alumni futures

CAE: Alumni Dollars and Participation Both Declined in 2007

A year ago I mentioned that the annual Council for Aid to Education (CAE) report on Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) indicated a declining trend in alumni participation:

The survey shows alumni participation falling from 12.4% percent in 2005 to 11.8% in 2006. The summary highlights the effect of larger graduating classes, longer life spans, and better record-keeping  by advancement shops.

This year's report continues with the same observation, saying that private giving grew by 6.3% overall (in dollars), but adding that dollars from alumni and alumni participation both declined. There was a 1.5% decrease in dollars from alumni, and another 0.2% decline in participation. So the last three years' participation rates by alumni look like this:

• 2005:    12.4%
• 2006:    11.9% (evidently revised from the 11.8 reported last year)
• 2007:    11.7%

The main explanations for the declines are technological and demographic, and are not related to alumni attitudes. Nonetheless, they are continuing cause for concern, and Inside Higher Ed covers the story in some detail (link below).

Meanwhile, the United States league table of higher ed fundraising saw some shifts, with the University of Southern California moving up to third (from sixth, last year) on the strength of a 15.7% increase in fundraising. Johns Hopkins (Maryland) and Columbia (New York) moved up slightly, and UCLA (California) cracked the top ten as Wisconsin–Madison dropped from tenth to 13th.

Inside Higher Ed story about the 2008 VSE report

CAE News Page with this and other stories

Chronicle of Higher Ed blog coverage

Council for Aid to Education home page

 

BlogHighEd Aggregates Higher Education Blogs

As mentioned by several other blogs in the past couple of weeks, two enterprising gentlemen have created a site called Blog High Ed. Matt Herzberger (Texas A&M) and Brad Ward (Butler University, Indiana) are the guys behind the effort.

What is the site? Their explanation, in part:

BlogHighEd is a higher ed blogger network. We are trying to unify the community of bloggers that talk about the "higher ed" niche. We want to aggregate the best of the best in higher ed from all areas: webmasters, marketers, vendors, counselors, consultants, and more.

...We choose the best blogs in our market to aggregate. There is an application process and we will select new blogs from time to time. The reason we are looking to do this is so that we have [a] blog that will continue to add value over time and not be another here today, gone tomorrow site.

Alumni Futures is now included on their site and they'll be syndicating the postings that appear here so that all their readers can see them, along with postings from about 20 blogs in a variety of other higher ed categories. As far as I can tell, Alumni Futures is still the sole blog going in the alumni relations field.

Thank you to Brad and Matt for including me. I added them a little while ago to the list of "Other Useful Sites" on the Alumni Futures web page.

BlogHighEd web site

BlogHighEd Page on Facebook

Antioch College Will Close As Previously Planned

[Updated March 31, 2008 with link to story on failure of sale.]

[Updated March 3, 2008 with link to Chronicle follow-up.]

The Antioch University (Ohio, USA) Board of Trustees announced that Antioch College will close as originally announced, for academic year 2008-9.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Ed, a press release issued today indicates that

the university’s trustees said they “ran out of time to reach an agreement on the transfer of the college to the independent corporation.”

This transfer of power was a condition of the alumni fundraising effort previously geared toward saving the college from closure. The Chronicle, Inside Higher Ed and other outlets will be sure to follow up on today's announcement.

Today's item in the Chronicle

[Update] March 31, 2008: Still no sale

[Update] Chronicle follow-up on March 3, 2008

Previous mention by CHE of Trustees' consideration of autonomy

Alumni site supporting continued operation of the College

My original posting here in June, 2007

My follow-up in August, with multiple updates

2008 Alumni Futures Innovation Award Winner

Congratulations to the winner of the first Alumni Futures Innovation Award:

R. Todd Erkel of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA)!

Todd received the random word "Doctor" to produce this winning entry:

"Every major college and university should appoint a Web doctor assigned to screen for and diagnose those conditions plaguing so many higher education websites:

• Transposition navigationitis: instability of critical navigation elements that suddenly change position and function from one site level to the next.
• Enlargement of the messagus deanus: elevation of senior administrator's welcome to dangerously high word counts.
• Supernumerary of the micrositus: abandonment of singular .edu site in favor of multiple, less search engine friendly microsites.
• Photographus prolapse: drooping down or abnormal bulging of photographic elements with associated symptoms (eye fatigue, dizziness, dyspnea, or palpitations).
• Ossification home pagetitus: gradual hardening of news and events items, originally meant as temporary updates, into permanent, space robbing home page features."

Todd hit the nail on the head with his concise, creative and funny contest submission. As he points out, too often we accept the decisions of "experts" on web development without considering the obvious problems that any average site visitor would point out. Someone with a fresh eye and a caring bedside manner could talk us through the worst of our online symptoms and help to heal what ails us.

To some extent, Todd's proposal has each of the hallmarks I mentioned in the contest announcement:

• Hasn't yet been thoroughly tried or tested in higher ed administration;
• Challenges standard assumptions and practices in our professions;
• Could be implemented at many kinds of institutions – or better yet, could happen across many or even all institutions.
• Is so cool, so clever or so simple that we won't believe we haven't thought of it.

Honorable Mention goes to

Nora Gubins of York University (Ontario, Canada)

and

Kevin Wesley of the University of Rochester (New York, USA).

In an upcoming posting I'll share their contest entries.

All of the submissions represented great efforts to think clearly about new ways of doing things, and show the kind of brainstorming and creativity that higher education needs to continually adapt and improve.

Thank you to everyone who participated.

For his winning entry Todd receives:

• Six months of Premium Services from the JibberJobber career site;
• A download of the CASE webinar Students Today, Alumni Forever: Developing Lifelong Relationships With Our Alumni-in-Residence
• His choice of one of three higher ed books; and
• The one-of-a-kind Innovation Award badge (shown above) to put on his blog, his Facebook profile, his personal web page or anyplace he wants it.

Congratulations to Todd! Tune in next January for the 2009 contest.

Does Low Alumni Participation Indicate Low Engagement?

[Updated February 28, 2008 with direct link to registration page for Jim Flynn's April 3, 2008 online presentation.]

[Updated February 18, 2008 with comments about the relationship between attitudes and behavior.]

A few weeks ago I mentioned Charlie Melichar's ideas about depicting alumni engagement. Jim Flynn of Harford Survey Research has worked on objectively measuring alumni engagement. Jim, who is presenting in CASE's Online Speaker Series (see link at the bottom of this posting) says his Alumni Engagement Survey evaluates, in part,

alumni attitudes toward the school, and their interest in participating in alumni programs, events and volunteer opportunities. This two–factor measure is predicted by differences in the college experiences of individual alumni, and it predicts differences in giving.

Jim also says that

alumni attitudes and interest in participating [in events and activities] are important indicators of engagement. Alumni who have not made a gift or attended alumni events may nonetheless be engaged with their alma mater. They want to receive news about classmates and campus events and are more likely to make a gift or to attend an event in the future than are their 'unengaged' classmates. 

This squares with something I've experienced with alumni surveys: they can provide good data about alumni attitudes, but little predictive insight into alumni behavior.

[Updated: Jim Flynn points out that "attitudes do predict behavior....However, they are not perfect predictors," and other variables account for differences in attendance, participation and giving. I was referring to simplistic surveys that ask alumni what kind of programs they'd like us to provide, after which we provide those programs and alumni don't participate in them.]

Discussing the reasons for low alumni participation, Dr. Flynn says

when we asked open-ended questions about why alumni did not attend events, the most frequent responses were travel time, work and family constraints. The next most frequently reported reason was that their classmates and friends were not attending.

As a result of this initial research, Jim suggests that "if you are using actual participation as an indicator of alumni engagement, you are greatly underestimating alumni engagement."

So even when alumni don't show up for events or make a donation, they may still be interested and engaged in the life of the campus. As for using the data, Dr. Flynn says that

combining individual graduates' engagement levels with alumni contact information and data on their activities as students can yield powerful data for recruiting and soliciting "engaged" alumni.

We still have a lot to learn. Meanwhile, though, don't assume low participation rates mean low alumni engagement – unless your alumni tell you to stop inviting them to events, and ask you to stop sending campus news. But at least then you'll know how they really feel.

Check the following site for Jim's upcoming online session and others (registration was not yet open at the time of this posting):

Data-driven Programming: Building Strong Alumni Engagement at a Small College
CASE Online Speaker Series
Thursday, April 3, 2008
2:00 to 3:30 PM, EDT (GMT-4)

Information about Harford Survey Research

Summer Institute for Women Administrators in Higher Ed

March 1, 2008 is the deadline for submitting your application to the 2008 Bryn Mawr (Pennsylvania, USA) Summer Institute for Women Administrators in Higher Education.

According to an email from Judith S. White, President and Executive Director of HERS (Higher Education Resource Services), there is space for

seventy-five women faculty and administrators who currently hold significant leadership responsibilities and are ready to make a greater institutional impact.

Over the past thirty years, more than 2000 participants of the HERS Bryn Mawr Summer Institute have gained knowledge, skills and perspectives that allowed them to combine broad strategic vision with best national practices. These women returned to their campuses to lead efforts for academic excellence, institutional distinction and effective resource management.

This isn't an ordinary conference: it is a month-long leadership and management program, and this year it runs from June 21 through July 16. Bryn Mawr's campus is located about 11 miles west of Philadelphia, PA.

You can find details on curriculum and the application process at the HERS web site (link below), or you can phone them up at 1+303/871-6866.

HERS (Higher Education Resource Services)

2008 Bryn Mawr Summer Institute details

Host campus: Bryn Mawr College

Good luck!

CASE Europe Workshops in London, 11 and 12 March, 2008

I mentioned earlier that I'll be in Hungary during March to help teach a training course for the European Association for International Education (EAIE).

I'll also be in London, a few days earlier, to help present two one-day workshops for CASE Europe: an Alumni Relations Masterclass, and a Seminar on Online Communities. Brief summaries are on my Upcoming Presentations page, and links to the detailed descriptions are below.

My co-presenters in London will include Ceri Butcher (Oxford Brookes University); Joelle du Lac (King's College, Cambridge); Daniel Guhr (Illuminate Consulting Group); Tess Robinson (University of Warwick); and John Easom and Hannah Hiles (Keele University).

If you're a European university administrator with responsibilities for alumni relations, I hope you'll consider participating in one of these educational programs:

• Alumni Relations Masterclass (CASE, London)
• Seminar on Online Communities (CASE, London)
• Alumni Relations from A to Z (EAIE, Budapest)

London at Night, photo by Min Zaw Mra, used under Creative Commons license. Click to enlarge.

Alumni Futures Anniversary (and Contest Reminder)

Anniversary!
A year ago today I started blogging at Alumni Futures.

21,681 page views later, this blog has more than 400 subscribers and has been visited by web surfers from
56 different countries (from Australia to Zimbabwe). It's been a very fun experience, and I'm looking forward to year two.

One thing I said in the very first posting was that

I hope you'll participate by adding your own ideas and visions for where the field of alumni relations is heading.

I still want you to share your "ideas and visions" about higher ed in general, and alumni relations in particular. Don't be shy!

Most of all, though, I sincerely hope that every reader has learned something new or been inspired to think about familiar things in new ways by reading Alumni Futures.

Contest!
Meanwhile, I want to remind everyone about the Alumni Futures Innovation Award. The deadline for submitting your ideas is in seven days (February 14).

Follow the link below, get your random word for inspiration, and write a paragraph explaining your idea to improve higher ed administration.

Alumni Futures Contest Announcement

(And when you e-mail me your idea, don't forget to mention what your random word was!)

Travelocity's Terry Jones on Digital Relationships

At December's CASE VII + VIII combined district conference, the opening keynote speaker was Terry Jones, the founder of Travelocity, which helped revolutionize the way we shop for travel. Jones, who also has a consultancy called Essential Ideas, gave a fast-paced talk about innovation, the internet and the need to adapt.

The key points I took away:

"Innovation can come from anywhere in the organizational pyramid." So encourage people throughout the organization to share their "what if" ideas, and provide positive feedback when they do.

But you can't do this, says Jones, if there's a Bozone Layer blocking them. This is what he calls "middle management that stops new ideas from filtering up because they're afraid of taking risks."

"Face-to-Face [interaction with customers] is no longer enough....We have to learn how to form digital relationships with our customers." This applies to alumni and development professionals whose interaction with prospects and donors is increasingly via online communities, networks and platforms.

Jones also talked about web sites and the increasing irrelevance of the home page:

Online retailers have simplified and structured their sites, so "each [search] leads to the page with the product you want. One more click buys it."

What is the implication for universities, alumni associations, and fundraising sites? We don't necessarily want people to go to "the home page." As Jones points out, if we're successful, then "every page is a home page."

In the end, says Jones,

people who buy a drill don't want a drill; they want a hole. You have to think like a customer if you're going to solve their problem.

But of course, first we need to know what the customer's problem is. And that's a topic for another posting.