our event webpage or department page. Advertisement on any program materials.
What else do we do? Promo items, etc. There's lots of different things. Our athletic sponsorship, e.g., you can have a one of the huge banners that you've seen at different athletic events as far as like college basketball, e.g., right now, we can start we can put those signs up in our various gyms of your choice. So, think about that.
Some benefits, right? Customized agreement. Now this is a very special type of agreement that we have with some of our sponsors. So, with this one, it's a negotiated agreement between you and us with specific benefits for both parties. And what I mean for a specific I'm going to use our culinary pastry and hospitality agreements as an example. So as an example, in exchange for a monetary donation, benefits have been created for the sponsor and the sponsee. So, for the sponsor, the benefits to this are you will get four VIP tickets to an event such as our annual Bits and Bites that's taking place this spring on April 16th at the Arboretum. So, you get special access to that event early. And there's special areas that are designated for VIP experiences. You get branding on the CPH sponsorship support wall. So, on that support wall at our Culinary Institute at the North Campus, we have our partners logo along with a QR code that when you scan it, it takes you to those partners. It could be their hiring page. So, if you're looking to hire some new folks, we've got that opportunity there. You've also got opportunities to present to students and discuss career and industry related topics. So that's another benefit of that customized agreement. You also get they also get access to the space and the kitchen at that North location. Okay. So that's a good example of what we can work out with you to make sure there's a mutual benefit for us on that agreement. They are advertising our name and our programs on their event webpage. So, the partners web page, they have links to the culinary program as well. So, it's a mutual benefit there in kind.
Now, in-kind is a non-monetary resource that can assist with our programs our events and activities for both students and employees. For the monetary, the excuse me, the in-kind donation. It's essentially when an organization gives Dallas College a resource or service instead of a monetary donation. So, keep that in mind with in-kind donations, we do, oftentimes get gift cards as in-kind donations, especially for some of our events.
As giveaways, to encourage people to come and stay for the whole event and to participate. That's an example of that. Some of the benefits of Dallas College for Dallas College is, of course, obviously financial resources for student programs and employee groups. It assists with scaling up our Dallas College network. And of course, you provide us with knowledge and resources that not only help us but will help us in turn help the DFW economy. You can see that as the more partners we have, larger, our network grows, which means more resources for you and for us. For partners. Essentially, we establish, establish support for our students and the future of our workforce. And partners receive recognition and those benefits that we talked about. And you have access to the Dallas College community. I mentioned earlier that there are opportunities in some of our packets for you to come out and present to our students, our employees, our faculty, our staff.
Currently I am working with some of our higher-ed universities who focus on the health care industry. And they will be coming out in the future to host orientation days for those different programs that they support at their universities that we transfer into. So, it's kind of a benefit for both sides, right? They're coming to us and presenting to us. And our students are getting to learn about them. And we've got those transfer relationships already established where students can already go into those programs with some credits already out of the way. So, keep that in mind as you're thinking about ways you can help us. And keep in mind, we'd also like to have your logo as an online presence for us, so it becomes easily recognizable, right?
So, areas to support. Now we've got several opportunities for you to support. Some of our opportunities in directly involve our employees. e.g., we have new employee welcome and conference day.
I will go a bit into depth into those in a second. We also have events to support our police and the community. Police have their annual national night out events in October. And they hold those events at the campuses, so the students and the local communities that surround those locations are involved. We also have police and community award banquets, and that is an annual event where they honor e.g., Rookie of the Year. So new Dallas police officers and community award winners.
You also can help our students by donating or helping support our athletics program. They have been winning some championships in basketball and soccer and volleyball in the past two years. If you take a look at our website, you can click on that and you will be able to see all the different sports we offer, including e-sports. We also have career fairs if you're interested in coming to participate in a career fair and bring on some of our students into your organization. We have an opportunity to do that as well.
Let's see here. One of our focus areas is our Ascender and Transfer programs. So with our career and transfer skills program, that entails a program which engages our students and alumni, preparing them by facilitating their career, their career and transfer development skills and empowering them to actively plan a future as a contributing member of a global community, the ascender program helps our first-year students design their programs to support their future endeavors. This reaches out to our LatinX community college students, as well as our other populations of our students. It helps them become ready to get that bachelor's degree. So essentially become transfer ready. So, we want to work with them from the very beginning. And they organize this university visits, which I spoke about a little bit earlier. They also have readiness workshops for the community and the students themselves. So, we're always trying to get the word out about what we do and how we can help students and anyone in the community.
So, another area to focus on or to look at is our culinary, pastry and hospitality sponsorship program. What this does when you support us is it can increase our student and faculty participation in professional development activities. Since it's a unique area. Supporting this area is a little bit different than some of our other areas because it deals with the catering area, right? So, you help us find those unique training opportunities for those, as well as provide opportunities for students to engage with those local businesses that focus on the culinary side of the culinary pastry and hospitality business. It also helps them to acquire certificates, certifications outside of just getting their degree through this program as well.
Let's see, here. I do want to focus, like I mentioned earlier, reaching out to our employees through Conference Day. So, you know, this is an annual gathering that happens in August. It's about the third Friday, every August this year, it's August 19th. And we gather all of our full-time employees, which equals to about 2,700 plus that actually show up in person. And I've been involved in tracking this. So, the plus side of 2,700 is where we're at and we do anticipate that that grows. We affirm our college's mission and our strategic priorities there. It gives us a chance to attend professional development sessions and it gives you a chance to interact with our employees. Tell them about what you do. Tell them about what you can offer them, and how you can create a cop-acetic relationship with them, right? And keep in mind faculty is there. So, some of you do focus on the education side of the house, so you will get face-to-face opportunities to talk to them. And the other benefit to that is we advertise for you on the website, on any signage and the big slideshow that is shown in the ballroom throughout the afternoon. So, it is your big chance to connect with our employees.
Now, our new employee welcome sessions. So, this is another opportunity to catch us as we walk through the door. Excuse me. Luckily, with this happens once or twice every quarter, it's scheduled. And our leadership and development folks that present this work with you to create a time slot for you to come in and talk about what you do with our employees, so they get to know you and your brand. So, we have lots of opportunities for us to partner because we want to make sure that you can engage with us. That we can have a cop-acetic relationship where we give you as much as we can to help you in your endeavors and vice versa. And we want to make sure that we can keep those opportunities growing, those relationships growing. I'm happy to help with anything, any questions you may have to help us build that relationship. Thank you so much for hearing me out about sponsorships.
[Dr. Tim Samuels]
Thank you, Marisa. I'll go next here. I want to especially thank you to Moises and Danielle for providing us this opportunity today to talk about corporate social responsibility in my segment will focus on tuition support programs. And there's three benefits to tuition support programs that we'll talk about. We'll talk about that in terms of new employees’ retention and also employ your support or employee support of the company. But why offered tuition support? For number one, with the two bullets that you see there, it reinforces a company's commitment to providing employees with opportunities for growth and development without the huge financial burden. And secondly, to improve, There's proven results. We have a much higher rate of employee engagement when we have tuition support type programs. And it effectively demonstrates corporate social responsibility for the employer. So, recruiting new employees, folks, I know probably everybody on this call is aware of this, but we have, despite relatively low unemployment rates across the North Texas region, we continue to have a very tight labor market. Everybody is competing for the same talent. And so, we as employers, we as companies or organizations that have employees, we have to separate our sales, distinguished ourselves, find ways to increase our competitive advantage in the recruitment of new employees. Something as simple as a tuition reimbursement type program can offer that type of attractiveness for a prospective employee.
So, in recruiting new employees, now, before we look at these numbers, you may know this there's 166.25 million civilian workers in today's workplace, not counting the military, 166.25 million civilians working in the workspace today. Well, let's focus on two components of that. One being whether you call them generation Y or millennials. They represent 45% or 45% of those reporting that they would change their job. For tuition reimbursement programs, 45%, 88% of the Gen Z workers are more likely to recommend their employer because of the opportunity to have educational benefits. And then 84% of employees, have sighted tuition assistance as an important factor in the decision to join, accompany. These are staggering numbers in certainly bode well as to why employees or employers ought to offer these types of incentives. But we're going to show her a little bit later on, but not everybody is capitalizing on this benefit opportunity.
In fact, it's quite staggering as to the percentage of those that are not. But absolutely tuition support programs. They help demonstrate a company's commitment to help attract, to help recruit new personnel to their company. Because it gives a commitment to lifelong development of that employer, that individual. So, despite the challenges that we have with recruiting new employees and that is, it has been an issue for us for a number of years now, going back ten or 15 years is the labor market has continued to shrink and with a qualified workforce. We got to think about retention, about Dallas College. Once we get employees in the door, we've got them. So, let's hold onto them. Let's retain them. Let's provide them with things such as an educational benefit package, educational benefit program. Because this will help retain the types of employees that we want in our organization. There's something to be said about retention.
If you don't know the average cost of attrition, the average cost of turnover for any individual is six to nine months of that person's salary. Think about that. Say a person makes $60,000 a year in that person's going to walk out the door and you're going to backfill that same position with another 60,000 year figure it's costing you 30 to $45,000, again, six to nine months of their salary to train, to on-board, to ramp them up, to get him through the learning curve, to get them acclimated, adjusted and on the job proficiently performing in the roles and the responsibilities that significant when you think about the number of job postings you see every day, even at Dallas College. It's thinking about that in terms of cost. Where we can hold onto our quality of our talent pool. And we can train them up. We can upscale, we can re-scale some of the industry sectors and like construction referred to as cross scaling in many ways, just bodes well for us. It reduces cost on the company. And yet it, it’s a commitment to our employees and it allows for us to foster growth and development.
So, in retaining good employees, a couple of other stats too, for you to look at here, 76% of employees said they were more likely to stay with their employer because there's tuition reimbursement benefit. That's a good number. What a lot of people don't understand. And especially with employers, because I work with employers all the time and we constantly talk about there are tax-free dollars to the employer for the growth of their individual employees. $5,250 can be deducted using a tuition reimbursement program. And so, we certainly want to educate our employers with that because the incentives are there from the federal government to help promote lifelong learning, the enrichment, the growth, the development for their employees.
And thirdly, in addition to recruiting new employees, retention, supporting the company growth by increasing the workforce quality. And simply put here, we're talking about the bottom line. Every employer across any industry sector. For those, especially in the for-profit market, they're looking at profit gain. And so, the more talented their team is obviously the more able they are to reach certain aspirations and goals and bottom-line targets. And so, tuition support program certainly can enhance that. You see here. 76% of individuals are looking for growth opportunities. They're there, they're looking for growth. Two-thirds of those are pursuing new skills. I appreciate Moises mentioning couple of industry certifications that I was fortunate to obtain several years ago now, and that's where I was able to gain some experience, some scales, some knowledge around project management as well as change management. And Lord knows, the change management has certainly come to be helpful during the reorg of Dallas College over the last few years. But those industry certifications, those skills that you need on the job are very important. 82% individuals said the scales are degrees earned helped them to be more effective to employ. I think that stands as stands for racing there 84% felt that help them prepare for the future of work. Speaking of the future of work, just a quick sidebar to that. I don't know if you have seen the Dell technology report, The Future Institute of work report, they collaborated on a report. And you've probably heard this, but I just want to remind that this is absolutely staggering when you try to wrap your head around it. 85% of all jobs by the year 2030 have not yet been invented. 85% of all jobs by the year 2030 have not yet been invented. So again, promoting lifelong learning, promoting new skills, promoting development.
We're in 2023. 2030 is right around the corner and 85% of the jobs are still going to be developed in the next seven years. Of tuition support programs two types, tuition reimbursement and sponsored billing. Tuition reimbursement. We're talking about those kinds of programs that allow employees to pursue specific degrees and certificates. The company is going to contribute to the cost of that may be in full, maybe in part. You may have to provide payment upfront and get reimbursed on the backend, or more commonly now we're finding companies paid on the front end. Again, to provide lifelong learning. And you can see there on the screen the other the other benefits. But that's tuition reimbursement.
Now, sponsored billing is another component that seems a little similar, but it's different. We do that with the ascender Institute. Since we're involved with corporate partnerships, we see a lot of sponsored billing. In fact, I would suggest that we see about 90% sponsor billing verse 10% tuition reimbursement with the various partnerships that we have with employers. This is where it's based more on on-demand training, real-time training. Maybe you need training in Agile curriculum development, and you've got 20 people you want to send to that training the companies will sponsor bill those employees to go through that very specific curriculum. Or maybe you're a manufacturing company and you need advanced manufacturing and some form of Python training for programming language. And you've got 30 people you want to send to that to get upskill quickly. Again, real time on-demand training where the company pays up front, they pay for those employers is typically a game for a very specific kinds of training is what we see with sponsored billing.
This is a kind of a quick stat in fact here that I continued to read and reread. Because at 80% of the people reportedly are interested in going to school. However, 40% know their employer. Only 40% of their employer offers a tuition reimbursement program and that only 2% of employees participate. Begs the question, why? Why is it only 2%? Why is it only 2%? When we have large number of folks that are offering tuition reimbursement programs. And secondly, about 25% of interested employees ever start an application. So that's one in every four, that's 25 out of every 100. And extrapolate that out. We have so many tuition reimbursement programs being offered, and people are just not takin advantage of it. And again, the question is, why?
So, Dallas College can help? We can help employers and we do strategize, talk about affordability, talk about degrees seeking locations online, in-person hybrid, whatever the model is of delivery just across North Texas, as you know, we have many various forms and vast swarms of higher education, whether it'd be for profit, non-profit, third party. Many different ways to increase your advanced learning, to gain industry certifications, to earn college degrees, certificates. So, let Dallas College come to the table to help you better understand what is the market? Where is the market? What are the best opportunities for your employers? For you, the employer based on your vision, your mission, your culture of your organization. There's a lot to be said about culture. And there's a lot to be said about the return on investment. So, if you haven't tuition reimbursement program for your employees, let's talk about the tuition cost, the time the return on that investment. Again, we're looking at your culture of your organization and your vision. Here's a few examples. As I begin to wrap up here. Home and industries, if you don't know, is the world's largest manufacturer of sports lockers in the United States, and they reside in Irving, Texas.
A partner of mine back in 2017 when we came to Dallas College, just started tuition reimbursement program and they reimburse it 100%, not just the employee, but their dependence and their spouses. Anybody in the home. It doesn't matter what you do, doesn't have to tie into your job, your career pathway. They'll pay 100% for whatever it is that you want to do for as long as you want to go to college. Amazon and other bigbox known asset here. They're well-known for their career choice program where they reimburse up to 95%. Amazon came to Dallas College in 2017 when Dr. May introduced Amazon to me and my colleague at Brookhaven at the time to kind of service to point people to talk about this career choice program, it to start working with Amazon. But that's an exceptional benefit for Amazon employees. We've done work with JPMorgan Chase and project management and Agile certification training. Amazon is more of the sponsored bill variety that I was explaining. JPMorgan Chase was more of a tuition reimbursement. And right now, we're leveraging a very new partnership with the city of Dallas, where we're working with our automotive fleet management, as well as their building services maintenance unit on a tuition reimbursement program with the city of Dallas. Just to illustrate a few of the partnerships that we have.
And what's next. We want to get everybody excited about what's coming up September 1, number one, because we're going to kick off the National Workforce Development month where representatives from my work group, the ascending Institute, will be on hand to talk about corporate training and talk about skills development fund grant opportunities through the Texas Workforce Commission. So hopefully you can join us there for September the 1st. But these are questions that employers need to ask. What percentage of your incumbent workers are participating in those educational benefits programs? Those enrolled. Are they taking courses for personal enrichment? What is the scope of what they're taking? Is it for scale attainment? Is it in the career path as it something else? What are the angles, etc. And so, if you don't offer tuition reimbursement programs, certainly we want to help employers start that conversation, without further ado. I'll turn it over to colleague Jeff King.
[Jeff King]:
Thanks Tim. You guys hear me all right? Awesome. Thank you. Yeah. I want to just say first thanks to Tim and Marisa. This is awesome information. I'm glad to be sitting on this and getting a chance to observe, absorb what you guys are sharing this morning. So, thank you all so much. I'm happy to be here. And thanks to Moises and Danielle for the opportunity to present with my two colleagues this morning.
My name is Jeff King. I'm the Senior Director of Development for Dallas College Foundation. I'm a newbie, been here for a year and maybe like three months. Still very much new to the Dallas College System, but love getting a chance to work in our foundation office and I'm happy to share more information with you guys today about the work that we're doing in the foundation. So first, just wanted to start off by saying that you'll probably hear a couple of things being shared today that that definitely crossover with what Marisa and Tim have shared we are work is definitely really cross departmental. If something comes up in the questions about that, that's great. Happy to answer any of that stuff with you guys. But I first wanted to start by just saying that as I go out and have an opportunity to meet with donors and our community. My work is specifically around a lot of fundraising. And whenever I go meet with donors, people to oftentimes just don't know that Dallas College Foundation exists. They know about Dallas College, and they know about the Dallas Foundation, which is a separate Foundation, separate entity. But they don't necessarily know about Dallas College Foundation. And so just kind of wanted to start there.
That's Dallas College Foundation does exist before the merger. Formerly the artist, formerly known as the Dallas County Community College District Foundation. We were founded in 1973 and we are a registered 501C3 nonprofit that has existed to advance the college's mission through philanthropy specifically. And since our inception, we've awarded more than $42 million in scholarships and grants to support the millions of students that have walked through the doors at tau at Dallas College. A lot's changed. Since our time of being around since 1973. Our names changed. Our vision and our mission have changed. Our basic structure has changed. And so just kind of wanted to start at this place where we got a chance to review that new vision and mission with all of you, which is here on this slide, to envision a future in Dallas County where anyone from any zip code can gain the knowledge and skills they need to advance economically and achieve their dreams. And we work to do that, to see that vision come to life by channeling the power of philanthropy to help Dallas College rise to new heights of innovation, excellence, and equity in service of our community. I think channeling the power of philanthropy really. It looks like raising money. I'm sorry, I went one too, too fast. So why this vision and why this vision and mission. Sorry, Danielle, do you have a question?
[Danielle Stellrecht]:
Do you have control of the slides because I don't see the slides looping.
[Jeff King]:
I am on the vision and I'm on a mission and vision slide right now where this gentleman who's got headphones is wearing a hoodie. Can you see that?
[Danielle Stellrecht]:
No. Did you already hit that take control button? There we go. Got it.
[Jeff King]:
Got you. Okay. So, did you guys see this slide? This is our vision and our mission statement. Alright, so this is where we're at right now getting caught up. So why this vision and mission. So, Dallas College Foundation, it supports Dallas College and its efforts to provide an accessible, affordable education that puts our students on the path to a thriving wage. Specifically, we raise money to eliminate barriers that prevent our students from all backgrounds from attending and graduating.
We hear Dr. Lonon and talk a lot about Dallas College being in the busting barriers business. I think this is one of the ways that we're, that we're doing that specifically is raising money to support scholarships and grants. And then we're also working to create a culture of exceptional teaching and learning that makes Dallas College a leader in the community college space. So, we raise funds for that as well. And then we also connect students to careers that support thriving wages and wealth creation. And by securing those resources, we are putting Dallas College and a position to be the region's greatest economic growth engine. And also serving as the region's greatest equity engine. And specifically, philanthropy or private funds, private fundraising dollars that come from individuals and foundations. It allows us an opportunity to try bold new approaches to go beyond public funding limitations. A lot of public dollars that we get, um, are highly designated. And so, whenever we get private philanthropy funds, it allows us to be a little bit more flexible, a little bit more nimble, and to try new things out. And also, to upscale a lot of publicly funded programs.
So, share the next slide. You guys still with me? Awesome. Thank you, Marisa, you're my go-to. So, the ways that we do this supporting student needs, if I was to put the foundation's work really into two major buckets. It's supporting students and then supporting this excellent education. And so, I think a pillar of, of what the foundation has done for over 50 years has been there to create scholarship opportunities. We have over 400 active scholarship opportunities that are over 400 active scholarships that are currently available for our students. Last year, 4,700 scholarships were awarded, and that was to a total of about $1.5 million in scholarship aid. And so, we know that Dallas College educates over 100,000 students. Every single year. Many of those students face complex life challenges. Our students require consistent, high-quality support and advising in order to persist and graduate. And for the last 50 years, the foundation has really been there to create scholarship opportunities to support students from different types, from different walks of life, whatever they are, whatever their interests may be and whatever their challenge may be.
Here on this slide, we've got a quote from Christina Boggs, who is a single parent that is a Dallas College student. She is going to Dallas College right now and taking advantage of the Josephine Lieber memorial scholarship that was set up last year by the Foundation. We set up a $900,000 scholarship through this Josephine Lieber fund. And it was specifically tailored to help parents to assist parents or single parents or single mothers who decided to go back to Dallas College and to get their education. And that's the main criteria that's available for that scholarship. And Christina is one of the students that's taking advantage of that and very grateful for it as well. So, assisting students by setting up scholarships, removing that barrier, the financial barriers so that they can continue to get an education is key. So now we're on our emergency aid fund slide. So, supporting students by providing relief is another key area that we're, that we work. Our emergency aid funds. I think once students are here and they're inside of our classrooms and they're getting an education. Sometimes a crisis comes up and emergency comes up. I myself was actually a Dallas College student.
Once upon a time I went to Brookhaven, had a great experience and my time at Brookhaven. But it was also one of these guys that I worked full-time, and I did not have a good car when I was a student at Brookhaven. And there'll be times when a timing belt or something would go a transmission would go out on the car. And it made it really hard for me to get to class. And so, we know that there are tons of students that are affected by this. 24,000 of our Dallas College students live on the poverty line. And so, they face a lot of these issues on a regular basis. So, there is an emergency a Dallas College emergency aid fund which has been established. And that fund, it basically allows students an opportunity to continue their education by providing direct assistance to them when these emergencies come up. Students can apply for financial assistance through the emergency aid fund. They can get $500 in direct aid, which that aid is made available to the students by our fundraising efforts through the foundation.
And it can provide any kind of relief for students who are faced with emergencies around food insecurity, housing assistance, medical bills, childcare fees, transportation, utilities, you name it. They go and they talk to a success coach or their campus coordinator. And then they do an intake form on them and then they get financial assistance which has made available through the Dallas College Foundation. We fund raise for this in a couple of different ways. We go out and try to get big gifts to support the emergency funds. Last year, we brought in a $200,000 gift from the Hammond Charitable Foundation, which supported these funds. And then we also do some grassroots fundraising around this effort as well. So, we try to raise the tent, but also expand the tent at the same time from a fundraising standpoint. And I think the ways that we expand the tent is that this is a part of our end-of-year appeals, like around holiday season, we send out appeals to individuals asking them to give a little bit to our emergency aid funds. This is usually the funding priority around Giving Tuesday or Texas Giving Day. And as many of you are probably aware of the Employee Giving campaign that we run every summer. The Better Together campaign. This was the funding priority for that. And it's very important that we support this effort to, because there is really, there's proven results when we're able to provide a little bit of relief for students who are faced with a crisis. We see that over 80% of the students that receive assistance from that students support model, they re-enroll in Dallas College, and they are successful, they persist. And 100% of the donations go directly to impacting the students through emergency aid fund. There’re no administrative costs. So, scholarships, emergency aid funds.
There are a couple of other programs that I'll skip for the sake of time. But I do want to jump to the Case Management Studio and the pilot program. Hopefully you guys see the pilot program on your screens now. Thank you, colleagues Tim and Marisa, for confirming that. The Case Management Studio, this is a pilot program that the foundation also meets with Dallas College Leadership. We assess needs, things that are going on in the college. And then we brainstorm around ideas that could possibly enhance the education or the experience that's happening here at Dallas College.
One thing that came up was this case Management Studio Program. Just a little bit of a background on this. We know that Dallas College made this major investment of over $15 million last year, I think, to hire 240 success coach positions. And those success coaches are a key part of the student's success model. Their first point of contact for our students with the hiring of this large number of success coaches, we really wanted to make sure that they had everything that they needed in order to direct our students to the resources and support they needed. Because we know that when students get support from that students support model, they persist, and they graduate. So, what that meant was talking to Dr.
Joseph and Dr. Stills. It meant really kind of coming up with this professional development and training center that will give our students support staff the skills and the knowledge needed to effectively connect those students to appropriate resources.
And it's essentially, it's like a gold standard professional development training program, which will be called The Case Management Studio. And that studio is going to really to be there to support anyone who is in that kind of care navigator role. So, Success Coaches, college coaches, financial literacy coaches. Anyone who is a multitude of case management roles that can really participate in this curriculum, participate in this training, and could really benefit from this gold standard training. What we found across not just our community, but other communities too, was that there was not a whole lot, like a whole lot of best practices that people had, things that they were doing along the way. But there was not necessarily one kind of curriculum that everybody was following and how to support our clients or our students with something that many other organizations we're running into as well.
So, we, this was something that the fundraising community was really interested in supporting. Had a lot of great interest from other partners, like whether it be a city square United Way. The Addie Foundation just gave a really big gift to help get this thing off the ground. And so, we're in the planning and implement that. We're in the planning and research phases of rolling out this program, but it'll probably launch within this year or next. Hopefully get a chance to share more information about this with you guys later on. The goal is to train first our care navigators and success coaches here internally, but then eventually role that program out to the larger community so that we can share best practices and engage the community of case managers more intentionally.
Again, I know that I'm running out of time here. So, we, the other area that I was talking about was fundraising for educational excellence. Just to kind of go over these really quick, we do a lot of fundraising for our School of Education, which is the four-year bachelor's Program, and culinary and hospitality and as well as construction sciences. Some brief points around this. I know Marisa talked a lot about culinary and hospitality and she mentioned a great event that people can participate in that supports culinary and hospitality as well, which is Bits and Bites. It's a really fun event. But we do some fundraising around that program as well and work with Stephen Deshazo one of our board members, Mark Paul is very involved with culinary and we partner with him and partner with Steve to make sure that we're as a foundation, raising additional dollars to support the students that are in that program and make sure that that program itself is not just the best in our community, but best in the state and hopefully in the nation as well.
School of Education. We have really great relationships with the Meadows Foundation, which has been sort of an anchor support or for the School of Ed and our board member, Regen Horchow. This is a big passion of hers as well. And I myself worked pretty closely with Rob DeHaas is the dean of the School of Ed, to make sure that we're bringing adequate resources for School of Ed so that we can continue to build out that kind of grow your own Teacher Pipeline to make sure that more teachers are in our Dallas area and able to provide quality education, which is a growing workforce need for all of us.
And then construction sciences as well. We were instrumental in helping to upscale the construction Sciences Building. And Sid Buff, who is major gift officer and our team, worked hand in hand with Adrian Thompson and people on Marisa's team to really bring in some scholarship opportunities available for the construction Sciences building. Really quick impact statement here from one of our School of Ed students, Brian Daniel's he is I saw him speak during a meadows presentation and I believe that he actually was working in an auto shop and then he was coming to Dallas College to take a class so that he could just get a little bit of mathematics under his belt so that he could go and eventually be a manager within the shop. And I believe he actually kind of gravitate more towards mathematics than he initially planned on. And then decided that he wanted to become a teacher and then enrolled fully into the school of Ed program.
This is a really, I think, a great impact statement that kind of brings all of our work together, which is, he says this opportunity will allow me, allow me to support my family and community in a way that I've dreamed up for many years. He's going to earn his degree with little to no debt and have an immediate return on his investment. And he is going to be a teacher probably in DISD and comes from be teaching in the community that he comes from. And so, it gets an opportunity to earn a living wage for basically with an education and a certification that comes at almost no cost. And so, it's a great return on your investment. And for me, it just goes to show that the work that we're doing is really the foundation and the college together is that we're in the business of changing people's lives. It's a social impact movement and that no social change has ever happened throughout history without securing resources, without fundraising of some kind. And that fundraising and philanthropy really is the fuel for social change, which is why I'm so passionate about the work that we get a chance to do here. I just play a very small part in that. But happy to do so.
So, a couple of ways you can get involved. I already mentioned Bits and Bites. Definitely go to Bits and Bites. I went to last year as a new employee. It was a phenomenal experience. It's at the Arboretum, at a Tasteful place. It's a good date night spot as well. You get a lot of good money for a lot of good return on your investment with buying that ticket. Tons of great food, and just one of the most beautiful places in all of Dallas to enjoy that experience.
And then we are in our 50th year right now. So, we've got some anniversary events that were kind of planning that the team will know more about in the future. We get those kind of nailed down. And then the last really a big way that you can get involved, I think, is through our employee campaign. The funding priority is almost always emergency aid funds. And we found that that really resonated with employees, which is not shocking because I think we're all showing up to work every day because we care a lot about our students. And so, the emergency aid fund is a great way to support our students. And it was the funding priority for last year's Better Together campaign. Employee campaigns are great. If you want to be a philanthropist, if you want to be a donor, you know, I invest in it. It's a great way for me to just donate a little bit at a time. And then at the end of the year it adds up to making a big impact. And so, it will probably kick off around. Conference day would be my guess this year, which Marisa already mentioned, but I'll go ahead and yield my time. I know that we're over, so Moises, I'll turn it over to you.
[Moises Ramirez]:
Thank you, Jeff. Thank you to all of our presenters. That was some phenomenal information. Out of respect for everybody's time. I know that the presentation was only scheduled till ten. We do have some really great questions. At this point. We're going to go ahead and end the presentation here in just a minute. I just want to let everybody know that we will end up sending a follow-up e-mail with all of this contact information, all of the presentation itself so that everybody can review it, along with the answers to all of the questions that are on our chat at the moment. So once again, thank you to all the presenters, thank you to everybody that participated. And please just expect that follow-up email. Have a wonderful day, everyone.