alumni futures

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

Time for a Change

I've been in alumni relations since January 1989, when I became assistant director in the alumni office at my alma mater, Brown University. That was 21 years ago, and I've been at Caltech since September 1999 – almost exactly half my career, or ten and a half years. 

My service to Caltech has been tremendously rewarding, but now I have chosen to move on to the next stage of my career in higher education. 

So I have decided to leave my position at Caltech on March 10.

Then what?

Although I am not immediately moving to a new permanent position, I plan to do so eventually, in an environment that encourages innovation and experimentation. In the immediate future I have an ample "to do" list. But I'm looking to add to it, as well.

I plan to complete my master's degree in education this spring, and if possible, continue as chair of the CASE Commission on Alumni Relations, while continuing as a member of the CASE Board of Trustees. 

I am also fortunate to have the opportunity to speak in diverse settings. In late March I'll deliver part of a training workshop in Paris for the European Association of International Education (EAIE), and will help teach a one-day master class in alumni relations for CASE in London. (At both events I will talk about social network technology and higher education).

Summer is shaping up to be busy too. In June I'll speak at the Whipple Hill Conference (for independent schools), and I'll run the second Alumni Futures Think Tank, a private workshop, in New York in July. And in August I hope to participate as a faculty member in the first-ever CASE Asia-Pacific Summer Institute in Singapore. 

I also will do consulting engagements as time allows. And of course, I plan to keep writing the Alumni Futures blog and tweeting about higher education via @alumnifutures.

Finally, I hope readers will contact me by email (andy@alumnifutures.com) to share job leads, discuss consulting or training needs, speaking invitations – or just to talk about higher ed advancement. 

Guest Blogger Scott Mory: Good Works Made Visible

This week's post is written by Scott Mory, CEO of the USC Alumni Association at the University of Southern California, and addresses the importance of strategically connecting alumni relations and the academic side of your institution.

Many of us already link institutional advancement with "the academic side of the house." But do we really think of ourselves, or talk about ourselves, as responsible for supporting our institution's academic mission?

My administrative home at USC is the division of university relations. Our senior vice president for university relations, Martha Harris, describes our division's core mission as "Good Works Made Visible." Those good works are typically the academic and professional accomplishments of our faculty, students, staff and alumni. And if you think about much of the work an alumni association does throughout the year, we focus a lot of effort on making good works visible.

For example:

• Publishing communications that publicize the institution's academic priorities and achievements
• Planning lectures with faculty members presenting their latest research
• Identifying alumni who can promote the institution's reputation in specific industries
• Recruiting alumni as expert advisors or guest speakers
• Recognizing graduates' professional accomplishments
• Marketing the institution's lifelong learning opportunities that are available to alumni
• Building a strong alumni network to help alumni and students find jobs, internships and career advice or support

Your alumni relations program probably has most of these features already. But are you presenting them as crucial support for the academic mission? If not, you could be missing a chance to make an effective case to volunteer leaders and campus colleagues about your program’s relevance and value.  (And it’ll make for a nice change of pace from being evaluated on how we support fundraising.)

Now you may be wondering how your alumni will respond to this focus. Trust me, they’ll love it. We recently surveyed our alumni, and they told us the most important factor in their relationship with USC is their perception of the value of their degrees – also known as degree equity. Their perception of the degree’s value is informed by the accomplishments of alumni, faculty, and students, as well as USC’s rankings in various surveys. Alumni also told us that one of the most important drivers of their loyalty is how well USC prepares students for a variety of activities, including responding to new career opportunities, deepening a commitment to personal development, and instilling a commitment to continuous learning.

For me, these findings are a roadmap on how to take USC’s alumni engagement to the next level – by connecting our work to USC’s academic mission, by making USC’s good works visible.

Photo of books in USC's Doheny Library by Zabowski via Creative Commons.

Alumni Futures Turns Three

Ordinarily I post new material on Monday mornings, but this week I'm jumping the gun a little bit so that I can post on February 7, which is Alumni Futures' birthday. The first post went up on this day in 2007, which means that I'm pleased to be entering my fourth year of writing the Alumni Futures blog.

Pretty much everything I said three years ago is still true of Alumni Futures:

• I want to generate discussion about new ideas and directions for our profession;
• I am optimistic that readers will learn from information exchanged here;
• I hope readers will participate by adding their own ideas and visions for alumni relations.

It started out simple and has remained so. But while the site's complexity has not increased, I hope its utility has. For me to know what works and what doesn't, what's missing and what you'd like done differently, you need to tell me. So send an email and I'll welcome any advice. 

For fun, here are some stats about activity on Alumni Futures since its inception in February, 2007:

• There have been 116,422 page views in three years.
• Almost 1,400 individuals have subscribed to receive new materials from Alumni Futures.
• I have published 234 postings, which works out to precisely 1.5 postings per week for three years. 
• More important, you all have contributed more than 400 comments to those postings, and that (in my opinion) is what makes the blog work. 

OK, back to work. Year four begins now!

2010: Alumni Relations Issues for the Year Ahead

Unlike many higher ed bloggers, I wasn't moved to do a year-end overview for 2009. But (at the risk of sounding pessimistic) I will look ahead at some of the large issues facing many – perhaps most – alumni associations. 

My belief that these issues are becoming central to our profession was reinforced last week at the meeting of the Association of Private College and University Alumni Directors (PCUAD) in Atlanta*. Many discussions among the thirty or so alumni executives present touched in one way or another on points that I am already concerned about. So what am I concerned about?

• I'm concerned about "mattering."

Senior administrators are questioning the relevance of alumni relations in the face of external and internal changes (i.e., competition for scarce resources). Will alumni organizations matter? 

• I'm concerned about our role as conveners.

People can and will self-organize into groups, so will we have a key role beyond brokering people's mutual interests? 

• I'm concerned because we've lost our monopoly on data. 

Search engines and social networks make people findable with little effort. Do we have information that alumni need, and that they cannot easily find somewhere else?

For all these questions, the answer may well be "yes." But we must still ask questions like these, and plan on long-term solutions that allow us to contribute to the success of alumni and their alma mater.  

With these concerns in mind, here are two additional questions to consider.

• Instead of doing many little things, as we have mostly done, should alumni associations focus on delivering a few larger programs and services, more central to the institution's core mission?

And...

• Should we focus more on supporting and connecting to the academic side of the institution? (Look for a guest blog post about this topic in the coming weeks.)

I've already mentioned several of these topics here in the last year, and most were originally raised first by others. I'm not claiming to be the first person to ask every one of these questions, I just want to generate in-depth conversation about them.

Please leave a comment or email me and continue the discussion. 

* Emory University did an outstanding job of hosting the PCUAD meeting. Shown here is the beautiful Miller-Ward Alumni House. Photo by Bill Ruhsam used with permission.

CASE Calls for Senior Level Volunteers

CASE (the Council for Advancement and Support of Education) is currently accepting nominations for senior volunteer leadership positions. 

These include positions on 

• the CASE Board of Trustees, 
• the three professional area Commissions (Philanthropy, Alumni Relations, and Communications & Marketing), and 
• the CASE Europe Board of Trustees. 

CASE seeks senior-level advancement officers from all types of institutions and from all segments of the profession. Self-nominations are appropriate and encouraged.

To submit an online nomination, simply go to the CASE web site's online form.

Hundreds of volunteer leaders have committed their time and talent to the advancement profession. You can join them, or help steer capable people to this opportunity.

Thanks!

Is Your School Too Old To Fail?

Recent news items about the anniversary of the failure of Lehman Brothers asked whether large, private financial institutions should be protected by government – whether they are, in effect, "too big to fail."

It's interesting to ask something similar of a college or university. If I told you that Oxford or Princeton was going to shut its doors, would you suggest that they should be bailed out? Protected? If so, would you advise using public money for the cause?

Many of the most prominent schools have been around for hundreds of years. 

Are they "too old to fail"?

The University of Bologna is more than 900 years old; just about the only organizations that resilient and long-lasting seem to be universities and organized religions.* 17 American colleges, universities and schools operating today are older than the United States itself. Few national governments can claim the long runs of which schools like these can boast. 

So schools last a long time. But what exactly is it that persists? Is the school we revere today really "the same" as the one that first bore its name? Of course not.

Schools (like many organizations) survive in name, but they must rebuild, reimagine and retool themselves ceaselessly, one small segment at a time. Saying that Bologna hasn't changed is like saying that a Model T Ford in an antique car show is "the same car" that Henry Ford rolled off the line in 1920. In reality, piece by piece it gets fixed up, "restored," and "maintained." A headlight here, a bumper there. Engine parts wear out and are replaced. Rubber moldings dry and crack and new ones are attached. The body fades and pits and the car is sanded and repainted. The upholstery gets torn, and....well you get the idea. Is it really the same car?

And so it is with our schools. We are lucky in some cases to have architecturally significant buildings that survive, but even those have to be updated for technological reasons, for safety, to please donors, or increasingly, to be "sustainable." So the buildings – like the institutions they serve – survive, but in forms that are new and often distant from their historical roles.

U.S. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes (Brown University class of 1881) famously quipped of his alma mater, "It is always the old Brown and it is always the new Brown." We would be hard pressed to sum it up more succinctly or more eloquently. And we'd be ill-advised to forget it.

* Iceland established a parliament in 930 A.D., but had no centralized administration until about 330 years later. 

Photo of old buildings and new students at the University of Bologna, from Michele Ursino via Creative Commons. Click photo to enlarge.

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.

Alumni Achievement Metrics and University Rankings

What makes a college or university "great"?

We all debate endlessly university rankings or "league tables." And a recent e-mail exchange with colleagues from US and UK institutions started me thinking about how we determine an institution's quality. 

We readily refer to "elite" universities and if asked to list, say, the top 25 schools around the globe most of our lists would overlap significantly, if not completely. You and I might disagree about whether a particular school should be in the top 5 or not, but I bet we'd agree on 20 of the names we'd list in our top 25.

But how do we "know" which schools are great? Along with whatever appears on the cover of US News or Times Higher Education, some combination of faculty notoriety, research output (including technology transfer), and admissions competitiveness play a large part. 

And then of course there is the graduates' success. But while we can read the annual rankings, and measure research output, patents and citations, how do we assess alumni success? 

Dan Guhr of Illuminate Consulting Group has mentioned to me that he sees alumni outcomes as a likely (if not inevitable) component of university ranking systems in the future. Any metrics around this would have to provide a quantitative (or rank ordered) proxy for categories such as

• alumni achievement
• alumni influence
• alumni network value 

We can probably propose arbitrary benchmarks for these kinds of categories in the form of ranges and ratios. For example, if "PhD completion" is an achievement metric, then we can measure the approximate fraction of our alumni who have completed a PhD within some finite period after we granted their bachelor's degree. This is just an example off the top of my head.

One survey that has started down this road is the Professional Ranking of World Universities (PRWU), established by Mines Paris Tech (also known as the École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris). They've selected a single criterion for ranking the "professional effectiveness" of institutions: the number of alumni from a single school who are CEO (or equivalent) at the "500 leading worldwide companies" as measured by annual revenue. 

They also quickly acknowledge the limitations of this specific model, but claim it is the only practical one that they can currently apply. The authors further admit that there is no way to measure, say, successful entrepreneurship among alumni:

The creation of companies by graduates could also be a relevant criterion to be taken into account but, once again, the data on an international level do not exist, and achievements (companies actually created) are difficult to compare.

This single criterion for business is no more flawed than the Jiaotong University Shanghai rankings', [link opens two windows] which award points for alumni receiving the Nobel Prize or the Fields Medal. But saying "our survey is equally flawed, but in a new and different way" is hardly a defense of a system such as the PRWU. (A flaw of the Shanghai ranking is that they consider the total number of prizes won by a school's alumni – without accounting for the size of the alumni population. At tiny Caltech the chances that a particular grad has won a Nobel are about 1:1300; what's the ratio at other research institutions?)

So an obvious problem with the overall approach of using alumni achievement is that it will be extremely difficult to assess the prevalence of a particular outcome for an institution with poor data about its alumni. In the long run, however, this could exert pressure on institutions to invest in improved data collection, internal data sharing and data maintenance.

The email exchange that started me thinking about alumni achievement as a ranking criterion did indeed move on to a discussion of internal data processes and the lack of will that many staff members exhibit when presented with a chance to reveal meaningful truths about alumni by sharing and analyzing data. Perhaps that will provide me with a topic for a future blog post.

Do you think alumni outcomes can and should be measured as a proxy for institutional success? What should we measure, and how?

Also: Wikipedia article about rankings with links to a number of such schemes and outlets

Image of university rankings from Flickr user Mathieu Thouvenin via Creative Commons.

What is the Commission on Alumni Relations?

This morning I gave a brief presentation to attendees at the CASE Institute for Senior Alumni Relations Professionals about the mission and work of the CASE Commission on Alumni Relations (COAR). As current Chair of the Commission, I wanted to make sure Institute attendees knew about this channel for guidance and direction from the profession to our professional organization. During the discussion, Dickinson College's Rick Delgiorno mentioned that it would be great if even more people knew about the Commissions and their work. So here's a brief summary of the points I made this morning.

There are three Commissions: Alumni Relations, Philanthropy, and Communications & Marketing. Each Commission's goal, broadly stated, is to "support the creation and dissemination of knowledge…and advise CASE on programming and services relative to their respective area."

The Commissions meet twice a year (once in person and once via web and phone), and the Commission chairs serve as CASE Trustees. The Commission on Alumni Relations currently has 20 members representing five countries and a cross-section of institution types: public and private, large and small, secondary and post-secondary. We work from the premise that, as their institutions' largest permanent constituency, "alumni are vital stakeholders in their institutions." As the CASE web site explains, the Commission "frames and directs research to

• examine and evaluate professional practices,
• develop and monitor programs and services in alumni relations, and 
• ensure that they reflect current knowledge, emerging issues and trends and the highest ethical and professional standards."

A set of past resources produced by COAR is available from the CASE web site, and includes 

• Principles of Practice for Alumni Relations,
• a CASE Management Checklist for Alumni Relations Professionals,
• CASE Guidelines for Alumni Relations on Establishing Vendor Relationships 

and more.

Current COAR projects include a pilot version of the CASE Benchmarking Toolkit. This survey will allow member institutions to measure their achievements in alumni relations, including year to year comparisons within a program and accomplishments compared with peer institutions. Use of the Toolkit will rely heavily on CASE's ability to help member organizations identify Communities of Practice for benchmarking purposes, a topic we've discussed here in the past. 

At this week's meeting COAR will also discuss the effects of the economy on alumni programs: organizational structures, staffing, campus partnerships, and communication practice are on the agenda. And we'll consider working jointly with our colleagues on the Communications & Marketing Commission to explore how best to maintain effective communications with alumni and friends during difficult economic times.

What Do You Think? How can the Commissions help CASE be relevant? What could we do that would help institutional and individual members of CASE get more out of their membership in the organization? Leave a comment here on the blog, or send me an email.