President's Message

Dear Beefmaster Breeders and Friends,

2022 marks the 12th year for the Beefmaster Education Endowment Foundation, or B.E.E.F. for short. We come a long way since a few breeders came up with the idea in a hotel bar at a sale somewhere.

The Foundation is a 501(c)3 not for profit corporation, meaning folks can give tax-deductible donations to the Foundation, which can then spend money to promote the breed in three major areas: Research, Scholarships and Education.

As of January 1, 2022, B.E.E.F. has spent $219,471 on research. This included three different projects focused on generating Feed Efficiency Data. This data enabled the introduction in 2021 of BBU’s new RFI (Residual Feed Intake) and $FE (Feed Efficiency Index). Efficiency is one of Beefmasters strong suits, and now we can convey that to the buying public through EPD’s. Clearly, BBU would not been able to achieve that level of funding for research without B.E.E.F., so it is an incredibly valuable relationship.

Since inception, B.E.E.F. has spent $41,429 on education. This has largely been in the form of paying for speakers and educational content at the BBU and JBBA conventions. We plan to expand into helping with field days for satellites and more public outreach as the funds available grow.

Finally, $92,976 has been given out in scholarships. There is nothing more important that helping push our Beefmaster Youth through their education and onto adulthood, hopefully as Beefmaster Breeders! In 2021, the “Prime” B.E.E.F. Scholarship was introduced, giving a deserving recipient $2000 annually for 4 years. We will add a new Prime scholarship each year until 4 are running at once.

This totals $353,876 given back to the Beefmaster World, which is pretty darn remarkable! Imagine the difference we can make in the growth of Beefmasters with this level of sustained spending in critical areas into the future?

The Endowment stands at $1,100,195., and it is important to note that the corpus of which this will never be touched. B.E.E.F.’s investments have yielded $223,038 since the fund was established and enjoyed an incredible 15% return over the past 3 years. B.E.E.F. has a very conservative spending policy in place to insure the Endowment will continue to grow.

We need everyone’s help with gifts large or small. The Foundation Campaign seeks 5-year pledges to grow the endowment. But we also need a lot of single gifts of any size – the goal is to have truly broad-based involvement from the BBU Membership. B.E.E.F. can also help with tax and estate planning.

Special thanks to everyone who has helped B.E.E.F. grow from an idea in a bar to a critical piece in the Beefmaster arsenal as we share the good news of the Beefmaster with the Beef Industry.


Warmly
Lorenzo Lasater
Board President
Beefmaster Education Endowment Foundation