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Organizational records; minutes of the board of directors, and of the steering committee; and subject files detailing fund raising activities and campus fraternities (resulting from association of staff member with Sigma Phi).

The Development Council records date from 1951 to 1985 and measure 3.5 linear feet. They are arranged in a two series: Board of Directors and an Alphabetical File. The records are most notable for organizational documents from the early 1950s and mid- to late-1960s, long runs of minutes from the board of directors (1953-1985) and steering committee (1968-1980), and correspondence from the development office (1951-1963). Surprisingly, there is a small but interesting body of records regarding fraternities and sororities, particularly Sigma Phi. This is located in the correspondence and results from the association of one of the Development Office staff with Sigma Phi.

Records of University of Michigan office (and its predecessor administrative offices) responsible for external fund raising and development activities, including subject files of development officials Arthur Brandon, Lyle Nelson, and Michael Radock; staff files; and photographs.

The records of the Vice President for Development date from 1948 to the present and measure 39.5 linear feet. They reflect the basic concerns of the office for these four decades: preserving and improving the university's public image and planning major fundraising efforts. Unfortunately, both activities are incompletely documented. In the area of public relations the records tend to discuss how immediate problems will be dealt with, rather than overall conceptions of the university's image. The thought behind the innovative fundraising devices created or employed by the office is sometimes recorded through consultant reports, but in general is not well documented.

The manuscript records have been divided into two subgroups, one representing the records of the vice president (or senior staff person, for those years in which there was no vice presidency), the other containing records created by the development office. The Vice Presidents subgroup has been divided by the name of each person who has held the office: Arthur Brandon, Lyle Nelson, and Michael Radock. Researchers should note that since Nelson and Radock used their predecessor's files for some time before inaugurating their own records, the relationship between office tenure and file dates is not an exact one. The Development Office subgroup contains records of that office and its subsidiary units. Several accessions of Development Office records received in 1989 and 1990 have been grouped together as Development Office subgroup: 1989-1990 accessions.