Gator News & Upcoming Events

Gator Club Wins Awards
The annual Gator Club awards were announced this past weekend at the UF Alumni Association’s Gator Club leadership seminar in Gainesville. We are extremely happy to announce that the So Cal Gator Club® was given awards in three categories – our first awards ever in the history of the Gator Club! The following is a list of the awards won and a brief description of why.  We would like to send a big CONGRATS out to our Gator Club Members, without your loyalty we could not have such a wonderful organization. We improved our membership over 185% this year from last year, and it surely shows. Let’s keep going with that percentage next year and we can accomplish even more!

Many other clubs and members were given awards for their outstanding work! Click here to visit the University Alumni Association’s website for all the details of the Gator Club Awards.

OUTSTANDING GATOR CLUB® COMMUNICATIONS
The Southern California Gator Club® utilizes our website, email list, and newsletter to communicate with our local Gator friends, family and alumni. We request the Alumni Association to distribute one of our newsletters per year to reach our extended Gator this year, over 3,100 Gators in the greater Los Angeles area. We also publish a second mailer, which will go out at some point in the spring, to approximately 325 Gator friends, family and alumni.

Our email list is our most important form of communication. Currently, we reach 248 people with our bi-weekly emails. Key information from these emails is posted on our website for those who visit it. We also provide our phone number for members to call, and of course "snail mail" works effectively as well.

OUTSTANDING MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM
Due to the overwhelming response from the mailer sent to all the local friends, family and alumni in late August we had a drastic increase – 185%! - in our membership this year (184 memberships!). Many new members had received the flyer and came in to the viewing locations to sign up the very next week. We had very good turnouts at both locations for all the games this year (especially when the game is at 9:30am PST!), which benefited both the club membership numbers, and also the viewing locations. Our chances of hosting the Gator nation at the Rose Bowl – our backyard – really perked up our membership as well. We still continue to receive new memberships.

Using this year to build the club significantly, we plan in future years to hopefully have enough cash flow to begin a program for scholarships to the University of Florida. Our current members receive Official So Cal Gator Club® Membership Cards which entitle the holder to many benefits including discounts, free giveaways, and prizes.

OUTSTANDING GATOR CLUB® MEMBER
This year, Club President Kerri Balabas was given this award from our club.

Kerri has paved the way for our small football oriented club to start moving to the next level as a true benefactor to UF. She has really managed to turn the club around this year. Through her aggressive communications initiative, she has managed to increase club membership by 185%. Our viewing parties have become standing room only. Further, she has increased the "fun" and value offered by the Gator Club by:

• Tying the Club into a summer SEC picnic initiated by the local Tennessee club
• Increasing raffle items during viewing parties
• Creating the popular and now sold-out Southern California Gator Club t-shirt
• Bringing official Florida Field stadium cups to our viewing parties (people went nuts for these)
• She’s recently been talking to UF to bring a UF speaker to the club such as Charles Young or other big name official

Hopes are, continued membership growth should lead to the first ever scholarship fund aimed at assisting Southern California students to the University of Florida

What does this mean for you? Imagine if you could network with not only your contacts, but also with all the UF alumni your friends know. Visit http://incircle.ufalumni.ufl.edu to fill out your profile and get started. Once you’re there, you can:

The Gator Nation Network is now available, courtesy of the UF Alumni Association. The service is free of charge and there are no strings attached. Visit http://incircle.ufalumni.ufl.edu to access your account and begin growing your Gator network today.