Mayor Menino, Chancellor Motley Announce Partnership to Support Boston Main Streets
UMass Boston Is First University to Join Community Change Program
Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Chancellor J. Keith Motley today announced a unique partnership between the University of Massachusetts Boston and Boston Main Streets to promote the Boston Community Change card among its more than 75,000 students, faculty and staff, and alumni.
The Boston Community Change affinity card, when used at participating businesses throughout Boston’s 19 Main Streets neighborhoods, provides customers with an earned cash rebate and directs a portion of each purchase toward neighborhood Main Streets districts and a nonprofit or school of the cardholder’s choosing. In exchange for encouraging students, faculty, staff, and alumni to sign up for and use the card, UMass Boston will be added as an option for cardholder donations.
“I applaud UMass Boston for being the first university to step up and partner with us to help support our local business districts,” Mayor Menino said. “Boston Main Streets serves such an important role in supporting and strengthening our neighborhoods. It’s good to see that this is also a priority for Chancellor Motley and UMass Boston.”
The Boston Community Change program was founded in 2006 and the card is now accepted by more than 200 businesses in neighborhoods from West Roxbury and Dorchester to East Boston and Allston/Brighton. Proceeds from the card benefiting Boston Main Streets will help support the city’s 19 neighborhood Main Streets districts.
“We know how important small businesses are to local economies and healthy communities, and we welcome the opportunity to support the work of the Main Streets program across the City of Boston,” Chancellor Motley said. “Mayor Menino has led this program to become a national model that I believe the UMass Boston community will want to know more about and support.”
Among its promotional activities, UMass Boston will encourage its more than 800 faculty and staff members to sign up for the card via the university’s web site and will staff an information table in the Campus Center during the first week of September as approximately 14,000 students begin class. In addition, the university will reach out to more than 60,000 alumni to encourage them to support local business development efforts as well as UMass Boston.
For more information, visit www.bostoncommunitychange.org.
About the University of Massachusetts Boston
Established in 1964, UMass Boston prides itself on providing challenging teaching, distinguished research, and extensive public service to Boston and the Commonwealth. Through its six colleges—Liberal Arts, Science and Mathematics, Management, Nursing and Health Sciences, Public and Community Service, and Graduate College of Education—the McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, and the Division of Corporate, Continuing, and Distance Education, UMass Boston offers undergraduate and graduate study to 13,400 students in more than 150 fields. For more information, visit www.umb.edu.