S20 Demo Day Webinar
The University of Illinois Foundation held the fourth UIDEA Demo Day featuring virtual pitches from the Spring 2020 Batch on Tuesday, May 19, 2020.
Featured Guest
Michael Raycraft
Clinical Associate Professor | Department of Recreation, Sport and TourismApplied Health Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Dr. Raycraft designs and teaches RST courses at Illinois, including cool topics like the Fan Experience, Sport and Sustainability, and Event Studies. He also leads the RST180 annual study domestic trip, often referred to as the Hall of Fame tour and featured in Storied. Raycraft recently appeared on the A Few Minutes With… podcast on the impact of a world without sport in the early days of COVID-19. He researches the effectiveness of youth mentor programs in golf and served as the Assistant Director of Marketing for Illini Athletics before beginning earning his PhD. Raycraft holds a BA from Kentucky in Accounting, an MS in Leisure Studies and a PhD in Recreation, Sport and Tourism, both from Illinois.
S20 UIDEA Teams
Growing Green for UIC
Designing a strategy to test impact-based giving at UIC, starting with sustainability initiatives across campus. Cynthia Klein-Banai, Rob Roman, Dmitri Sandbeck, Emily Stearney, and Kate Yoshida.
Illini-On!
Farm the Morrow plots and avoid Quadpocalypse! A philanthropic alumni gaming app that is extremely fun, often educational, and always Illini! Ella Van Wyk, Eva Miller, and Nancy Rampson.Demo Day FAQs
What is Demo Day?
If you are new to Demo Day, welcome! Demo Day is the culminating event of each UIDEA batch (cohort). This is a chance for the teams to showcase their ideas/work and gather a LOT of feedback all at once.
How do the pitches work?
Each team has a 35-minute window. During the first 15 minutes, the team presents a problem or opportunity, a solution, evidence or stories to support the solution, a budget, a plan, and an ask. After the pitch, the audience (in person and livestream) has five-ish minutes to ask the team questions. Then the Selection Committee (the people who decide which initiatives are funded) and advancement leadership have ten-ish minutes to ask questions. The final five minutes are used to provide written feedback/scoring for the teams.
What happens after today?
While UIDEA is billed as a 12-week program, Demo Day isn’t the end. The teams take Demo Day feedback into consideration, rework their asks if necessary, and create a full due diligence report (with way more answers and details than you could possibly see in their pitches) in advance of a due diligence session with the Selection Committee, where even more questions are asked. The Selection Committee then decides which ideas will be advanced/funded and those teams start piloting or scaling their ideas.
Huh? Not sure about one of the acronyms used today?
We have a handy 12-page list of (not nearly all of the) acronyms we might use in advancement: go.uif.uillinois.edu/Acronyms.