Thanks for filling our sky with stars!

We set out to attain a goal for our end-of-year fundraising campaign: $100,000 in giving between November 1st and December 31st. We are pleased to announce that we more than exceeded this goal, raising a total of 105,965!As part of this endeavor, Westar issued a friendly challenge to its Associates and Fellows. The ratio of Associates to Fellows is 8 to 1. For its end of year fundraising program, we playfully challenged the Associates to raise $80,000.00 for Westar and Fellows $20,000.00 for a successful $100,000.00 campaign.

All told, we raised $90,815 from Associates and $11,145 from Scholars. Scholars, you didn't quite make it -- but we can all still count ourselves winners because we contributed to the mission of bringing religious literacy to the public!

This an important time for Westar as established programs are thriving. New efforts and program delivery methods are being developed and tested to advance Westar’s cutting-edge scholarship and robust verbal exchanges. The staff has made a commitment to use live-streaming, as locations permit, for JSORs and other Westar events. Video blogs are available as well as new material being fed to our YouTube channel, and a regular blog addressing scholarship and contemporary issues is now widely followed.

Thank you for joining us in demonstrating our appreciation for all that Westar does. (Of course, you are still welcome to make a contribution to Westar and can do so here.)As Marketing and Digital Education Director, Alexis Waggoner works closely with both Westar’s Marketing Committee and the Executive Director to advance the presence and value of Westar in our culture through social media and the use of digital media in public education. Alexis brings to Westar a unique blend of digital marketing and religious education experience. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary.