alumni futures

CASE Advancement Summit 2007: Notes, Quotes

I spoke at the the CASE Advancement Summit in Chicago earlier this month, and I also sat in on a variety of presentations. I recorded a few things to share on Alumni Futures. If you were at the conference and had a different interpretation or recollection of what I've written about here, please add your thoughts via Comment on the Alumni Futures site. Or perhaps you heard something noteworthy that you want to share - please do so.

• From a public university alumni director at a breakfast roundtable: "We cut out several class reunions and those classes' reunion giving did not change." The implication is that reunions don't increase those classes' gifts. But could there be a secondary (positive) effect of those alumni getting together, that will not be reflected in that year's totals?

• CASE President John Lippincott during a discussion of China's economy:

"Beijing has more millionaires than New York and London. But their charitable giving is one-fortieth that of their American counterparts'."

• Kenyon College President Georgia Nugent:

"I'm sick of the over-use of the word "accountability." How about "responsibility"? Is anyone held "accountable" for a success?"

She described the current hunger for holding higher education leaders "accountable" as being "third-party [and] fear-induced."

• Alan Merten, President of George Mason University quoted Raymond "Chip" Mason (of Legg Mason) on ethics. Mason likened some questionable practices to standing so close to the line on a tennis court when serving, that some chalk gets on your shoes:

"You don't want to get chalk on your shoes. You are technically on the correct side of the line, but if you're close enough to get chalk on your shoes, you're too close."

• Ohio State's prodigal Chancellor E. Gordon Gee said, "You have to be passionate about the institution, not just a hired gun who can do this for anyone." I found this ironic, coming from the person who describes himself as someone "who has been the president of more colleges and universities than anyone else," and who announced his departure from Vanderbilt the day after making these statements.

• Merten again, with a winter sports metaphor this time: "If you don't fall down when you're skiing, you need to try a tougher hill." This implies that we should always be learning and that we should find new challenges - hard ones - and tackle them until they're not hard enough to make us fail. Then repeat the process.

• Finally, when asked, "What's the best idea you've had as president?" Merten replied:

"The best thing that I did was that I got out to meet alumni. Someone said that your university can be good without the support of its alumni, but it cannot be great without the support of its alumni."

Profound truth? Or empty platitude? What's your take?

Grambling Alumni Group's Lawsuit: Dismissed

Back in September of 2006, the alumni association at Louisiana's Grambling State University, along with the city's mayor and others, sued the University, claiming that the school mistreated employees and that the university was "being led in the wrong direction."

Now a court has dismissed the suit, saying that the complaints should have been made to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, that the alumni group had no standing to sue in the first place, and that the plaintiffs' complaints were too vague to compel legal action anyway.

The attorney who led the effort against Grambling State says he will apply for a new trial next week.

Chronicle's News Item About the Dismissal

Original Chronicle Posting About the Lawsuit

Associated Press Story About the Lawsuit

Alumni Affinity Loan Consolidation: An Update

[Updated August 1, 2007 with a USA Today story on the expansion of NY AG Cuomo's efforts:]

...Cuomo announced Wednesday his office had served subpoenas and document requests to 40 athletic departments, 38 of them in the NCAA's top-tier Division I....Cuomo is seeking information on deals made by the athletic departments with a student loan provider. Cuomo said Student Financial Services Inc. (SFS), doing business under the name University Financial Services (UFS), was also subpoenaed.

The heat stays on colleges and universities, but for now is focused away from alumni associations and toward athletics. But we know that alumni relations and athletics are close partners, especially in the upper echelons of NCAA Division I. This continued scrutiny will almost certainly return to alumni associations.

Special thanks to East Carolina's Paul Clifford for the heads up on this latest chapter.

[Updated July 31, 2007 with this Chronicle News Blog story:]

Under the terms of a settlement agreement ... Nelnet will cancel its “affinity” agreements with 120 alumni associations and pay $2-million into a consumer-education fund....

[Updated July 26, 2007 with this information:]

According to an item in Inside Higher Ed, Nelnet is 

ending its relationships with more than 100 alumni associations in which the lender...has paid them fees [and sometimes] a share of revenue in exchange for the right to market consolidated education loans to graduates of their institutions.

A Nelnet spokesman said:

Nelnet has done our best to remain firm in our support of the appropriate and valuable affinity consolidation services that we provide to alumni association clients and their members, [relationships ] similar to those that many companies and industries have with alumni associations to offer members a variety of products and services.

[Original Posting:]

CASE is providing a set of Frequently Asked Questions to help alumni professionals talk about loan consolidation affinity agreements, which have been scrutinized and publicized by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (as reported here on May 4, 2007).

In an email to alumni executives on July 20, 2007, CASE President John Lippincott wrote that

the U.S. Senate may consider legislation addressing student loans. A current draft of the legislation...would prohibit alumni associations from accepting payments from or co-branding with private lenders in the marketing of student loans. One result could be the effective elimination of affinity agreements between loan consolidators and alumni associations.

Pointing out that "there is nothing inherently wrong" with alumni loan consolidation services, Lippincott acknowledges nonetheless that many associations are distancing themselves from these agreements. He adds that

we must clearly define the differences between the student loan and alumni loan consolidation issues and...we must proactively communicate the value that affinity programs of all types offer to alumni, their associations, and their institutions.

In closing, Lippincott adds that "CASE is partnering with the Council of Alumni Association Executives to survey alumni associations about the nature and impact of their affinity programs." 

So keep an eye out for the survey, check the FAQ and make up your own mind - in collaboration with your colleagues and Boards - about the pros and cons of these and other affinity partnerships.

Alumni Volunteers: Do We Need a New Direction?

A frustrated alumni relations colleague recently posed some interesting questions and ideas via email. She wrote, in part:

We were all asked to read Jim Collins' Good to Great before [a recent] conference and it served as background for many of the discussions....I was particularly interested in the notion of "getting the right people on the bus," and how our industry is hampered in this area because many of the folks on our bus are volunteers.

Among other things, this colleague (who works at a private college in the U.S.) wrote that she was frustrated by the lack of strategy around "why we need volunteers" and "how we should put volunteers to work." Doing what we've always done isn't working anymore, in her view. She also pointed to an "inability to institute change, for fear of alienating alumni volunteers."

This might sound negative, but I believe she is putting a voice to thoughts that many alumni professionals share. She wrote, in part:

I must admit that while we're enjoying the advances of technology and paying far more attention to metrics, we still haven't (in my view) made much progress on the alumni volunteer front. I often find myself feeling trapped, frankly, by the resource drain of maintaining a vast and dated infrastructure of volunteers.

Meanwhile, this frustrated colleague reports her institution is asking the following questions to address these issues, but she (and I) would love to know what others are doing:

• What does the institution want or need alumni to do?
• What does the alumni association need volunteers to do?
• What do alumni want to do for the institution?
• What gaps exist among the answers to these questions?
• How can we eliminate those gaps while offering alumni fulfilling volunteer opportunities that help the institution?

Later this summer I will post a follow-up with thoughts on volunteer management gleaned from a discussion at last week's PCUAD meeting. 

But meanwhile, leave your comments by visiting Alumni Futures on the web and scrolling down to the bottom of this posting where you'll see the words: POST A COMMENT.

Tell us what you think.

CASE's Commissions: Breaking Down the Silos

This spring I finished a three year term on the CASE Commission on Alumni Relations. The Commissions, which seem to be largely unknown outside of CASE's volunteer leadership, are meant to provide CASE with practitioners' insights on advancement. The members represent a variety of institutional and disciplinary perspectives from a variety of countries. CASE also oversees volunteer Commissions on Communications and Marketing, and Philanthropy.

It was rewarding to serve on the Commission, meeting twice a year. The discussions were relevant and focused, for the most part, and the CASE staff were responsive to suggestions, questions and ideas from the Commissioners. To me, the most interesting agenda items were the "horizon issues." We set aside time to discuss topics or trends from our daily work which have future implications for the entire advancement profession. Some of the topics raised in these discussions are finding their way into Alumni Futures.

One project the Commission recently completed was the development of a "management checklist" for alumni professionals. The other Commissions have produced similar documents. I would like to see these checklists integrated into a streamlined and unified "outreach management checklist." This could spur greater collaboration among fundraisers, alumni staff and communications professionals.

This whole issue raises, in turn, the question of whether CASE should increase collaboration among the Commissions themselves. Although we periodically met jointly on specific topics, our Commissions were mostly sequestered from one another, often meeting several floors apart in hotels or at CASE headquarters. Even our group dinners took place in parallel, and we trekked to three different restaurants for our respective meals.

It is fruitful to focus on alumni relations topics with fellow professionals whose experience is rich and useful. However, keeping the silos mostly intact suggests that our disciplines have fewer shared challenges than I think we really do. We can help our profession and our institutions by taking advantage of opportunities for joint efforts with alumni, development and communications staff working side by side.

The Two Most Hated Words in Advancement?

Web publisher Lulu.com recently commissioned a survey to find out what internet users considered the most hated words in the online world. Tech news web site Ars Technica followed up with a summary, which spurred readers to suggest their own personal favorites (or anti-favorites, I guess). And here is the summary:

• Folksonomy
• Blogosphere
• Blog
• Netiquette
• Blook (don't ask)
• Webinar
• Vlog
• Social Networking
• Cookie
• Wiki

This got me thinking: does our profession have phrases, words or terminology that make the hair stand up on the back of your neck? I immediately thought of two words which make my skin crawl:

• Friendraising
• Funraising

But that's a far cry from a list of ten truly scorn-worthy words.

So I need your help.

If you're reading this on the Alumni Futures web site, scroll down a bit to where it says POST A COMMENT, and let us know the words that bug you the most. If you're reading this by email or in a newsreader, send your contributions via email.

The only requirement is that they be related to higher education somehow - general business terminology can be documented and mocked elsewhere. So don't tell us that your "AVP wants you to bottom line your core competencies so you can leverage your value propositions on a go forward basis."

We hear that all the time!