The Warren J. Mitofsky Memorial Fund to Support the Roper Center

Warren J. Mitofsky
(1934-2006)

Please consider making a generous tax-deductible donation to the Mitofsky Fund in support of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Connecticut.

The Roper Center Board of Directors has created a fund in honor of Warren Mitofsky, who was Chairman of the Board when he died in 2006. At the time of his death, Warren had ambitious plans for the Center's growth, for enhancing its visibility, and for modernizing its storage, retrieval, and data manipulation capabilities. An energized fundraising effort to support these goals was one of his highest priorities.

Why support the Roper Center?

The Roper Center’s mission is to preserve the voice of the people.  It is the largest archive of public opinion data in the world, with holdings from 1935 to present. The Center acquires, organizes, and preserves data from public opinion studies conducted throughout the world and makes these data widely available for further study and research.

Everyone who thinks it is important for the public voice to be heard and accurately represented in debates about policy and politics has a stake in maintaining this important legacy.

The Roper Center is supported by the research organizations and media polling units that generously donate their data to the Center so it will be preserved for posterity for use by future generations.  University libraries, private research firms, and corporations pay an annual fee to access the full Roper Center collection and services. The University of Connecticut also graciously provides staff and office space to support the day-to-day operation of the Center.

But the support of these institutions is not enough for the needs of the Center in the 21st century.

The Warren J. Mitofsky Memorial Fund for the Roper Center supports new initiatives to expand and maintain the holdings of the Center, make the archive easier to use, and give new audiences access to the vast data in the archive.  Specific projects that will benefit from the generosity of donors to the Mitofsky Fund include:

• Expanding the archive to increase its holdings of research conducted by governments and private firms in Mexico and Latin America
• Creating teaching materials to be used in innovative high school courses to introduce students to the analysis of public opinion
• Transferring hundreds of public opinion surveys conducted decades ago into current data formats so they can be readily accessed now and in the future and used in comparative and historical analysis
• Creating new online tools for data analysis that will make data in the archive more accessible to journalists, students, and others.

The Mitofsky Fund also supports an annual $1,000 award for outstanding research utilizing data in the Roper archive.

The 2009 recipient will be honored at an Awards Dinner held November 12th in New York City at the Bryant Park Grill.

Please join with us in honoring Warren and enhancing the work of the Center by generously contributing to the Mitofsky Fund.

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