The U-M Alumnae Council representing women graduates and the Alumni Association (AAUM) once again are looking to provide grants to deserving U-M departments and colleges through the Alumnae Council Birthday Greeting Campaign.

Eula dePriest Marcks, a 1933 graduate, originated the campaign in 1961. She invited alumnae to contribute one penny for every year of the university’s history, hence a “birthday” campaign. Today, donors are asked to contribute 25 cents per year of the university’s history. The campaign also accepts larger donations.

“The original goal was to boost scholarships, as there were few for women when Marcks began the campaign,” says Mary Kinley, chair of the Birthday Greeting Grant committee of the Alumnae Council. The council is an affiliate group of AAUM. Today, awards go to a broad range of support projects.

Those seeking a campaign gift must apply by March 19. Application forms are at tinyurl.com/88a4d5c.

“The Birthday Greeting Campaign is an appeal exclusively to alumnae and women who support the university,” says Melanie Burzynski, Alumni Association senior director of development. Since the program started, more than $2 million has been donated in support of scholarships or programs at schools and colleges at U-M enhancing the lives of women.

Organizers generally raise between $30,000-$60,000, and have given out 34 awards, one each year. The committee, made up of eight alumnae, sort and rank the applications, and interview six finalists. A winner is announced in May.

Recent program beneficiaries include a laptop loan program for nontraditional UM-Dearborn students, many of them working single mothers pursuing undergraduate degrees. “This is a vulnerable population of students at risk of dropping out,” says Ellen Judge Gonzalez, director of the Student Outreach and Academic Resources Program at UM-Dearborn.

Gonzalez says the program will allow students unable to afford laptops to borrow them for use at home. “It makes things a lot easier,” she says, adding the laptops are on order.

On the Ann Arbor campus, the Institute for Social Research has used its Birthday Greeting Campaign gift to seek renewed donor support for The Elizabeth Douvan Junior Scholar Fund in Life Course Development. That fund, established by the students, colleagues and friends of Douvan, honors her life and work on the ISR faculty by encouraging research agendas in Life Course Development and supporting junior researchers in the departments where she was active.

Rona Carter, assistant professor of psychology, used the support to investigate how biological and physical changes associated with puberty influence girls’ behavioral and psychological adjustments.

Nicky Newton, as a graduate student in psychology, used a grant to advance her research that studied four cohorts of women in their 50s and 60s. Newton identified the percentage of married women and single women — including divorced, widowed and always single — at different points of time, to see if those percentages have changed. Going forward, she will look at differences between single and married women in social connectedness, and how that influences health and well-being.

“Getting the funds re-energized our fundraising effort and now we are able to support researchers like Rona and Nicky,” says Patrick Shields, ISR director of development. Shields adds that renewed efforts raised money to create a large enough endowment to provide $4,000 awards to researchers in 2010, 2011 and this March. “We could not have done it without the jumpstart from the Alumnae Birthday Greeting Campaign.”