Northern Iowa launches fundraising tradition in TC’s Tee

The University of Northern Iowa prides itself on being a tight-knit community, and for years has been scheming up a way to remind new students and old of that tenet so central to its mission and experience. It might just have found the right “fit.”

This year, UNI students and supporters across the Cedar Valley and state will be sporting the first “TC’s Tee,” a new annual T-shirt tradition the campus hopes will raise camaraderie, Panther pride, and money for UNI’s general scholarship fund, housed within the UNI Foundation.

Priced at $24.95, 20 percent — or about $5 — of every sale of this year’s RAYGUN-produced shirt will support a variety of scholarships across the Cedar Falls campus.

The shirt — which comes in both purple and gold and in sizes small through 3X — uses RAYGUN’s signature all-caps style to boast: “BADDEST CATS IN THE VALLEY.”

“Just like the Panther family, TC’s Tee is all about helping others,” according to a web page for the shirt — named after UNI’s Panther mascot named “TC” or “The Cat.” “This is why all proceeds from the sales of TC’s Tee go directly into the UNI General Scholarship Fund to help current and future Panthers pay for their educations.”

UNI — like all of Iowa’s public universities — has been eyeing creative funding solutions as state support has slipped over the years, accounting for 77 percent of the Board of Regents’ general education budget in 1981 and just under 30 percent today.

Conversely, where 21 percent of the general education budget came from tuition in the early 1980s, about 64 percent does today.

Tuition rate hikes — like the 3.5-percent increase UNI imposed across its campus this academic year — come despite pushback from students, who have more cards to play in an increasingly competitive higher education landscape, with demographic shifts churning out fewer high school grads.

Even with the tuition bump this fall, UNI expects to generate $1.9 million less in tuition than it did last year — when its total enrollment dropped to 8,949, the lowest in 55 years since 1967.

Creative funding alternatives have included big ideas, like the University of Iowa’s $1.165 billion public-private partnership for the operation of its utility system, and small ones, like UNI’s limited-time-only T-shirts, aimed at becoming an annual tradition.

“Each year, a fresh new design will be introduced and the old design will be retired,” according to the TC’s Tee page. “Each design will be a limited edition.”

The plan is to debut the new design every summer when freshmen arrive on campus for orientation, “welcoming them to the family,” and then to make them available broadly. This year, outside orientation, UNI started peddling its shirts at the Iowa State Fair.

To date, more than 1,000 have been sold — bringing in more than $4,000 from the fair alone, according to Adam Amdor, a UNI spokesman.

TC’s inaugural tee as of this week is available in all RAYGUN stores — including in Ames, Cedar Falls, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Des Moines and Iowa City. The shirt, Amdor said, also is on the RAYGUN website and at the UNI Bookstore.

UNI doesn’t have a contract with RAYGUN, but rather is working with the popular Iowa-based company through its standard fundraising program — which donates a fifth of any product sales to an organization.

And although RAYGUN is the vendor for the inaugural design, Amdor said the campus could use a different vendor next year or in subsequent years.

“It's really been a partnership between University Relations, the UNI Bookstore, RAYGUN, UNI Athletics/Learfield and UNI Student Life/Admissions,” according to UNI spokesman Pete Moris. “It's my understanding that Athletics will use the shirts for their annual ‘shirt swap’ this weekend where students can trade in a shirt from another institution for a new UNI shirt.”

Athletics also will give away the shirts at sporting events this fall.

“It started with a simple goal: unite Panthers,” according to the campus promotion. “Students and alumni, faculty and fans. Musicians, athletes, gamers, bookworms and everyone in between. We are all one family, and we want everyone to know it.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com