alumni futures

Profile: Krista Slade and the Rhodes Trust

[Updated 25 November, 2011 with link to "Networking" article from Toronto Globe and Mail.]

Alumni communities serve critical roles in many kinds of organizations – not only in schools, colleges or universities.

This article is the third in a series of short interviews with professionals from non-traditional alumni programs.

Profile: Krista Slade
Director of Advancement 
The Rhodes Trust
Oxford, UK 

Krista Slade oversees alumni, development, and communications supporting the Rhodes Scholarships at Oxford University in the UK. Krista joined the Trust in 2010, after three years as the first executive director of the Singapore-based Asia-Pacific office of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). With more than 20 years' experience in global advancement, she's worked in Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore, her native Canada and now the UK. In 2010 she was honored with CASE's Crystal Apple award for outstanding teaching.

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Alumni Futures: Krista, what is the Rhodes Trust, and how does institutional advancement fit with its mission?

Krista Slade: The Rhodes Trust administers the Rhodes Scholarships, established in 1903 from the estate of Cecil Rhodes, who had the vision to create the first international scholarship program. His generosity has educated more than 7,000 Rhodes Scholars to date. Alumni include Nobel Laureates, Olympians, government leaders, judges, teachers, and business people. Scholars come from all corners of the globe, and share exceptional intellect and a commitment to service. We have about 4,400 living Scholars in more than 70 countries. 

[Rhodes was funded by a remarkably visionary act of philanthropy,
yet doesn't have a tradition of fundraising]

Our core mission is to operate the world's preeminent scholarship program, and ensure that we have the resources to do this in perpetuity. Our office is responsible for communicating our values, attracting the best scholarship applicants, and supporting our volunteer and fundraising infrastructure. Connecting the global Rhodes community and keeping them involved is the cornerstone of all we do. 

AF: Your educational advancement background is extensive. Which aspects of your current work are most similar to traditional alumni and development, and in what ways are your current roles different?

KS: Rhodes was funded by a remarkably visionary act of philanthropy, yet it doesn't have a tradition of fundraising. So my role is all about building a sustainable, integrated development effort from scratch. This means establishing a database, understanding different countries' tax laws, hiring, writing – what you would find in any start-up operation. We have outstanding support from leadership and a great development board. We don't have a problem identifying prospective donors; the challenge is building the infrastructure to follow up on the opportunities. It's a nice problem to have.

AF: In the future, will Rhodes benefit from following traditional advancement models, or will you need to invent new ways of engaging your audience in order to succeed? 

KS: Most of what we do follows practices used in other institutions. One aspect that differentiates Rhodes is the global and mobile nature of our alumni community. Fortunately, Scholars have an established tradition of keeping in touch with Rhodes House, dating back to the earliest days. We have a great opportunity to connect with our constituents at the grassroots level. The Warden of Rhodes House, our CEO, has met with more than half of the living Rhodes Scholars in the last two years – a remarkable, empowering feat. It also requires a huge amount of follow-up and responsiveness.

This broad consultation process is fundamental to future success, and has already created tangible outcomes. For example, we have started distributing the bios of our Scholars when they leave Oxford. This is the most-clicked item in our electronic communications. Interest in the current and future generations drives much of our philanthropy.

AF: What are you doing now that shows promise for future success? What additional resources will you need for the program to reach its full potential?

KS: Two Scholars from the class of 2009 approached me about starting a graduating class gift campaign. They secured 85% participation from the global class. The gifts were modest, but the enthusiastic response was heartening for our Trustees and alumni. Our message about why support matters is filtering out to all segments of our community. Creating this culture of asking and giving is a long-term project, but it will pay big dividends in coming years.

[Our CEO has met with more than half of the living Rhodes Scholars
in the last two years]

Another unique aspect of Rhodes is that we have a strong reputation in some markets (especially the U.S. and Canada), but are less well-known elsewhere, even in the U.K. Building a domestic donor base for the Scholarships is an area with strong potential.

The biggest operational challenge right now is recruiting and training staff members to deliver the support and infrastructure our volunteers need and deserve. We have the budget, but not the bodies. Watch this space!

Photo of Rhodes House by The Reith Lectures, via Creative Commons. Click it to view full-size.

Related resources

• Rhodes Alumni Video Interviews (rhodeshouse.ax.ac.uk)
• Video: Rhodes Warden/CEO Donald Markwell & NY Times writer Nick Kristof (vimeo.com)
• 11 Famous Rhodes Scholars (huffingtonpost.com)
• Consider These Rhodes Scholarship Tips (usnews.com)
• Networking key to survival of...Rhodes Scholarships (theglobeandmail.com)
   
  Past Alumni Futures profiles: 
• Profile: Brant Ust, USA Baseball (alumnifutures.com)
• Profile: Dean Dwigans, Marshall European Center (alumnifutures.com)  

English Universities After the "Browne Report"

 

An independent higher education review panel in England published its recommendations in October 2010. The adoption of the panel's findings engendered (among other things) large-scale protests by English university students. The dramatic response centered primarily on the cost implications of the proposed reforms. The review itself, known familiarly as the Browne Report, is about 60 pages long – but its most noted suggestions included the following:

• No cap on university fees (tuition).
• Limited government underwriting. 
• Limits to the portion of student fees that universities can keep.
• Government funding only for "strategically important" subjects and courses (e.g., in sciences and technology).
• A not-so-simple system of partial- and maximum-maintenance-grants. 
• Proportional tuition grant repayment by alumni, depending on their income level once they leave university.
• A single Higher Education Council to replace four existing high-level offices, to set quality levels, enforce academic quality standards, scrutinize student access, and with authority to bail out struggling institutions.
• An 80% cut in the government's "block grant" to universities (to be offset by student tuition fees).

That last item is certainly among the most radical on the Report's long list. The current grant is almost US$6 billion.

The summary above is admittedly an over-simplified snapshot of just a handful of the Report's proposals. With that in mind, here are a few brief observations about points in the Browne Report that I think deserve further appraisal.

The Report shifts higher education from being a publicly funded good to being a free market commodity, subject to competition. It's hard to argue for or against specific levels of funding or targets for cuts when what is changing is the very philosophy behind an entire nation's higher education system.  

But in fact, there isn't really a university "system" in England, any more than we have one in the United States. The wide range of institutions represents a decentralized, unsystematized diversity of educational options that defies the application of a single "model" to govern the entire collection. 

Lord Browne has said that "student choice" must influence "academic quality." But "quality" is hard to measure, so the proposed proxy is "student satisfaction." A nod toward measuring university effectiveness would be welcome here, but that's hard to measure too – especially as educational goals vary widely from student to student. Taking into account the sliding re-payment system for student bursaries, Browne's system may channel many students' goals toward making the most money, so they can pay off their loans. This, in turn would limit the range of professional fields which they might enter. With more students going after degrees in business, finance and technology (or wherever the higher paying jobs will be), fewer would pursue the arts, "non-strategic" languages, and the humanities.

And the proposed free market would dictate that those unpopular courses, therefore, no longer be offered. The institutions that want to offer them would close, or shut down those departments entirely.

Stefan Collini has described this as a "disguised voucher scheme":

Students will be able to borrow the cost of the fees...and they are then expected to go and spend them on the 'service provider' of their choice. The [Browne] report proposes that what universities teach will henceforth be determined by their anticipation of consumer demand.

When all the nit-picking about specific issues is done, the question remains: should a national government abdicate responsibility for judging the long-term value of the academic subjects it supports? Letting "the market" choose which departments survive is a high-level cop-out. I'm not sure that a group of "experts" on high would make good decisions, but I do think the education community would benefit from an honest appraisal of which disciplines the population needs, in what way, and for what ultimate purpose.

Facility with languages, in-depth exposure to the visual or performing arts and literature, awareness of cultural and historical trends – all these things deserve careful assessment before being turned over to free-market decision-making, especially when that decision will be influenced by constraints such as the student's ability to pay back a loan.

Universities should offer the academic subjects that contribute to the financial well-being of the country and the individual; but the less lucrative academic subjects can and should be measured against a standard other than their economic by-products.

A final thought: the slow-moving gears of shared governance in education aren't adjusted for the relatively brusque decision-making in this case. England's education sector has been hit not only by the content of the Browne Report, but by its urgency, which makes its impact all the more dramatic. The relative speed with which the Report was issued and its proposals adopted adds to the impression within higher education that the government's decision-makers are out of touch with "how we do things" inside the academy.

Related articles

• The "Browne Report": Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education in England  (independent.gov.uk)
• At a glance: Browne report (bbc.co.uk)
• Browne [report] drew on a single opinion survey (timeshighereducation.co.uk)
• Browne's Gamble by Stefan Collini (lrb.co.uk)
• Tuition fees and why as a Liberal Democrat I would vote against them | Evan Harris (guardian.co.uk)
• British Universities See Magnitude of Budget Cuts (insidehighered.com)
• New Plan for Irish Higher Ed (insidehighered.com)

Photos: 'Save EMA' by Chris Beckett via Creative Commons. 'Student Protests – Parliament Square' by bobaliciouslondon via Creative Commons.

Public School Districts and Alumni Funding

Many American public school districts are searching high and low for additional funding. It seems inevitable that they will ask alumni for donations, as private institutions do. This practice isn't new, but it doesn't garner much attention in the public eye – at least, not compared to the high-profile capital campaigns of private institutions of higher education.

I am guessing we'll hear more about it soon. A recent blog posting from Newark (New Jersey) Star-Ledger columnist Mark Di Ionno highlighted one example of local public school fundraising:

N.J. school districts begin seeking alumni donations to plug holes left by state aid cuts

And this isn't a bake sale or a car wash. The district is talking about raising funds for endowment, as a private institution would do – and they are doing it campaign-style, with a quiet phase that has generated US$3.5 million of a planned US$5 million goal by school-year end, according to Di Ionno's article.

The readers' comments in response to the story raise a number of good questions (in classic Internet flame-bait and trolling fashion).

• Is private fundraising warranted if local tax-payers think administrators are overpaid?
• Will this practice widen the gap between wealthy towns and lower-income areas? 
• Can public elementary and secondary education "compete" with colleges and universities for scarce private support from overlapping populations?

Public school systems can certainly increase individual giving by launching strategies (and training and assigning staff) to pursue it. But many questions remain, such as how much money is out there for savvy, assertive districts, and is endowment the right form of support to pursue? And what are the districts prepared to stop doing to free up resources for development?

Share what you know and think, in the Comments.

Photo of (mostly) smiling students at the Globe, Arizona Public School about 100 years ago, via Flickr user freeparking and Creative Commons.

Related resources

• N.J. school districts turn to local foundations to support imperiled programs (nj.com)
• Facebook founder Zuckerberg establishes foundation to help Newark schools (online.wsj.com) 
• Cash-strapped L.A. schools seeking corporate sponsors (latimes.com)
• First Chevy Volt auctioned for Detroit Public Schools (volt.charitybuzz.org)
• Fund for Public Schools – New York City (schools.nyc.gov)
• Public school fundraiser? Try alumni (the.honoluluadverstiser.com)

Three Models for Alumni Membership: Pros and Cons

Paul Prewitt asked recently whether the membership dues-based association model is hurting alumni organizations, instead of helping them. Having recently stepped down from the leadership of a membership association, I exchanged some ideas with him via email. I've boiled down my thoughts to some simple pros and cons of the various association membership models.

The two alumni-centric models I mention here are 

1. The Membership Dues Model: Alumni choose to pay annual or life member dues, in exchange for a set of benefits and privileges not available to non-members.
2. The Inclusive Model: All alumni have equal access to the same set of programs and services provided by alma mater via the alumni office.
   
   There is also a fundraising-focused offshoot of this:
    
3. The Donor Benefits Model: Individuals (including non-alumni) who donate at least a specified amount of money to the institution receive exclusive benefits for their contribution.

Some Advantages of the Membership Dues Model    

• Generates revenue in the form of dues. 
• Life dues can be placed into endowment for 1) growth and 2) long-term higher return (life members pass away and no longer use benefits, but the association retains and reinvests their dues). 
• Helps you identify who really is a more active than passive supporter (ie, they bothered to join, which is a form of engagement). 
• Members feel privileged to some extent ("first class citizen").
• Places the school in front of constituents through cyclical marketing and renewal process.

Some Disadvantages of the Membership Dues Model

• Members may think that they are donating to the institution when they join an autonomous ("independent") alumni association. 
• There's overhead associated with maintaining dues programs (benefits administration, renewals, payment processing, marketing) so, generally, only larger organizations can justify the relative opportunity cost. Most small shops will do better to allocate their membership management position to events or programs instead.
• Non-members resent the paying for things they think should be free (e.g., library access, publications, discounts, merchandise...).
• Marketing can leave non-joiners with a negative feeling toward the institution.

The primary alternative to due-based associations are so-called "inclusive associations," where all alumni automatically are welcome to participate in activities without regard to having actively joined an association or other alumni organization.

Some Advantages of the Inclusive Model

• Saves on overhead of marketing and administering a separate membership and benefits program. 
• Reduced marketing and sales aspect to alumni relations.
• Helps creates the impression that the association has something of relevance to all alumni.

Some Disadvantages of the Inclusive Model

• Alumni are not aware of the alumni association (or, they're not aware of their "membership" in it).
• All benefits potentially accrue to all alumni, which is a cost ineffective way to model service and product delivery. 
• Removes a potentially significant revenue stream from the balance sheet.

In our brief exchange, Paul also mentioned an off-shoot of the dues model, the Donor Benefits Model. This is a system where benefits accrue to individuals who contribute to the institution above a specified financial threshold. 

Some Advantages of the Donor Benefits Model

• Allows you to identify, cultivate, steward and reward those who support the institution financially. 
• Helps identify prospects for future giving, increased giving, and more diversified giving.
• Can generate attention and gifts from people who otherwise wouldn't bother (for example, they like having access to the institution's president or senior administrators and professors).
• Creates a framework for "more equal than others" outreach, which reinforces the culture of giving at higher levels (e.g., travel programs for President's Circle).

Some Disadvantages of the Donor Benefits Model

• Alienates people who feel their non-financial contributions (e.g., career expertise, volunteer time at events, service on boards) is not valued at same level or in the same way as financial donations.
• Reinforces stereotype that only people who give money are "important" to the school.
• Distracts people from seeing relative value of volunteerism, and may discourage people from engaging non-financially. 

Additional Thoughts

I think that many alumni offices tend to program for a mythical average alumnus who, all things being equal, is 1) interested in alma mater, 2) prepared to engage or join, and 3) willing to donate. 

But there is no such thing as the "average alumnus." The fact is that the vast majority of alumni 1) don't have an active interest in the school, 2) don't join local or comprehensive alumni groups, and 3) don't contribute financially. 

Some associations are already programming more for the minority of alumni who are predisposed toward engagement, while largely ignoring the rest of the constituents. Of course, there will be periodic efforts to attract newly-interested or available alumni as volunteers and donors as well, but alumni who have exhibited low or no engagement over some length of time will be dropped from mailing and invitation lists. 

Bottom Line

Dues-based associations are not "bad" for alumni relations. So long as an association has the scale to justify the overhead cost, dues structures are still justified. But to thrive, membership associations must deliver real benefits that people truly need or want, and that they cannot get elsewhere.

Photo of a members only chair at the Royal & Ancient Golf Club, St. Andrews, Scotland, from Flickr member Son of Groucho via Creative Commons.

Alumni Affinity Credit Card Update

Last week the popular Huffington Post initiated a campaign urging readers to have their college and university alumni associations disclose their affinity credit card agreements. HuffPo, as it is known, mentioned that the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 requires these groups to explain certain aspects of their card contracts.

Huffington also provided a sample letter, and instructions for how to be "polite but persistent" in your query to the university or its alumni group.

As a follow up, CASE's Director of Government Relations & Institutionally Related Foundations, Brian Flahaven, circulated some information highlighting key aspects of the legislation (which is known by its clever acronym: the Credit CARD Act...get it? Credit Card? Credit CARD?).

According to Flahaven, disclosure obligations vary, depending on the kind of "alumni group" involved. 

I'll quote Brian's note at length, since his explanation is detailed and clear:

Alumni Associations Not Separate From Institution
The law requires institutions of higher education to "publicly disclose any contract or other agreement made with a card issuer or creditor for the purpose of marketing a credit card." This means that alumni associations that are not separate from their colleges and universities will now have to disclose all affinity credit card marketing agreements. Final regulations released by the Federal Reserve Board indicate that institutions can meet this requirement by posting the contract or agreement on [their] Web site or by making it available upon request.

Alumni Associations Organized as Separate 501(c)3 Organizations
The law requires credit card companies to disclose any marketing agreements with institutions of higher education, alumni associations and affiliated foundations under which credit cards are issued to college students. This means that any card agreement where a student has been issued a card would be subject to disclosure by the credit card company, not the alumni association. Final regulations released by the Federal Reserve Board...

...Clarify that "an agreement may qualify as a college credit card agreement even if marketing of cards under the agreement is targeted at alumni, faculty, staff and other non-student consumers, as long as cards may also be issued to students in connection with the agreement."

...Define college student broadly. The definition includes students of any age attending an institution of higher education and applies to students enrolled in graduate or joint degree programs.

Finally, Flahaven provides additional links as resources:

• The section of the Credit CARD Act of 2009 affecting alumni association affinity credit card programs [may require CASE member log in]
  

and

• Section of the Federal Reserve Board's final regulations on the Credit CARD Act of 2009 affecting alumni association affinity credit card programs. [333kb PDF]

Brian closes with this advice: "If you receive a request for a copy of your association's affinity credit card agreement, we encourage you to review the law with your legal counsel to determine your disclosure requirements." 

I would say, even if you don't receive a request for a copy of the agreement, go ahead and review the law with general counsel. You should know your legal obligations.

Contact Brian Flahaven at CASE directly with your questions:

telephone: 202/478-5617 or 

email: flahaven@case.org .

Photo of credit card by Ed Ivanushkin via Creative Commons. 

Alumni Magazines: Online Questions, Part II

In the last post, I listed three key issues that alumni publications would have to address while exploring online options: 

1. the delivery format selected, 
2. the accessibility of popular content (which raises privacy issues), and 
3. cost.

These are not the only issues they face, and the comments to my last post contain excellent points for all to consider. But I'll use the three points I made originally as a starting point for discussing some ways to move forward.

Delivery Format
For now, to go portable, alumni magazine publishers must choose between 

• a standalone program (an "app") and
• a mobile-optimized web site (although some may choose both). 

Some apps are certainly popular, but for this use they may not be effective. Before an alumnus sees content via your app, he must visit the online app store, download the app, and launch it to read your content. These are far from insurmountable barriers, but they are barriers to participation nonetheless. 

Meanwhile, mobile-optimized web sites will face the same challenges as traditional web sites: generating traffic, and then generating repeat visits (ideally by inducing alumni to subscribe to updates, as one does with podcasts, for example). Mobile sites that simply load standard versions of web page frustrate their readers with tiny print, links that are too small to "click" with your finger, and microscopic images. For these sites, "optimized" is not a good description. 

Furthermore, web developers who hitched their wagon to Adobe Flash will have to unhitch it and pair up with a different protocol (such as HTML5) if they want to be seen on the iPad. Apple's new device doesn't support the Flash format (which Apple CEO Steve Jobs called a "waning" technology).

Access to Popular Content (and related privacy questions)
Brown University is the alma mater of Brent Grinna, whose blog I quoted last week – and it's my alma mater too. Brown recently put class notes and obituaries behind a log in on its alumni magazine web site. I do read these items in the printed publication every time it arrives (it's an outstanding magazine, by the way). But personally, I wouldn't log in to read class notes and obits online unless the print version went away completely. Even then I would probably not click through; a log in, though critical from a privacy viewpoint, is an one obstacle too many for readers like me; I consume alumni content when it's relevant and convenient – not merely because it's relevant. 

For comparison purposes, the majority of the Ivy Plus Group's ten schools' web sites seem to require a log in to read class notes. Dartmouth's, Penn's, and some of Columbia's alumni notes (e.g., the School of Social Work) are unprotected. But Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, Stanford, MIT, and some of Columbia's schools (e.g., Law) require registration and a log in to read notes. Yale's online class notes, oddly, are temporarily "out of service." 

Class notes are among the most popular items in alumni magazines, in part because class notes' content is most clearly unique to the institution itself. If you believe the feature articles in alumni magazines, every school has earnest students and alumni out to change the world, top-rank researchers pushing the frontiers of science, and bold, visionary leadership ensuring the future of the institution with the latest capital campaign. But only one college or university has your classmates' and school friends' personal updates. 

Because of privacy concerns, the online version of this popular feature requires readers to do something they've never had to do with print: obtain, record, and enter a username and password when they want an update. This has serious implications for readership patterns in a post iPad era; will the rest of the content be compelling enough to bring readers back, time after time? 

See links to related blog posts at the bottom of this article.

Cost
Assuming that online versions will be add-ons to printed alumni magazines for some time to come, the cost question is long-term. The additional cost of content conversion or development is a high hurdle for publishers, if their online and printed "versions" of magazines are to exist side by side. Last week I talked about the rationale for sticking with a tried and true magazine identity online, but I personally don't get excited by the online version of a printed publication – even if I like the printed version. Having online content slavishly follow a printed magazine's focus and style can prevent the risk-taking needed to invent a new way of communicating with alumni, a way that takes full advantage of new platforms' capabilities.

The Internet is not where printed content becomes immortal. It is, however, an increasingly interactive medium which points to new forms of alumni engagement.

The Bottom Line
For decades (more than a century for many), alumni magazines have trained alumni to love their printed pages and their quirky, niche content. But this content by itself won't drive more than a tiny fraction of alumni to consume it online as well. For better or worse, it will have to assume the interactive, dynamic and fast-changing form that more well-funded publications are already pushing to readers on new platforms and new devices. And that will come at a high financial cost, which means that advancement shops will have to find support from outside the existing print publication budget. 

How is your institution supporting innovation and funding in the magazine business? 

Leave a comment.

***

In a future post I'll look at Brown University's foray into iPhone applications via EverTrue Mobile.

Previous Alumni Futures posts on related topics:

Alumni Magazines: "Be Read or Don't Bother"

Status Updates: The New Class Notes

A Few Mobile Format Alumni Magazines & Student Newspapers:

Harvard Magazine

BYU Universe

Rochester Review

June 11 Deadline to Apply for CASE Conference Scholarships

CASE is offering about 20 scholarships to cover conference registration fees for advancement professionals at selected CASE programs.

The Virginia Carter Smith Scholarship Program is for you if you have less than three years' experience in educational advancement, or if you've moved from one advancement discipline to another in the last three years (e.g., from alumni relations to development). Among the criteria for awarding the scholarships are "career potential," an applicant's statement about resources available through their institution, and the candidate's "ability to express him or herself."

If selected to receive a scholarship, you will have conference registration fees waived, but will still have to cover, travel, hotel and meal costs to attend. Conferences NOT covered by the Smith Scholarship are the Summer Institutes, the Summit, or the annual District conferences. But that still leaves you with many options from the CASE professional development calendar.

Get your application started, though: the deadline for scholarship applications is Friday, June 11, 2010.

Click this link to download the application packet from the CASE web site [180kb PDF]

And in case you're wondering, Virginia Carter Smith was a CASE president, and founder of CURRENTS Magazine. 

Other CASE scholarships:

International Scholarships Programme (for global access to advancement training)

SimpsonScarborough Scholars (for young communications and marketing professionals)

Peter Buchanan ASAP Scholarship Award (for student advancement programming)

Good luck!

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.

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.

Antioch Update: Alumni to Buy College

Quick update to the Antioch story. 

The University has agreed to transfer ownership of the campus to a group of alumni who hope to re-open the school in a couple of years. However, many hurdles remain before the financially troubled institution can be revived – not least of which is the school's run-down physical condition, as well as legal and financial steps involving bond holders and the Ohio state Attorney General's office.

These links provide background and updates:

Chronicle of Higher Ed: Update on Antioch

New York Times: Alumni Group to Buy College

Inside Higher Ed: A Deal to Revive Antioch

Prior coverage from Alumni Futures:

Antioch Alumni and the "Angry Wake"

Antioch College Will Close As Previously Planned

Antioch's Second Chance? Alumni Step Up