Yale Alumni Nonprofit Alliance holds annual gala 

Staff Reporter

Courtesy of Brian Hammerstein

On a winter evening in 2011, a group of nine Yale alumni gathered on the 18th floor of the Yale Club of New York City to discuss how the University’s nonprofit community could be unified to create a greater impact, according to Ken Inadomi ’76, who founded the Yale Alumni Nonprofit Alliance.

The group convened for that first meeting after receiving invitations from Inadomi. Inadomi said that although close to 50 alumni RSVP’d to attend, a blizzard that night whittled the group down to its smaller size. Today YANA is composed of over 9,000 alumni engaged in social impact work across the globe. Over 180 YANA members and their guests attended YANA’s annual gala at the Yale Club of New York City on Thursday evening. The gala, which featured a performance by the undergraduate a cappella group Shades of Yale, marked the group’s first in-person event since 2017. 

YANA also held a conference the following day, titled “Magnifying Your Mission.”

“Our saying has always been that when like-minded, mission-driven people get together, great things happen,” Inadomi told the News. “So many relationships, introductions and connections have been formed over the past 24 hours, and it’s incredibly gratifying; the power to convene, arguably, is one of humanity’s greatest strengths, and it’s one that we have to continually exercise.”

This year’s gala theme was “Generation to Generation,” a nod to the intergenerational involvement of Yalies in social impact work, Inadomi said in his opening remarks. 

University President Peter Salovey also delivered remarks in a pre-recorded message shown to attendees at the event. During the gala, the organization also honored four alumni for their exemplification of YANA’s mission in generating positive social impact. Those honored included David W. Blight, Sterling Professor of history and director of the Gilder Lehrman Center; Robinhood CEO Richard Buery LAW ’97; Sherry Wang ’07, co-head of the Urban Investments Group at Goldman Sachs; and current YANA Executive Director Rachel Littman ’91. 

“As the theme of this year’s gala suggests, mission-driven work reverberates from generation to generation and as you know, serving a cause greater than our own interests today is the surest way to enrich the world tomorrow,” University President Peter Salovey said in a video shown to gala attendees. “Of course, as a global research university, Yale is dedicated to advancing the frontiers of knowledge, [but] we also expect our graduates to mobilize what they have learned for the benefit of humanity.” 

David Wilkins, director of philanthropy at Dwight Hall at Yale, told the News that he is excited about the connections between Yale alumni working toward social change that YANA helps to create.

Since 2017, YANA and Dwight Hall have collaborated to offer YANA-Dwight Hall Summer Fellowships, which include stipends for summer living expenses for a group of undergraduate or recently graduated students with financial constraints who are pursuing “careers in common good,” according to the fellowship’s site.

“Besides building the next generation of social change leaders and nurturing and inspiring public service and social justice work in New Haven and beyond, some of [Dwight Hall’s] additional long-term objectives are embodied through this event, such as exposing more current students and young alumni to pathways to public service careers and in the long term of building a network of alumni and Dwight Hall students in mentor-mentee relationships,” Wilkins said.

Among those in attendance was Sean Hargrow ’26, founder and executive director of the Yale Undergraduate Coalition for Advocacy and Innovation, who told the News that, for him, the event served as a networking opportunity to engage with alumni in the non profit world.

Littman told the News that YANA acts as a central hub for University alumni involved in the social impact space and that she encourages current undergraduate students to engage with the organization.

“Don’t go through Yale thinking that it’s all about banking or investment banking because it really isn’t,” Littman said. “We don’t have as much presence on campus but contact someone within YANA, and it will open up this huge network because all the alumni really do want to help, and we’re all growing and learning from each other and so students can come learn from us and we can learn from you.”

Merle Duskin Kailas SOM ’79, who is a member on YANA Board, told the News that she was astounded to find out that the organization operated on an $80,000 budget.

She added that the organization works to provide programming on a volunteer basis and that “every dime” the organization makes goes toward programming costs. Duskin also said that with more donations from YANA members, the group could look to hire permanent staff that would allow the organization to grow even further.

“Fundraising is very hard,” Kailas said. “We need a staff, we need real infrastructure, we need to be able to pay salaries, we need to be able to pay benefits … And we could hire that core staff, we could grow exponentially but right now we’re pretty limited.”

The Yale Club in New York City was founded in 1897.