Seven display monitors illuminate the hallway just outside the IU-Bloomington Official Bookstore on the first floor of the Indiana Memorial Union, where several wooden plaques once hung.
The new display comes as a replacement to previous plaques where the IU Foundation recognized donors in the foundation’s Presidents Circle by engraving the donors’ names in medallions made with metal from the original carillon bells of the Student Building’s Bell Tower.
Rick Dupree, the IU Foundation’s executive vice president for development, said the new display came as a solution to recognize more donors in a limited amount of space.
“The space in the Union that had the existing donor recognition wall has a finite amount of real estate,” Dupree said. “We ran out of space as compared to what we needed to celebrate our donors’ philanthropy.”
IU Foundation Donor Relations Manager Kristi Hopf said the previous display was about 15 years old, having been installed around 2000.
Dupree said he hopes the new display brings increased attention to the donor recognition wall, where passersby can now touch, scroll and interact with the display.
“More often than not, people would just take a glance at it and walk by,” Dupree said. “So we were hoping that the beauty of it in itself would be more of an attraction than it had been in the past.”
The new display allows for names of all Presidents Circle donors to scroll across the screens. The Foundation is working to update each donor name with a small biography and photos, allowing people to click on names on the scrolling list and learn more about each donor.
Hopf said that in addition to the Presidents Circle, the display now has the ability to honor the Well House Society, the 1820 Society and the Arbutus Society.
“The past donor wall was just able to recognize Presidents Circle,” Hopf said. “But now we have the opportunity to recognize three additional university-wide donor societies, which is a wonderful perk to going interactive.”
Hopf said the wall’s interactive display will continue to be updated in various phases.
“In addition to the donor information and photos and bios we hope to get up there, we also want to have a comment from the president or others that would show what private support has been for IU and how necessary it is,” Dupree said.
Hopf said the display, being paid for privately, will have another phase completed later this fall.
Though Hopf said it has been too early for donors to have noticed changes in the donor recognition wall, a new class of Presidents Circle donors will be inducted Oct. 2.
As a part of the donors’ induction ceremony, donors will be taken to the new wall to be shown their name, a tradition that Dupree said will be “extra special now.”
“It’s just been an opportunity for us to use technology,” Dupree said. “The other donor societies are a little bit different than Presidents Circle, and they get recognized in their own way, usually through hard-copy materials, so this is just taking advantage of the infinite opportunity we have with this new system.”
