Matchy Matchy

For 24 hours each March, the University of Michigan community rallies on Giving Blueday to support the scholarships, programs, and departments that define the university. This year, Anthropology made the most of it.

LSA’s Department of Anthropology celebrated a record-setting Giving Blueday in March 2025, raising $12,800, thanks to a powerful combination of strategic outreach, more than 50 generous alumni and friends, and a deep commitment to student success beyond the classroom. 

Anthropology’s campaign was bolstered by a $5,500 match challenge that increased both fundraising and donor totals, and exceeded its $11,000 Giving Blueday goal. The match also helped Anthropology earn an additional $1,000 incentive grant from the university for making it onto the Giving Blueday leaderboard with the 10th highest number of separate donors university-wide. 

“In an ordinary Giving Blueday, we raise between $4,000 and $5,000,” said Department of Anthropology Chair Kelly Askew. “So the match really helped. We raised more but we also attracted more donors with the message that we had matching donors backing us.”

“Matches and challenges create opportunities for increased community impact. When supporters see a lead donor come forward saying, ‘I believe in this cause so much so that I will match your gift,’ it has a positive ripple effect,” added LSA Advancement Director of Digital Fundraising Kristen MacNeil Mambro. “Anthropology’s success confirmed what we know about matching gifts and why we encourage donors to take advantage of them on special occasions like Giving Blueday: matching gifts can significantly boost the size of your gift, they raise awareness for important causes, and they help motivate communities to band together to demonstrate their commitment and further their impact.”

Askew secured the matching funds from three of the department’s most steadfast donors, all of whom increased their regular yearly contributions to help rally support from others. By engaging this loyal base early and personally, Anthropology began the day with positive momentum.

The funding raised on Giving Blueday went directly to two student-led programs that embody Anthropology’s mission: AUGMENT (the Anthropology Undergraduate/Graduate Mentoring Program) and MISAA (the Michigan International Student Anthropology Association). Both programs support students in the Anthropology community—inside and outside the classroom. The matching gifts served not just as financial catalysts, but also as signals to the broader community that this work matters deeply.

“We’re very proud of these student-initiated programs. They identified a need and they organized themselves, and so we wanted to honor and reward that effort,” said Askew. “Anthropology is the study of human diversity. We recognize that people come from a variety of backgrounds and may have different levels of experience with college and being able to succeed in college, getting jobs post-college or going on to graduate school, whatever path someone wants to take.”

AUGMENT matches undergraduates with a graduate student mentor with similar interests, experiences, or background. Mentors help their mentees navigate the ins and outs of the field, find research opportunities, evaluate and apply to graduate programs, and improve their writing skills. AUGMENT offers workshops like “How to Craft a CV” and “How to Read an Academic Paper,” and provides microgrants for costs not covered by traditional grant funding.

Anthropology alumna Julie Stroh (A.B. ’73) was one of the match donors. She's been giving to the department for decades; more than 20 years ago she established the Julie Childress Stroh Endowment for Student Support in Anthropology to support undergraduate field research, resources that didn’t exist when she was a student. An active volunteer fundraiser, Stroh chairs the University of Michigan Library Campaign Advocacy Circle and serves on both the Look to Michigan Florida Campaign Leadership Committee and the University of Michigan Museum of Art Leadership Board.

“I have a soft spot in my heart for the department,” said Stroh. “I feel the way I've operated as an executive, whether in the corporate world or higher-education, that my studies in the Department of Anthropology have really informed my thinking. A lot of my success has to do with the liberal arts education I received at Michigan—and Anthropology in particular—in terms of assessing complicated cultural situations, which play tremendously into the workforce.” 

“Julie has been such an advocate for our department,” said Askew. “Most of her giving has been through her endowment, but for every Giving Blueday she has also faithfully been up at whatever hour it starts, and she would make sure that she was the first donor to Anthropology every year.”

“I’m nothing if not competitive,” Stroh added, so she jumped at the opportunity to fund matching dollars “that had the potential for the department to reach a stretch goal, to challenge other Giving Blueday donors to do better, to do more, to really show that the power of the Michigan alumni network is unmatched.” 

Another friend of the department to step up as a match donor was professor emeritus Conrad Kottak, who joined the Michigan Anthropology faculty in January 1968; he was chair of the Department of Anthropology from 1996 to 2006. He gives back to the department each year, Askew shared. “And when I reached out to him to ask if he’d consider this new idea of putting up funds for a match on Giving Blueday,” she said. “He told me, ‘Not only do I think it's a good idea, but I'm going to increase my annual donation.’” 

“I was delighted to be offered a job at Michigan, one of the two anthropology faculties in the country that I most respected,” said Kottak, who was in Madagascar doing ethnographic field work as a young scholar when “the department displayed a great deal of confidence in me by hiring me sight unseen.” He never regretted his decision to accept the position at Michigan, where he taught for 42 years, retiring in January 2011. 

Kottak is one of the most well-respected scholars in his field. The anthropology textbook Kottak authored defined the field, said Askew, introducing it in an engaging way to her (and countless others) as a first-year university student. “A lot of people don’t know what anthropology is—understanding humanity, past and present, in all its diversity over time and space,” she said. “Conrad not only helped build Michigan Anthropology into what it is, but his textbook [now in its nineteenth printing] is probably the most used textbook in introductory anthropology courses in the country.”

Stroh also credits Kottak with igniting her interest in anthropology during her first year in college, when she took his Anthro 101 course in the LSA Honors Program. It was during his tenure as chair that she established her endowment.

“I attribute much of my professional success and personal happiness to my association with the department and the university,” said Kottak. Like many proud alumni, he arrived in Ann Arbor with little interest in football; years later, he’s transformed into a committed, true blue Michigan fan—cheering alongside his wife, daughter, and son-in-law who all hold Michigan degrees.

“I was pleased this year to be able to join Julie Stroh in offering matching funds, which led to our successful Giving Blueday,” said Kottak. “I continue to feel incredibly grateful to the department, college, and university for hiring and promoting me, and for a work environment that fostered my own teaching, research, professional development, and creativity.”