Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: University of California, Davis

Title of entry: UC Davis: Advancing Wine for California and the World

About this entry: “Advancing Wine for California and the World” is the campaign case statement for UC Davis’ Department of Viticulture & Enology, the world’s top-ranked research leader in grape growing and winemaking. A signature fundraising tool of the university’s Expect Greater campaign, it tells a comprehensive, compelling story about the university’s decades of leadership at the cutting edge of California winemaking, its bold vision for responding to global challenges and opportunities shaping the wine industry’s future—and above all, the key role philanthropy plays in advancing this work.

The case statement is organized around four primary pillars that guide the department’s research, education and industry outreach:
• Challenging climate-change with world-class innovation
• Creating next-generation technologies that yield more sustainable vineyard and winery models
• Pushing the boundaries of wine chemistry and microbiology to better understand what makes an exceptional wine
• Preparing the next generation of innovators to lead these efforts forward

The thread running through all of this work—and the document’s central theme—is that the story of California’s past, present and future as a global wine hub is a story of fruitful partnerships—between UC Davis and the winemaking families and industry leaders who power the wine world. Our aim is to inspire today’s visionary philanthropists to see themselves as a vital part of this continuum of leadership and innovation. In its first four months of use, the document already has led to multiple major gifts and is playing a strategic communications role for the department and its philanthropic and industry champions.