alumni futures

10 Ways to Integrate Advancement

A few years ago, "integrated marketing" was a hot phrase in education. A worthy goal, it remains difficult to achieve. Increasingly, we now hear another integrative mantra in the same hallways:

"Integrated advancement."

The goal? Weaving alumni relations, development and communications into a cohesive, collaborative team.

In April, CASE's three Commissions asked, "what does it take to integrate the advancement disciplines?" CASE staff members sat in, took notes, and participated in the conversations.

The initial discussion generated a provocative list of drivers of integration. The brief points below capture a fraction of the conversation. In no particular order, here are 10 of the suggestions I recorded during the meeting: 

1. Learn about integration from small shops (e.g., those with just one or two staff members). They are, in effect, already integrated – because "everyone does everything."

2. Start at the top. Senior leaders must commit to improving their working relationships with each other if they expect staff below them on the org chart to work collaboratively.

3. Use more data and fewer anecdotes.

4. Teach and model the integrated vision during the recruitment and training of new team members.

5. Jointly develop a unified strategy for advancement – not just separate alumni relations, fundraising, and communications strategies.

[Want to integrate advancement? 
Use more data and fewer anecdotes.]

6. Seek out and celebrate small victories. Large-scale change takes time.

7. Create cross-silo teams that design integrated programs. If teams are separate, involve members of each others' staffs early in the planning process.

8. Think of alumni officers as development officers, and vice versa (e.g., do alumni staff file trip reports to aid in cultivation or research?). 

9. Don't treat alumni relations and development as clients of marketing and communications. They're partners.

10. "Move out" staff members – and volunteers – who don't actively support integration.

Note: These aren't my ideas. These are comments made by advancement professionals from a wide variety of institutions.

And of course, there are many other approaches to making advancement teams more effective through collaboration.

How do you foster an integrated approach to advancement?

How would you rank or evaluate the ideas above?

What would you add to this list?

Leave a comment.

Related article

• What is the Commission on Alumni Relations? (alumnifutures.com)

Social Technology & the Leadership Volunteer

Charlene Li, founder of Altimeter Group and prominent author and speaker on social media for business, is a candidate for the board of the Harvard Alumni Association. She announced this on her blog recently, and asked Harvard alumni for their support as she seeks to fill one of six elected positions on the board (the majority of members are appointed).

Li's announcement offers at least three lessons regarding the leadership of alumni organizations and their future relevance. There are also good reminders about why busy people volunteer their time and expertise.

[Volunteers want to use their expertise on your behalf.]

1. Just Ask
To explain why she is running for an alumni board position, Li said simply: "I was asked." 

Alumni will often volunteer if you simply ask them to. 

 

2. Make It Relevant
Volunteers don't want to do "just anything." They want to use their expertise on behalf of the institution. Li explains that she might be able to "push the alumni more into using social technologies."

 

3. Let Them Repay a Debt
Finally, volunteers often serve out of a desire to repay the institution. Li writes:

Harvard made a huge difference in my life... [and] continues to wield its influence in my life on a regular basis, from alumni connections to the research the University conducts. I see this as an opportunity to not only pay back my alma mater...but also society and the world in general.

This is an election campaign statement. But it's very valuable when volunteers endorse the organization's positive impact on them and on the world.

[Two critical aspects of alumni service can be hard to balance.]

So Li's election blog post articulates two critical aspects of alumni service that can be hard to balance:

Serving the needs of the institution,

and

Serving the needs of the alumni.

It will be interesting to see how the HAA ramps up its social media effectiveness should Li be elected to its alumni board, and to assess the outcomes of that effort.

Regardless of Li's future as a volunteer leader, non-profit managers should note the nature of this particular call to action, and actively seek out volunteers whose expertise will help them increase member engagement.

Thanks to Alumni Futures reader John Forbes for bringing this topic to my attention.

Related articles

• What is the Ideal Role for Leadership Volunteers? (alumnifutures.com)
• Has Advancement Advanced in Social Media Use? (case.org)
• Elections open for Overseers and HAA Directors (news.harvard.edu)
• What is an Open Leader? (case.org)
• Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform How You Lead (charleneli.com)

A New Chapter for Me – and for Alumni Futures

I've happily spent the last 13 months working as an independent consultant, speaker and author under the Alumni Futures banner. 

But in a few weeks I will enter a new phase in my professional life. 

I am excited to announce that I am joining Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as Associate Vice President for Advancement (Alumni Relations and Annual Giving).

In this role, I will oversee both alumni relations and annual giving as they come together into a newly-integrated team.

During and after this transition, I will keep Alumni Futures alive as an outlet for ideas and resources to help advancement professionals understand their environment. I will also complete my existing consulting and speaking commitments, and remain available to give occasional keynote talks and other presentations. (See my Upcoming Events page for an up-to-date listing of scheduled events.) 

[I am excited to join Carnegie Mellon University as
Associate Vice President for Advancement...]

Since 2007, my goal with Alumni Futures has been to help organizations understand the changes advancement professionals are facing. In the process I've interacted with a variety of individuals and organizations and have learned a great deal. I am grateful to all the clients and colleagues whom I've had the pleasure of working with via Alumni Futures – especially my outstanding Advisory Group.

Now it's time to continue learning, this time as a member of an integrated advancement team at a top research and teaching institution. I hope you'll keep reading Alumni Futures – on the web, on Twitter and on Facebook – and keep learning alongside me.

 

Photo of Carnegie Mellon campus by Mark Cato via Creative Commons.

Staffing for the Social Web: 4 New Ideas

An interesting question arose in a recent email exchange among several professional colleagues (including Alumni Futures Advisory Group members Andrew Gossen of Cornell University and Liz Allen, consultant and author of the Adaptivate blog):

"What is a model staffing strategy for online communications in advancement?"

Here are four relevant, forward-looking ideas from the discussion: 

1. The Need for Research
There is an increasing need for staff who can handle qualitative and quantitative research, as well as metrics (to track return on investment). Cornell's Gossen commented: "This is increasingly important, because social media monitoring tools are becoming more sophisticated, and many programs are integrating social channels more tightly into their web presence."

[There is a need for staff who can handle
qualitative and quantitative research.]

2. The Need to Work with Data
Gossen says that "alumni programs will increasingly need someone to work with data." In addition to building online interaction around data to make it more relevant to individual users, "this staff member would be thinking about great infographics to replace most of the text-intensive stewardship content we currently use to keep donors engaged."

[Note fun but informative map infographic above, showing US states as comparably-sized national economies. Click it to view full size.]

3. In-house Realtime Content
Advancement offices will soon need access to professionals who can generate multimedia content in-house and on the fly. Webinars, livestreaming video, and graphics and data mashups will become must-have features of the social web, and alumni will expect them to be available in realtime.

[Communications staff engage more people than traditional staff
who interact only at events.]

4. Integrating Communications with Alumni Relations
Finally, Liz Allen points out that alumni communications professionals should be integrated into the practice of alumni relations. "Anyone handling communications in an alumni office must be an alumni relations professional, not just a communications person who happens to work in an alumni association." Allen points out that communications staff engage with many more people than do traditional staff members who interact only at events. "That person needs to have personality, to understand alumni relations and its role at the institution, and to have genuine alumni interaction online and in person."

These ideas aren't yet critical breaking points for alumni communications. But it's important to think about what changes will make future engagement strategies more effective for the institution and for alumni and donors.  

Infographic via The Economist

Related articles

• Social Media Staffing and the Org Chart (adaptivateblog.com)
• The Enterprise Social Media Adoption Path (johnbell.typepad.com)

Two Ways to Measure Social Media

This article is also featured on the CASE Social Media Blog.

 

Measuring social media activity is a very hot topic.

In its simplest form, measurement of social media activity takes one of two forms. Organizations generally measure either:

the things the organization does,

or 

the things its audience does.

For example, an alumni association might post a series of photos on Facebook. Later, when reporting on its activity, the association would include the number of photos shared on Facebook.

Alternatively, there might be a number of "Likes" on the photos, plus comments from alumni or students. These comments are "user-generated content" and will be reported as outcomes of the photos having been posted.

[Measurement of social media activity takes one of two forms.]

The first kind of metric ("what the organization does") shows only how active the organization is (inputs).

The second metric ("what the audience does") shows the type and quality of interaction the inputs generate (outcomes). To assess your social media effectiveness you need to identify, record and compare both kinds of activity over time.

Knowing you posted a lot of photos doesn't tell you anything about your success. Knowing alumni left many comments on the photos doesn't tell you much either – unless you look and see which types of photo content engendered the comments, and whether the comments in each case were positive, neutral or negative. 

By identifying 1) the inputs that trigger user reactions and 2) the kind of reaction each type of input creates, you can increase the likelihood that your content will engage alumni over time. 

[Combine behavioral information with attitudinal information for 
a complete picture of social media outcomes.] 

This approach to metrics combines behavioral information (how alumni interact with you) with attitudinal information (how they feel about you), providing a more complete picture of social media outcomes than you would gain from recording and reporting only your own actions, or only those of your audience.

Combine this information with strategic goals for alumni engagement, and you'll be able to assess more accurately how using social media is helping you reach your objectives.

Photo of a useful measuring tool by Mutasim Billah via Creative Commons.

Related articles

• 10 Ways to Measure Social Media Engagement (singlegrain.com)
• Track Social Media Analytics with Hootsuite Social Analytics (lockergnome.com)
• Sharing Your Success: Bringing it All Together (adaptivateblog.com)