Comets Giving Days Ends on High Note with $1.1 Million Total

The University of Texas at Dallas received a record 3,141 gifts and raised more than $1 million for the sixth consecutive year during the ninth annual Comets Giving Days on April 9-10. The annual fundraising event brought in $1.1 million to benefit 128 UT Dallas groups.

The Basic Needs Resource Center, which opened last fall, participated for the first time and received 72 individual donations to bolster initiatives that provide food, clothing and emergency funding for students. The center raised more than $5,400 and plans to use the majority of funds to support Temoc’s Closet, which provides free clothing, shoes, accessories and hygiene products to students.

“We’re a new office, and we’re just trying to see how we can make the most difference for UTD students,” said Danyelle Gates BA’17, assistant director of the center. “We connect students with a number of programs that help meet their basic needs, and we would not be able to function without the support of our Comet community. Together, all of us can support our fellow Comets.”

For the second year in a row, Comets Giving Days kicked off with a breakfast celebration that offered attendees opportunities to win bonus funds for their favorite causes. Over four rounds of bingo, $1,000 was distributed to participating campus groups. Members of the UT Dallas Pep Band won three games, earning $650 to jump-start the band’s fundraising efforts. By the end of the event, it raised $2,465, surpassing its $1,000 goal.

Lori Gerard PhD’18, director of the pep band, said that the group owed much of its growth to its fundraising success during Comets Giving Days. It plans to use this year’s funds to acquire more instruments and bolster its travel budget so it can accompany Comet athletics teams to their road games.

“We first participated in Comets Giving Days in 2019, and we were really small then,” said Gerard, assistant professor of instruction in the Harry W. Bass Jr. School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology. “We wanted to grow but didn’t have the instruments to support that growth. That first year we raised about $1,200, and we’ve participated every year since. These funds helped us grow from about 17 members to 28. Now we really need trombone players. We have great trombone players coming to UTD, but they don’t own the instruments, which are very expensive. We want to make sure we have instruments for incoming students who want to join the band.”

Throughout Comets Giving Days, UT Dallas schools, centers and organizations competed to win extra funds through challenges and matching gift opportunities. The Bass School topped the leaderboards as the school with the most unique donors, receiving over 280 gifts from 139 donors.

In total, 21 areas of the Bass School received contributions this year, including the Operations, Productions and Technology resources team, which raised more than $2,200. Adam Buxkamper, academic lab manager at the Bass School, said that some of these funds would augment the Games and Media Library, which maintains fully functioning historic video game consoles and a catalog of over 600 games for both student use and research.

“Our faculty often want to teach about retro game systems and their games,” Buxkamper said. “But where would students find them? We provide the resources so that our faculty can teach these classes. It’s also a spot where students can come to relax and play things they can’t find anywhere else. These funds help us preserve our library, replace equipment and acquire new systems, games or parts.”

All gifts made during Comets Giving Days contributed to UT Dallas’ $750 million goal during New Dimensions: The Campaign for UT Dallas, which has now raised nearly $440 million.