Holiday Support for the Scholarship

For any of you who have not finished (or started) your holiday shopping, here's a reminder that you can support the PHUL Scholarship when you purchase through Amazon.

Have your holiday shopping support PHUL, use this link and the scholarship gets 5% of your order: http://tinyurl.com/PHUL-Amazon

More details in last year's post:
http://phul-ultimate.blogspot.com/2008/12/holiday-giving.html

Holiday giving

The whole point of today's blog is really just to share the following with you so that when I look at my gchat friends I can see this message repeated in every single status message:

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Have your holiday shopping support PHUL, use this link and the scholarship gets 5% of your order http://tinyurl.com/PHUL-Amazon
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Now that that's done with, feel free to read up a little more if you so desire, or skip down to the bottom for ways to help (PLENTY of them pass the "I'm a poor college student and don't have any money..." test, so go ahead, check them out.)

Many of you are probably aware of the PHUL Scholarship. For those who are not, the PHUL Scholarship was established in 2003, it is currently awarded annually to one student-athlete who will receive $1,000 per year for up to four years. Winners are selected from a pool of applicants who have participated in the spring PHUL season and show outstanding playing ability, high school academics and Ultimate community service. Only those students attending a school in the Greater Pittsburgh Area are eligible. The scholarship is also badly in need of a new website... but that's another subject.

I have listed the other (United States, collegiate) Ultimate scholarships offered that I know of. This information is almost all from Google searches so it may have inaccuracies and most likely some omissions. Please feel free to drop me a line if you know of more or have corrections.

CU (Colorado University - Open) - Est. 2001, $1,000? $3,000? to an incoming Freshman (first year of eligibility). Alumni funded. (info)
Cornell - Open - Est. 2003 (info) Alumni funded. $1,000 - $2,500 over X years?
Warren Wilson Ultimate Team? - Est. 2003? (info). First I'd ever heard of this, not sure if it happened. $1,000/yr for 5 players.

The PHUL Scholarship is unique in that it is the only community-funded, community-based and endowed scholarship for college Ultimate players. To my knowledge, all other college Ultimate scholarships are alumni funded, are for one specific team and are paid yearly from an alumnus' checkbook as opposed to being paid as interest on a sustainable endowment.

For example of how an endowed scholarship works:

$100,000 is raised and housed in an account at the Pittsburgh Foundation. Once a year this fund earns 4% interest (or hopefully more), and that $4,000 ($100,000*0.04) is given out in scholarships. Thus the principle ($100,000) is not touched and is free to grow with new donations. The scholarship can continue to pay out indefinitely with no additional financial support.

The method described above is the PHUL Scholarship, and our goal is to reach that $100,000 within 10 years of the start of the endowment (est. 2005). To date the endowment is at ~$40,000.

So what can you do to help support this effort? Well there are a few simple ways:

1.) Give money

• Facebook details
• Drop off cash/check at 165 Morewood Ave, 15213 (checks made out to PHUL or Darren Shultz).
  

2.) Shop

• Have your holiday shopping support PHUL, use this link and the scholarship gets 5% of your order http://tinyurl.com/PHUL-Amazon details of how this works here.
  

3.) Tell a friend

• Pass on the facebook link from above
  
  
• Put this message"Have your holiday shopping support PHUL, use this link and the scholarship gets 5% of your order http://tinyurl.com/PHUL-Amazon" in your gchat/AIM/facebook/etc. status. Or e-mail it to friends/family who use amazon.

4.) Play Ultimate

• First Night of Flight gives donations to the scholarship when PHUL players sign up (see this post)
• PHUL runs the SAY WHUT outdoor Hat tournament on Dec. 20th (that's less than 2 weeks away) where the profits benefit the scholarship.

5.) Play pool

• We have a pool table in my basement. Play me in a game. If I win you donate $1 to the scholarship (we have a jar in the house). If you win, I'll pay you $1.
  

Updates: Weekly Posts, Nationals, Office, Scholarship, FNoF

Updates:

+ Weekly Posts: Starting next week the PHUL Blog will have a new post every Monday and Thursday. Other updates may appear between, but you'll be guaranteed two posts a week at those times.

+ Nationals: Congratulations to former PHUL player and current PHUL admin Christie Lawry for her 13th place finish at the UPA Club Championships in the womens division last weekend with Loose Cannon.

+ CPU Office Designer: Congratulations to Acadia Klain for being named the Lead CPU Office Designer. Acadia is an architect from Carnegie Mellon University who is also the captain of the Pittsburgh womens team, Pounce.

+ Scholarship: The PHUL Scholarship, which has raised $52,676.83 since it was officially opened at the Pittsburgh Foundation on 7/14/2006 is now searching for a lead fundraiser. Apply here. This is a paid (stipend) position.

+ First Night of Flight: Since you've read this far we might as well let you in on a little deal. PHUL has worked out a deal with First Night of Flight Event Director Mike Yanchak to save you all $5 per person or $25 per team for the next 3 weeks. E-mail DarrenShultz@gmail.com for the full details and the link to get you your savings.

PNC buys National City, PHUL buys local

PNC Financial Services Group (PNC) today announced that it will acquire National City Corp. (NCC) for 5.6 Billion dollars. The market has been speculating on this for the past two weeks, and the PHUL Administration has been hoping for it for the past 2 years. We haven't quite had the cash on hand to buy National City ourselves, so PHUL applauds James Rohr (CEO, PNC) and PNC for this move.

National City held PHUL's first bank account, and has always been good to us, but over the past years PHUL closed all accounts with National City and moved them over to PNC. We even worked to bring the CPU (Community for Pittsburgh Ultimate) accounts over, despite some internal resistance. We just didn't feel it right to keep our cash with a bank who shares the same home with the Cleveland Browns. We are the Pittsburgh High School Ultimate League after all.

This lead to a focus in past years to partnering with local companies and our community. We created a scholarship for students attending universities in the Greater Pittsburgh Area, and housed it at the Pittsburgh Foundation. The initial boost that we needed to get the scholarship off the ground was given by local entrepreneur Henry Thorne who co-founded Pittsburgh based Aethon and Thorley Industries. Poiesis Informatics, a local company founded by 3 Ultimate players, supports that same scholarship.

PHUL moved our T-shirt ordering to Kaules Screen Works in the North Hills. Sourcing our shirts locally not only eliminated shipping costs, which saved PHUL players' money, it also allowed us a faster turn-around time for our order, and gave an opportunity for a current PHUL player to intern at the screen works company. The list goes on and we're always looking for ways to work with the community to improve our city as well as our league. As PHUL mentions to potential sponsors and partners: "Our league is here, our friends are here. We, like you, call Pittsburgh our home and are working to make it an even better place to work and play."

We're proud of the win-win situations we've been able to create with the other great Pittsburgh organizations and we're excited to find our new home in Lawrenceville, where the PHUL/CPU office is now based. We've received a warm welcome from Helen McMullen, owner of Perk Me Up coffee house, and now that we've got our morning brew, we're ready to meet the rest of the neighbors and shake this place up.