Video Contests, Film Festivals, and Awards
UNCF Launches "Better Futures" at Essence Music Festival
By StudentFilmmakers.com
posted Jul 2, 2013, 11:24
New PSA campaign focuses on bringing African Americans to and through college.
UNCF (United Negro College Fund), the nation’s oldest and most successful
minority higher education assistance organization, will introduce audiences
of this year’s Essence Music Festival (July 5-7) in New Orleans to Better
Futures, a national multimedia public service effort that builds on the organization’s
41-year-old campaign to help African American students get to and through college.
It encourages Americans to make an investment in educating African American
students as segue to improving the “futures” of all Americans. It
also evolves one of the most iconic brand tag lines in advertising history from
"A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste"® to "A Mind Is A Terrible
Thing To Waste, But A Wonderful Thing To Invest In."®
Better Futures builds on the iconic “A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste”®
campaign first launched in 1972 – by UNCF’s then-Executive Director
Vernon Jordan, the Ad Council and advertising firm, Y&R. Since its inception,
“A Mind Is…” has generated $3.5 billion. The new campaign
will make clear the high rate of a return a donor generates from an investment
in the UNCF scholarship program. New Better Futures PSAs transform the idea
of donating to a cause to a more powerful idea of investing in the future, including
the introduction of a stock for social change, where people can see the direct
social return of their investment. Economists were consulted for the campaign
and developed an algorithm to show the social return of donating just $10 to
UNCF, including the impact on earnings, crime savings and health savings. The
campaign includes new television, radio, print, outdoor and digital PSAs featuring
students who have personally benefited from UNCF sharing their poignant stories
of success.
“Support for UNCF and its students is not charity but an investment in
better futures for our students and—because the entire country benefits
from increasing the number of college graduates—for all of us,”
said Michael L. Lomax, president and CEO, UNCF. “The students who graduate
from college as a result of receiving UNCF scholarships represent the return
on our investment. They are our—and our contributors’—dividends.”
With the African American college completion rate at 21%, compared to the national
average of 30%, UNCF's Better Futures will focus on closing the college completion
gap so that African Americans complete college at the same rate as the rest
of the country. This aligns closely with President Barack Obama’s goal
for college completion, which would “ensure that America’s students
and workers receive the education and training needed for the jobs of today
and tomorrow, and provide greater security for the middle class.” The
President and his Administration have committed to “working to make college
more accessible, affordable, and attainable for all American families.”
“For more than four decades, the ‘A mind is a terrible thing to
waste’® campaign has been the engine that has helped more than 300,000
students earn college degrees. This new iteration represents a new kind of philanthropy,
one that doesn’t urge a gift, but an investment in our country’s
young people,” Dr. Lomax said. “Our new PSAs use real stories from
real UNCF students to show how that investment will play dividends for all our
futures.” These stories were captured by an elite group of African American
creative partners, including TJ Martin, who’s co-directing efforts (with
Dan Lindsay) on the 2011 film “Undefeated” led him to become the
first African American to win a Best Documentary Academy Award®. Delphine
Diallo, a graduate of Académie Charpentier School of Visual Art in Paris,
was the principal photographer for the campaign’s ads.
The campaign launches at a time when a college degree is now what a high school
diploma was to previous generations – the minimum entry-level requirement
for almost every well-paying career. According to UNCF, the high cost of college
and the lack of financial assistance are the major reasons that students don’t
enter or complete college. UNCF plays a critical role in enabling more than
60,000 students each year to attend college and get the education they need,
and the nation needs them to have.
Better Futures PSAs also align closely with Building Better Futures: The Value
of a UNCF Investment, the latest report from UNCF’s Frederick D. Patterson
Research Institute. The report is based on extensive research that compared
the educational outcomes for students who received UNCF scholarships with those
who did not. Its conclusion is decisive: recipients of UNCF scholarships are,
as a group, significantly more likely to graduate than non-recipients. In fact,
if the impact of UNCF scholarships were extrapolated to all African American
college students, the annual number of graduates would increase by almost 16,000.
UNCF African American scholarship recipients have a 60 percent five-year graduation
rate, five percentage points higher than the national average and 25% higher
than the average for all African Americans. For every $5000 that UNCF provides
to an African American freshman through a scholarship, their likelihood of graduating
increases eight percent.
The Essence Music Festival, held at the Mercedes-Benz Louisiana Superdome and
New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, provides an opportunity to bring
attention to the remarkable strides the New Orleans has made and the on-going
challenges it faces following Hurricane Katrina. UNCF will illuminate its role
in those strides as well as those facing African American communities across
the country.
As the nation’s oldest and most successful minority higher education assistance
organization, the United Negro College Fund’s mission is to provide financial
support to its 39 member institutions and increase minority degree attainment
by reducing financial barriers to college. UNCF institutions and other historically
black colleges and universities are highly effective, awarding 25 percent of
African American baccalaureate degrees. UNCF administers more than 400 programs,
including scholarships, leadership training, internship and fellowship programs,
mentoring, summer enrichment, and curriculum and faculty development programs.
Today, UNCF supports more than 65,000 students at more than 900 colleges and
universities nationwide.
Resources:
www.uncf.org
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