alumni futures

Fundraising on Twitter: Anything New Here?

In late February Mashable's Melissa Jun Rowley published an article titled 10 Tips for Successful Twitter Fundraising. I was interested to see what Twitter-specific tactics might surface. But when I read the list, it seemed to me that every one of them was something that any non-profit fundraising professional should be doing anyway – and not just on Twitter. 

Examples of the non-Twitter-specific advice include

• Keep Track of Developing Relationships
  
• Recognize Volunteers and Donors
  

and

• State Your Purpose and Your Request Clearly
  

These are certainly critical components to successful fundraising – but they are not at all specific to Twitter. 

In the comments to the post Laurie Pringle voiced this exact point, saying:

This is basic fundraising 101. Very little of this is specific to Twitter - it's basic fundraising, sales, marketing and relationship building skills (and some might say just plain old good manners)...Every major non profit conference I go to, most of the philanthropy and charity websites, are full of articles, papers and educational offerings on just this topic – and have been for some time.

I agree. So my questions are

Are some of these "10 Tips" actually more true on Twitter than in any other fundraising channel?

and

Are there other tips that you can think of that really do apply more to Twitter than to any other channel?

Leave a comment. Or write a reply on Twitter: @alumnifutures.

New Staffing Models in Alumni Relations

[Alumni Futures is partnering with Charlie Melichar's Intermedia blog this week, to share some views on the changing landscape of institutional advancement in education. Read Charlie's interview with Andrew Gossen, Cornell University's new senior director for social media strategy as a companion posting to my comments below.]

I've been thinking a lot recently about something I heard on a SelectMinds webinar a couple of years ago. 

Ethan McCarty, program manager for Greater IBM (the corporate alumni community for current and former IBM employees worldwide) was discussing social media. He described how IBM was connecting the organization to its audience via its sprawling, worldwide LinkedIn Group (more than 46,000 members today). A webinar participant asked how IBM measures the return on investment for social tools. McCarty replied, "What's the ROI for your phone service?" 

In other words, online networks are part of the fabric now, they're what people do. They are as critical to many businesses as telephone service is. Online community is not an experiment or a half-measure to make up for the fact that people won't read your direct mail pieces.

Our work requires ever-increasing incorporation of online networks and so-called social media – these are tools for doing our work, not just "programs and services" that we offer. So what are the implications for alumni relations? One implication is that staffing models, organizational structure and professional roles must change, and change soon.

Cornell University (Ithaca, New York, USA) is adapting to these opportunities by creating permanent roles that embed these practices in the alumni relations effort. Their decisions raise the bar for how alumni offices incorporate social tools into traditional engagement. I asked Cornell's Associate Vice President for Alumni Relations, Chris Marshall, to comment on their rationale.

Chris told me,

I've hired most of our team members for their ability to motivate and manage volunteers, to develop deep relationships, to plan strategic events, and to work hand-in-hand with fundraisers. Asking staff with those specialized skills to also become experts in a rapidly-evolving field like social media, with its complicated task of collecting, synthesizing, and reporting metrics, simply won't get the job done. I believe we need dedicated staff in these areas for alumni affairs to succeed.

We’ve decided that social media is going to be the primary way we ‘touch’ most of our 215,000 alumni. We also believe it will help us advance our relationships with key donors and volunteer leaders. So we have to do it right, and have to show our results with data. That’s why we’ve hired Andrew Gossen as our Senior Director of Social Media Strategy, and given Jennifer Cunningham the title of Senior Director, Marketing Strategy and Business Analytics.

This doesn't mean that other staff members are off the hook and don't need to know or think about the newer tools that alumni are using. A new hire today should be familiar with social sites and comfortable using them for alumni engagement, in ways that make sense in their own organization. 

Other organizations, such as the Stanford Alumni Association, have also begun carving out these roles even in the face of limited resources. By measuring the results analytically, these front-runners will be able to show how our online efforts influence alumni relationships (with each other and with our institutions), and to what extent. This is the beginning of an important new direction for alumni relations, communications, and development staffing models.

Related postings: 

A post about Princeton's mobile-optimized reunion web site

Andrew's guest blog post about "an unusual online student-alumni interaction"

Andrew's guest blog post about social networking meeting philanthropy

CAE: 2009 Saw Drop in Giving to U.S. Higher Education

This is the time of year when the Council for Aid to Education (CAE) publishes its annual report on Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) – that is, financial donations to colleges and universities in the United States.

According to a New York Times article about the CAE's survey, 

Gifts to colleges and universities declined almost 12 percent in the 2009 fiscal year, to $27.85 billion...the steepest decline in the survey's 53-year history.

The article goes on to state that

• private liberal arts colleges saw the largest decline (18.3%);
  
• capital gifts (for endowment or buildings and property) dropped 25%;
• the last decade has seen an average 4.1% overall increase in giving each year.

Here are past Alumni Futures postings on this survey since 2007:

2007: Alumni Dollars Are Up, Participation Is Down (Again)

2008: CAE: Alumni Participation and Dollars Both Declined in 2007

2009: I did not report on the CAE survey last year, but here is a statement from CASE about the survey's results.

Here is the Chronicle of Higher Education's report on today's announcement of survey results.

Alumni Relations and Fundraising: The View from Twitter

This is a short work week in the United States, thanks to the annual Thanksgiving Holiday. So instead of laying a heavy trip on Alumni Futures' readers, I'll just share a few of the occasional alumni-related postings seen on Twitter. This isn't about "how to use Twitter for fundraising and alumni relations." It's just a couple of simple observations.

The theme connecting the tweets I have collected here is this: 

Students and alumni have a preconceived idea about what alumni associations do, and our actions often don't match those preconceptions.

For example, we often include students in alumni communication before they graduate. Students don't always expect (or want) to be invited to interact with alumni:

We help alumni and friends connect by forwarding contact requests (but not giving out contact info!). Alumni don't necessarily expect us to do this:

 

We email alumni with news, invitations, information and sometimes gift solicitations. They don't all have a warm, fuzzy feeling about alma mater:

We assume that our humanities grads are just as generous as our business or medicine grads, and so we ask them for money...especially if we have a championship basketball team!

 

We make people opt out:

 

And we ask for donations from recent grads, to encourage the "habit of giving," but many alumni equate student debt with immunity from requests for donations:

 

Like it or not, we get painted with a broad brush. Students and alumni won't necessarily understand why we do what we do, and more to the point, even if they do understand, they won't automatically care. 

What we do must have value and relevance to their needs and to their interests. If we don't convey this clearly, they'll echo sentiments like this one:

Remember: perception matters.

How Advancement Will Change After the Recession: 4 Questions

At the recent CASE Board meeting Paul Sheff, chair of the Commission on Philanthropy (and chair-elect of the CASE Board) shared a set of questions he developed in collaboration with CASE staff. I thought the document was thought-provoking, and worth sharing more broadly.

Share your own questions (or answers to these questions) by leaving a comment.

1. If necessity is the mother of invention, what did we invent during the past year in response to the economic downturn that might remain in place when our institutions’ finances return to “normal”?

2. What have we learned about measuring and demonstrating the importance of advancement to our institutions, defining our messages, and communicating with and engaging our constituents? Which of these lessons will translate to our work in better economic times?
  
3. What have we learned about collaboration across our traditional disciplines (alumni relations, communications, development and marketing), staffing (number of staff required and deployment of staff), organizational structures and management in general? 

4. What – if anything – should CASE be doing now to develop content and services for members in the post‐recession workplace? What should be at the top of the list? 

Special thanks to Paul Sheff (president of Catholic Memorial School in Massachusetts) and to CASE's Rae Goldsmith for encouraging me to share these questions with Alumni Futures' readers.

Image of the plight of bananas during a recession from Flickr user Colin White, via Creative Commons.

10 Ways We Use Social Media to Engage Alumni, from Mashable

Over at the excellent Mashable blog, Vadim Lavrusik has written a great summary of ten ways in which colleges and universities are deploying so-called social tools to engage and serve alumni. 

10 Ways Universities Are Engaging Alumni Using Social Media

While obviously not an exhaustive list, the article provides a comprehensive but manageable overview of different approaches to web-driven alumni interaction. 

Take a look and leave a comment (here or on Mashable): do you think the article is on target, and what are you doing to engage alumni online?

How Not To Find Lost Alumni

The other day I mentioned that AlumTweet could theoretically help you find lost alumni, but that its value might not outweigh some of its risks or shortcomings. This reminded me to comment about another, more typical way of searching for lost alumni.

The search for lost alumni is a priority of many new alumni directors and advancement vice presidents. After all, more alumni in the database means more contact, and more fundraising opportunities.

As a result, alumni association web pages are peppered with well-intentioned listings of "lost alumni" - graduates whose names have no corresponding mailing or email address and no telephone number in the alumni database. (Image at right)

I believe that listing lost alumni on your web site is a security risk – and a potential privacy violation waiting to happen. 

Why? 

Human nature. 

Your advancement office probably has policies designed to protect alumni contact information, but it also has well-meaning, helpful staff members. Putting a policy in place cannot stop someone from providing alumni directory log in credentials to someone who contacts the office and says, "I'm on your list of lost alumni and I'd like to use the directory and update my record. Can you please tell me my user ID and password?"

If this happens just once, you've created a security risk. Providing access to the alumni directory without verifying identification (e.g., by insisting on phone contact and asking for details from the person's alumni record – such as major subject of study, or an advisor's name) means risking the exposure of private alumni contact information to a spammer or a stalker.

My own experience is that these public lists of lost alumni generate extremely small numbers of updated records. In my opinion the risk outweighs the benefit.

If you disagree, or have experience with this practice, leave a comment.

Anonymous Donations: Should We Care About the Source?

Two weeks ago I submitted a topic to the CASE Group discussions on the LinkedIn web site [free registration required]. I am posting an updated version of my question here to generate additional discussion.

Anonymous Donations: Anyone concerned about the source of the funds?:

There has been ample news coverage recently about a series of anonymous donations to US colleges and universities, totaling some $80 million so far. The gifts come with the stipulation that the receiving institution must not attempt to identify the source of the gifts, or the donations may be rescinded.

Should the receiving institutions have concerns about accepting donations of this size without any information about the donor, business or enterprise that generated the funds? I can imagine a circumstance in which an institution later wishes it were not linked to the donor or his/her line of business. 

In reply, Judy Piercey (University of California - San Diego) quoted an article in which her UCSD colleague Juli Larsen (Associate Vice Chancellor of Development) commented about having been approached with a similar offer: 

As a public institution, we do have very stringent rules on gift acceptance. The only way we were willing to enter into this discussion was if the bank itself...was willing to verify [that] the source of the funds was legal and attest in writing to the legitimacy of the donor and the donor's intent.

As it happened, that donor did not make the donation, but the point, said Larsen, is that 

This was definitely new territory. It was frustrating....Our work is about trying to connect donors with our people and programs. So obviously we want to meet these [donors].

What do you think? Should we be grateful for any large donation in tough economic times, or should we be suspicious (or at least, extra curious) about large gifts from donors who don't want anyone to know who they are?

Additional coverage of the topic from Inside Higher Ed:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/05/08/donor 

Guest Blogger Ian Moore: A UK Perspective on Alumni Reunions

Last Monday's Posting about the New York Times commentary on reunions and Facebook elicited some great comments. Among them was a reflection on reunions by Ian Moore, Deputy Director of Development & Alumni Relations at Coventry University in England. I thought it was worthy of its own posting, so Ian becomes the first non-North American guest blogger on Alumni Futures. Here's a slightly edited version of his remarks about reunions from a few days ago.

Large reunions can mean a huge workload, and yet proportionally reunions engage relatively few alumni annually. This is especially true when you consider what can be achieved if you allocate the budget and workforce to other schemes, including online community building.

I can understand that for established programmes in America, reunions may serve a justified purpose as part of a balanced programme of activities. However in the UK, many of us in start-up operations are being asked to create a tradition of reunions from scratch, with initial events expected to be sell-outs, as they are certain "that's what happens in the US." Obviously, it’s much easier to host a reunion if you have been actively stewarding alumni through structured alumni engagement since graduation (and before). However, not only is this not always true in America, for relatively new alumni relations operations, many graduates will have had lengthy periods with no contact from the institution. It always surprises me therefore how much importance is placed on reunions as a global measure of an alumni operation's success. Admittedly, events are a highly visible part of an alumni operation but so many other crucial yet less obvious activities must precede them. I would expect start-ups to put goals in order and 

1. create databases 
2. create communication channels (publications, e-newsletters, websites) 
3. establish & promote community connections (interaction with publications, personal updates, address changes, web communities, etc.)
4. encourage engagement (including asking alumni to return for reunion events)
5. harness alumni goodwill in some way, and steward at the next level 

1. and 2. can be set-up relatively quickly but creating a community is a slow, trust-building exercise. At my institution I expect to be in the community building phase for many years before sizable numbers of alumni wish to reunite with one another as standard practice. At the moment, alumni wish to reunite specifically with their old friends. If those friends are not attending, alumni do not want to come regardless of how exciting the event (and similarly those friends do not come for exactly the same reason – catch 22). I suspect that although this will undoubtedly be true in the US for some alumni, many will return for a reunion because they feel a commitment to the alumni community and a shared identity that they wish to demonstrate and nurture. This reflects the many decades' work in establishing an alumni culture. In the UK we need to recognise our cultural differences and our relatively late arrival to this profession. People do not attend reunions for another chicken dinner. They come to see old friends and reflect their commitment to a proud relationship with that institution that has not dulled over time. The alumni profession needs to accept that alumni, thanks to services such as Facebook, can now network more efficiently than ever and retain contact with friends much more easily. They may not need an official reunion if they wish to meet up with their old classmates. A simple email sent personally to a large group inviting them to a selected bar, restaurant or home may be just as effective. However, they cannot demonstrate their pride in their connection with an institution anywhere else. By offering institutional reunions we allow cherished memories to be dusted down and given greater value. Don’t we all at some stage want to look back fondly on our past in the belief that we have made good choices?

Do I think reunions have a future? Yes.

Do I think reunions are overrated? Yes.

Would I like to see equal or greater value given to other programmes, such as online community development? Absolutely.

Finally, some events serve multiple purposes and can help to establish community. In my list of 1. to 5. above, some reunions are worthwhile at an early stage of alumni operation development; indeed, some giveback (5.) is possible very quickly — but these should be the exceptions and not the rule. So pick the easy wins first and don’t chase the impossible dreams currently set by senior institution leaders who see the success in North America, and expect it can be duplicated quickly and easily elsewhere. Make it clear that American success is a product of long term investment in many things – not just hosting parties.

Reunions in the Digital Age: More Compelling, or Less?

This weekend the New York Times gave Facebook a long look. Brad Stone asked if Facebook was "growing up too fast." His article covered a wide range of the site's uses and users, detractors and fans alike. In Sunday's Bits blog, in a posting titled Who Needs a College Reunion? I've Got Facebook, Jenna Wortham skimmed lightly over the question of whether she should attend her five-year reunion at the University of Virginia. After all, she wrote,

I already know which of my former classmates spent their post-graduate years planting gardens in the Dominican Republic for the Peace Corps...I've seen photographs documenting medical missions to South Africa, vacations to Ecuador and endless albums of wedding receptions and gurgling babies.

The dozens of reader comments on the piece offered a counterbalance to Ms. Wortham's posting. Among other things, readers pointed out that:

• Most alumni skip the five year reunion because many grads haven't done very much in five years, compared with what they'll have accomplished when the 20th rolls around. 
• Facebook may increase attendance at college and high school reunions because it makes it easier to spread the word, even to alumni who don't receive (or read) mailings from alma mater.
• The extension of Ms. Wortham's argument is "why bother making plans at all?" In other words, at what point does an activity pass "the Facebook test" and promise to be more interesting in person than online?
• Social sites help alumni relations by "keeping your emotional connection to campus going" whether you're near to campus or far away.  
• There's an experiential gap between the classes that are (right now) three and five years out of college. The former have had Facebook all the way through their undergraduate experience; the latter had to adopt it after they graduated. How this plays out in attitudes toward campus and toward face-to-face interaction remains to be seen, but must be monitored by alumni and development professionals.

There are a few counter-arguments as well, tending to support Ms. Wortham:

One reader states that at the "selective, private university" where he attended grad school, the undergrad reunions "seem weirdly insular and self-congratulatory...a re-affirmation of their Ivy League exceptionalism." This sounds like a success to me, as an alumni director. If alumni don't think there's anything special about their relationship with alma mater (and each other), the institution will have a hard time convincing them they need to return. 

Finally, one writer comments that he'd "rather reunite with my friends on my own terms. I don't need an institutional excuse." Another writes that if there are really a few "select individuals" you want to see in person, "you arrange it. Reunion stock is taking a nose dive."

Herein lies the big challenge for alumni associations. An alumni association executive once described inviting a graduating senior to join the official online alumni community. The student's reply: "I already have my network, and I'm taking it with me." 

If students and alumni don't see the school playing a relevant role, or providing services unavailable elsewhere, then the association and the institution will have no choice but to fade into the background. That's why most of us are trying to make our voices heard through LinkedIn Groups and Facebook Groups and Pages. 

And this strategy might work in the long run. But we should be working on a backup plan in the meantime, so we have an alternative that makes us visible, relevant and engaging to our alumni over time. 

What do you think?

[Updated 30 March: Link to the UVaToday blog posting on the topic.]

A note of appreciation to Donald Ivanoff at Polytechnic Institute of NYU, who independently mentioned Alumni Futures in a comment on the NY Times blog. 

Photo of reunion fireworks over the University of Virginia Rotunda from Flickr user David Werner via Creative Commons.