alumni futures

Step Away from the Printed Directory – Once and For All

Note: This article originally appeared on the Switchboard Blog.

Back in the late 1990s, I worked at a large public research university. We sat through a sales presentation by a vendor of printed alumni directories, and when he left, we said to each other, “OK, but I guess this will be the last printed directory we ever do.” This was the dot com era, the CD-ROM was the latest and greatest way to store and access large amounts of information, and we believed that before long, the digital wave would submerge the printed alumni “phone book” at last.

Five years later I sat through a presentation by the same sales representative, at a different institution. When the salesman left, we looked at each other and said, “I don’t think so. Let’s just host it on the web.” A year later, Facebook was gaining traction and the phrase “social network” was rising in prominence. Alumni still weren’t ready for a digital-only directory landscape. So eventually we compiled, edited, and printed the directory in-house, as a benefit to dues-paying members of the Alumni Association.

Five years after that—now as Associate VP at another university—I got a call from the same sales rep, who told me the business model had changed. He acknowledged it was hard to get alumni to buy the directory outright, but he told me that they would provide the directory to alumni who contributed an agreed amount to the annual fund. I said, “No thanks.”

And finally, we didn’t do a printed directory.

I was not inundated with complaints from alumni expecting the book to arrive. I did not field a single question from curious alumni, wondering what could possibly have changed. The passing of the printed volume went unnoticed by all except the university staff members, whose time was now free to deliver benefits and services of more relevance and value to more alumni.

[I did not field a single question from curious alumni]

This point is critical. The idea of “opportunity cost” in business is important, and it applies here. Simply put, opportunity cost refers to what you give up by forgoing an opportunity to pursue an alternative.

In other words, every minute you spend handling the extensive details required to produce a printed alumni directory is a minute you cannot invest in a project with higher value to your audience and your institution. So even if the directory, for example, is of interest to some alumni, you should ask whether there’s a project of value to even more alumni (or of greater value to the same alumni).

In the past few months, I’ve spoken with alumni professionals and volunteers at four institutions who are planning to produce another printed alumni directory. Davidson College’s experience with this has been documented on this very blog. This continuation of the alumni directory business surprises me, as I see alumni leaders try to justify the effort they know it will take.

Why am I surprised? After all, the alumni relations landscape is crowded with “traditional” events and programs that institutions hesitate to discontinue. So why not a paper book sent through the mail?

Because today, ubiquitous internet access combines with powerful search to make most information instantly accessible to most people, anywhere in the world at any time. And the information you find online is likely to be more up to date than information captured in a static form at a specific point in the past. Since printed directories routinely take more than one year to initiate, compile, edit, format, publish and distribute, about 15% of the contact data is likely to be wrong by the time you send it to the few alumni who want it.

To learn what value remains in compiling and printing such a book, I asked for input from alumni professionals. Here are some of the responses, with my comments:

“I’m amazed that it’s still a business, but there’s still some money to be made. More complaints, more pain than ever, however.”

Some alumni will always complain. Knowing that you can’t satisfy everyone, and accounting for limits on your resources, you should actively decide who you can satisfy, how, and with what expected outcome.

“Alumni seem to expect it. The book in hand is a more tangible experience.”

Do they really expect it, or do they just “seem” to? Those are two different things – but you can check. You should at least find out how many alumni expect it and which alumni they are. If alumni do expect it, it is because we have trained them to expect it by repeatedly providing it.

[We have trained alumni to expect it by repeatedly providing it]

“I am building an advancement program with almost 60,000 alumni and no active database. I will take advantage of the directory company collecting current data...at no expense to my program. To be honest, I don't care how many (if any) books they sell.”

Ah, perhaps this is a good use case. Someone starting with “no active database” can find it useful to have a publisher gather data. But is there really “no expense” to your program? Yes, there is no cost to your budget to purchase the books or the service. However, we’ve already seen that there’s the opportunity cost (i.e. everything you cannot do because you’re busy with the directory). There’s also the time, attention and effort that goes into negotiating the contract, ensuring accuracy in the survey instrument, scripting the calls, handling inevitable customer complaints, checking the accuracy of data collection, shepherding the project through your advancement services team, and monitoring the production, distribution and (guaranteed) further complaints from people who were omitted or listed incorrectly (or included, when they had in fact opted out of being listed).

To ensure a quality product, there is absolutely a considerable and real cost.

I emphasize that the “quality product” is not just the printed book. It also comprises customer service and interaction with the publisher’s callers, the printed survey or update form they mail, and most important, the integrity of the data itself. If you’re going to spend a year or more trying to get an upload for your advancement database, you need to be certain that the data you’re adding is correct, and is more accurate than the data you already have in there.

A final comment from a colleague:

“Just did one this past year. It will likely be our last, primarily because our vendor experienced terrible delays (and didn't always share info about them in a timely fashion), which in turn impacted our credibility with the alumni who participated. We did a get a lot of interest in the print directory from our 1960s and 1970s alumni.”

“A lot of interest” perhaps. But how much interest did the alumni team miss out on by spending the effort and time to handle the delays, and to repair the damaged credibility she mentions? And what about the opportunity to engage more effectively across generations who are not so thrilled by the alumni directory?

Before you decide that the printed directory is a prudent investment of your organization’s scarce resources, weigh it against the actual need and ask yourself which of your strategic goals it helps you to achieve. And – as with any existing program or activity that you repeat because “alumni expect it” –  think about what the project will prevent you from doing that could be advancing your mission more effectively.

Alumni Networks: Allies for Institutional Reputation

This article is based on a presentation developed for Building Universities’ Reputation 2017, a conference hosted by the Universidad de Navarra in March 2017. Unfortunately, due to travel difficulties, I was unable to participate as a speaker. I am sorry that I was unable to attend, and hope that this article provides conference delegates and others with useful information.

§

Competition is heightened among universities today, as rankings increasingly influence public perception of educational quality. These rankings - sometimes referred to as “league tables,” in a nod to European football standings - have detractors and advocates. But regardless of one’s opinion about them, the rankings clearly have public visibility.

Universities work to improve the various factors that influence rankings, including student achievement, research output, facilities and recognition for teaching. But all universities have a particular army of supporters who often remain underutilized in the effort to promote the institution: their alumni.

Before we look at how alumni can help universities, here are three key points to understand about alumni communities and reputation:

1. Alumni form the largest group of stakeholders at your institution

You may have thousands of students, hundreds of professors and researchers, and just as many staff members… but the number of alumni will always be much larger. There are numerous institutions whose alumni number in the hundreds of thousands.

2. Alumni form the only permanent community at your institution

Students are students for only a few years. Professors and administrators will retire or take new positions elsewhere. But alumni status is lifelong.

3. Alumni are both insiders and outsiders

In Institutions for Future Generations (p. 382) the authors explain that as insiders, alumni have a personal interest in their university’s success. And as outsiders to the daily life of the institution, alumni bring the external perspective of semi-detached observers.

Considered together, these three points form the foundation for engaging alumni to enhance your institution's reputation.

[Alumni form the largest, and only permanent audience within your university's community]

The Benefits for Alumni
As citizens, we trade in “social capital” in our lives, especially for professional purposes. Connection to a respected and known institution can enhance graduates’ professional stature and their employability, and can offer professional prestige among family, friends, co-workers and employers.

This is the concept of “degree equity”: the idea that your diploma can increase in value long after you leave university. Its value will rise as your university’s reputation and stature increase. Alumni are usually judged according to their alma mater’s current reputation – so if you attended many years ago, before the institution was well-known or highly-ranked, others will still regard you in accord with its current reputation.

In addition to social capital, it helps to understand “social identity theory.” In part, this says that one’s personal identity is formed somewhat by the groups to which they belong. A university’s alumni often share a sense of identity or community. If so, the university benefits when those alumni spread the word about the strength of their connection to their alma mater. Over time, this can contribute to an increase in institutional recognition; and with increased recognition comes the opportunity for improved reputation.

Some universities’ names are well-known around the world (these institutions top the league tables, of course). But the quality of an alumni network does not depend on the academic quality of the institution itself. There are smaller, less famous universities whose alumni are active, supportive and helpful in increasing reputation. Any university can harness alumni as allies to improve its public reputation.

The Role of Alumni
There are many ways in which alumni can contribute directly to areas that influence reputation. They can...

·     ...act as academic talent scouts to attract top students for enrollment.

·     ...help with employability and career support for students and fellow graduates. This means providing internships, externships, or speaking in classrooms and on panel discussions at career events for students and alumni.

·     ...serve as “brand ambassadors” for the university. This can include visibly displaying their affiliation, talking about the institution and sharing its social media content with their own networks. Many institutions have formalized these volunteer roles for alumni to spread the good word about alma mater. Among European examples are Radboud University in the Netherlands (click on an ambassador’s photo for full information), the University of London, and Cass Business School.

More specifically, alumni active in online communities can serve as social media (or digital) ambassadors, as described in detail by the University of Reading. This can serve organizations of all types, not just universities. Schools often provide ambassador roles to volunteers, and Chevening, the UK government’s international leadership program, has ambassadors who blog about their experience in more detail than you’d find in a Facebook posting or a Tweet.

These means of promoting the institution illustrate how times have changed. In the past, universities mostly controlled which information the public received about them. Now technology allows all of us to publish anything, at any time, to any audience, and therefore communities of all types can self-organize. The university can still publish its own information, but it is just one of many sources of information. So, instead of dominating what people think and know about it, the institution instead has only limited influence over people’s perceptions and opinions. And this includes correcting incorrect views or “fixing” damaging news stories.

[In the past, universities controlled which information the public received...]

The Fine Print About Alumni
I believe that the student experience is the single most influential factor affecting a graduate’s relationship to alma mater. Alumni who had a poor student experience can harm your reputation, just as those who support the university can improve its reputation. Having a good alumni website, nice events, or a strong social media presence cannot “fix” negative alumni attitudes created by lackluster student experiences. This is why more than ever, alumni professionals, academics, communications professionals and student affairs leaders must work closely together. They need to support the student during their brief tenure as students, and accompany the student during the gradual transition from student to alumnus.

There are limits to the benefit a good reputation can provide. Recent research confirms that alumni financial support for high-reputation institutions declines with negative news coverage. In other words, a good reputation cannot provide permanent or total protection to your brand. In fact, a good reputation may create a more negative impression when bad news surfaces, because alumni expect better from an institution that is highly ranked and well-known.

Professionals interested in alumni support of institutional reputation must also explore the meaning and role of an organization’s brand. Brand works alongside reputation to contribute to long-term university success. However, university brand and alumni relations are usually managed from different departments inside the university. Success requires active collaboration by all involved. This means sharing information and partnering to plan and execute public-facing projects, as well as sharing strategic goals and jointly measuring their outcomes.

Leave a comment with your thoughts about reputation and the roles of alumni.

Photo: Bibliotèque de la Sorbonne by John Towner, via Unsplash

Book Review: University Fundraising in Britain by William Squire

University Fundraising in Britain - A Transatlantic Partnership
by William Squire
Matador Books (Troubador Publishing Ltd.), 2012
ISBN  978-1784620-097

I recently read the slim paperback University Fundraising in Britain – A Transatlantic Partnership by William Squire.* Squire, a career diplomat, served a foundational role in both the establishment of CASE Europe (this book was published on the organization's 20th anniversary), and of professionalized university fundraising in the UK. He evolved comfortably into his role as the first head of university development at Cambridge University.

The "transatlantic partnership" of the book's subtitle is appropriately featured, since a major premise of this historical overview is the way in which (and the degree to which) British fundraisers learned from their American counterparts during the formative years of the profession's establishment and growth. The book provides the US context in great detail, but glosses over the prior history of advancement in the UK too easily, covering the period from the 13th century to 1971 in exactly 12 sentences.

However, useful and readable footnotes compensate for the book's uneven pacing in places. 

In examining the US context, Squire provides good data on sources of revenue in American universities. This matters because it led, in part, to awareness in England that fundraising was a source of important revenue to public institutions in the US, not just to the famously wealthy private universities whose philanthropic successes are well-known. The implication of this was that public UK institutions could see fundraising success as well – potentially, at least. Squire also makes the important point that in US institutions, the university president has, from the beginning of formal fundraising here, been an integral participant in development efforts. It was not automatic that UK leaders would be a part of the fundraising effort, and their eventual involvement drove tremendous growth. The book has numerous examples to illustrate specific points like this.

[It was not automatic that UK leaders
would be a part of the fundraising effort]

Along the way toward learning the specific history of the field, the reader also learns the important milestones along the way – many of which follow the British tradition of naming things after leaders or authors (e.g., the Ross Group, the Thomas Report, the Pearce Review, the Woolf Report, and so on). 

The book successfully tells the granular history of the profession's establishment in Britain. But a more useful outcome is illustrating the effective alignment of people at two levels in UK higher education: the working level and the policy level. This mattered in a chicken and egg way. Fundraisers in the trenches had to produce results, to show that they were performing a long-term strategic service that counted. At the same time, however, policy makers had to create structures that enhanced, encouraged and enabled systemic commitment to large-scale development efforts. A failure on either side would have stalled the broader effort.  

To me, this dichotomy mirrors the dual relationship (pointed out in the 2012 Pearce Review) between two of the biggest ongoing issues in UK fundraising: 1) the "availability of professional staff" and 2) higher education's overall commitment to pursue active fundraising policy. Again, there's a push-pull component: without staff to achieve results, policy doesn't matter. But without systemic support (such as matched funding), results will be sub-optimal, no matter how hard-working and savvy gift officers might be.

As for results, Squire amply documents the enterprise's growth, with snapshots of alumni donor numbers, total money raised, and institutions participating in industry-wide meetings and surveys.

In an odd omission, the book provides no index, so finding a specific reference is a little difficult. But the table of contents provides sub-headings that make things somewhat more searchable. 

[Without staff to achieve results, policy doesn't matter]

Summary
This book will be of definite interest to fundraisers working (or thinking about working) in UK schools and universities, as well as those in the charity sector. Those assuming a management or leadership role, in particular, will benefit from the historical background that Squire provides. 

Reading his many specific details can make Squire's content seem almost trivial at times. The agenda of a CASE conference that took place 10 years ago hardly seems "book-worthy." But to use a familiar science metaphor, Squire is relating what happened right after the Big Bang. We know that decisions at the outset of a long-term effort will have effects that last long after the original practitioners are gone. For that reason, this book will be valuable to analysts and historians of European education, though it may seem pedestrian to those toiling in advancement today.   

If the book's outlook can be summed up in one phrase, it would be "Cautiously encouraging." With a strong foundation established, fundraising in UK universities no longer has to prove itself as a worthwhile investment. However, the resources to invest in the first place remain difficult to secure, so the evolutionary road map ahead remains somewhat in question. Watch this space.

Related Links:

University Fundraising in Britain on Amazon.com

University Fundraising in Britain on iTunes (with iBooks preview)

Review by Dale Cooper in the Times Higher Ed
 

* The book was given to attendees at a meeting hosted by the consulting firm GG+A, which is where I obtained my copy. 

A Theory of Institutional Advancement?

"Institutional advancement" is the euphemism for the collected professions of fundraisers, communicators, and alumni specialists in education. In 2011, an interesting discussion with my colleague Philip Lehman led us to wonder: could there be such a thing as "advancement theory"? 

If it could exist, how might we characterize it for others to build on? 

Complexity and Unifying Theories
In her book Complexity: A Guided Tour, Melanie Mitchell explores whether her own field, called "complexity science," might benefit from synthesizing its varied threads. Complexity theory has its roots in chaos theory, theoretical physics, and abstract math. So...not much connection to alumni relations or fundraising. However, her exploration of complexity's framework made me ponder a systematic look into advancement.

Mitchell asks, is it worth seeking "general principles or a 'unified theory' covering all complex systems?" I wonder, are there structured ideas within advancement rigorous enough to be considered "theories"? If so, should we gather, evaluate, and organize those ideas in relation to each other?

[What is the "stuff" of advancement? What are its building blocks?]

Mitchell points out that some sciences are almost ready for unification, others are not. Physics for example is "conceptually way ahead." It is 2,000 years old, and has identified the two kinds of "stuff" that things are made of (energy and matter). Physics has related energy and matter to each other (E=mc²), and has unified three of the supposed four forces of nature. Complexity, on the other hand, hasn't identified anything in its realm comparable to forces or "stuff." 

There are steps to evolving a theory and using it. First you have to articulate the theories, and account for their conceptual building blocks. Then you can establish the likely relationships among these building blocks, so the model describes the way the discipline behaves in the real world. Then and only then can you start to unify related theories into an overarching description of an entire branch of knowledge (or practice). 

Advancement: Hardly Scientific
What is the "stuff" of advancement – its building blocks? The practice of fundraising, communications, and alumni relations? We need specific, detailed descriptions of what our work includes.

A first step would be to articulate common advancement principles that apply to all institutions. Further description of these principles would then follow, with practitioners trading, and improving on generalizations that grow from specific instances that represent the underlying principles.

This is how highly structured fields prune and shape their theoretical foundations. Can advancement do this? Should we bother? Or is advancement too unstructured, too diverse, and too unscientific to be crafted into a conceptual framework that would be of any use?

First Steps
JT Forbes at Indiana University and other members of the Council of Alumni Association Executives have drafted some definitions and descriptions that get alumni relations started in this direction. 

I've written more about that here:

Does Alumni Relations Need a Typology?

Leave a comment – complex, chaotic, unstructured, or otherwise.

 

Photograph of a complex structure in Singapore by Andy Shaindlin.

What Steve Jobs Knew About Alumni Relations

I recently read Walter Isaacson's biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. It holds many examples of the ways in which Jobs could cut to the heart of a problem or describe an elegant solution in a simple way.

One example in particular leapt off the page for me, and I have found that it applies to many things in everyday life – especially in my work. 

When Apple was developing the iPod, Jobs argued that as many functions as possible should be built into iTunes. In other words, instead of browsing for music, purchasing it, sorting and labeling it, and collecting it into playlists all in your music-playing device (the iPod), you would perform all those functions on your computer – and the music player would be just that – a device for playing music, plain and simple. 

["Put the complexity in the right place"]

Jobs said that the reason other companies' portable music players hadn't caught on was that "they were complicated" (chapter 30). He continued: 

So by owning the iTunes software and the iPod device, that allowed us to make the computer and the device work together, and it allowed us to put the complexity in the right place.

Jobs had put the complexity where it belonged another time, about ten years earlier. Isaacson describes Jobs' reaction to Apple's convoluted product line when he returned to Apple as interim CEO in the mid-1990s (chapter 25):

He grabbed a magic marker, padded to a whiteboard, and drew a horizontal and vertical line to make a four-squared chart. "Here's what we need," he continued. Atop the two columns he wrote "Consumer" and "Pro"; he labeled the two rows, "Desktop" and "Portable." Their job, he said, was to make four great products, one for each quadrant.

Putting the complexity in the right place

How does this apply to advancement?

We have a hard time packaging the programs and services we deliver to alumni. There are so many events, benefits, volunteer roles, and points of contact that we are constantly scheming to combine, describe, and explain them to our audience.

Could we simplify our business enough to obtain a Jobsian degree of clarity? It's not as if Apple only had four products, despite the 2x2 matrix. In this example, the "Pro Desktop" quadrant was eventually filled by the Power Macintosh G3. But once the consumer had settled on the G3 as the product of choice, there were a few different configurations (memory, processor, and storage) to choose from. Jobs didn't take away choice entirely – he just put the complexity of choosing in the right place. 

[Make it easy for individuals to understand what we offer,
and to make the decision to buy in]

What would it look like if our 2x2 matrix just had "Students" and "Alumni" at the top, and "Social" and "Professional" down the side? Or maybe, "Engaged" and "Non-engaged" at the top, and rows labeled "Online" and "Offline"? 

Or it could be 3x3, and the offerings could be labeled however you wish.

It doesn't matter what the labels are. The point is to make it easy for individuals to understand what we offer, and to make the decision to buy in. Then we can provide choices that make sense to a subset of our overall audience.

Have you done this? How? Did it work?

Leave a comment.

The Risk in Measuring Alumni Engagement

Adapted from a talk I delivered to CASE District VII in San Francisco on March 1, 2013, titled
"What is Alumni Relations For?"

What are universities for?
I recently read a thoughtful (and at times, funny) book called What Are Universities For? by Stefan Collini. Collini, a professor of intellectual history at Cambridge University, describes how politicians and a "morose, prickly" mythical creature called "the taxpayer" are challenging universities to justify their existence in economic terms. And as we see in the media, critics are calling for more "accountability" by universities regarding the needs of the communities which they serve. They say we can assess this by tracking things such as

* jobs created
* graduates being hired
* companies founded by faculty members, and
* technologies commercialized by the institution. 

But as Collini points out, economic growth is not the sole (or even primary) way in which a community benefits from having such an institution in its midst. To measure education – and humanities in particular – in this way is to apply standards ill-suited to the task.

Collini's essay about what universities are for prompted me to wonder, "what is alumni relations for?" In a way, alumni relations is similar to the humanities. Like the humanities, alumni relations is under scrutiny. Every dollar invested, every staff hour worked, every event, is being assessed to see whether it is generating something called "engagement."

[Engagement is to alumni relations what
economic output is to the humanities]

Advancement VPs, budget managers, and development directors are wondering whether alumni relations is contributing directly to fundraising, and many of us are indexing "engagement outcomes" in search of an answer.

Just as economic measures are ill suited to assessing the "effectiveness" of the humanities, assessing alumni relations primarily according to fundraising outcomes is misplaced. And it ignores a fundamental aspect of alumni relations: the fact that it's largely about relationships.

How do we measure relationships?
We don't generally quantify how we feel about others or what we "get" from having a relationship with them. We don't assign a numerical outcome to interactions with a spouse, a close friend, or a family member. Nor do we keep a record of weighted "engagement opportunities" with family members and acquaintances. 

Why don't we quantify the relationships that matter to us? Because we measure their value based on how we feel, not on a scorecard created by a committee. And things that are based on feelings can't be measured. As Collini points out, they can only be judged.

The engagement craze
And yet, increasingly, we're trying to measure alumni relationships instead of judging them based on our goals and experiences. We have created engagement scoring schemes that quantify intangibles. How much time and effort are alumni relations professionals spending collecting, curating, and computerizing "engagement activities"? How much time should they be spending?

Critics will say, "But Andy, a relationship isn't a business. Universities are businesses. We have to apply business practices to manage them effectively and to maximize return on investment."

Schools, colleges, and universities exhibit business-like characteristics in some areas, and we can choose metrics to assess our progress toward some goals. But historically we've treated alumni relationships like a liberal art, not like a science. So if we assess alumni relations on a numerical scale, we have to change the way we design it and practice it. And we have to reassess its purposes.

Alumni relations needs a methodology
Regardless of its stated purpose in a given institution, alumni relations needs a methodology. We need tools that describe our profession, that help us assess our work, and allow us to talk about it with colleagues from other institutions. But what methodology should we choose? A subjective one based on judgment? Or a more numerical one, based on metrics?

Alumni relations operates today on a continuum, with no data at one end and nothing but data at the other end. 

 

"Friendraisers to the left, please. Robots to the right."

We could operate without data, judging our work by whether people "seemed happy" when they left an event, and by calling ourselves "friendraisers." I don't suggest we do that. 

At the other extreme, we could assign weighted values to things we define as engagement, put them into a database and try to prove exactly how engaged someone is. As you've guessed, I feel that this prevents us from exercising the judgment we need to wield.

A hybrid solution
Instead, we should combine these methods, as some already do. We can find a comfortable spot somewhere in the middle. We can use less measurement and more judgment. We can track data and correlate alumni relations to giving-related outcomes.

And we can find activities that support fundraising directly. A simple example: Work with development research staff to scan the LinkedIn profiles of alumni who join your official group. Flag likely candidates for research, based on job titles and keywords, and track how many become prospects and donors (hat tip to Cornell's Andrew Gossen). 

Alumni executives should regularly set aside the engagement scorecard long enough to get a feel for their alumni family. Because that's what people who are nurturing relationships do. They feel.

And based on how they feel, they decide what's important. To achieve what's important, they can check the numbers for guidance in taking the next step forward. And then see how that feels, and continue the process.

It's not a scientific method, but it can still reflect intellectual and professional rigor.

A simple equation to help us
In that vein, Collini suggests a simple way for scholars to assess each others' work in the humanities: 

Experience + Reflection = Understanding 

This is a proxy for metrics in a field - the humanities - where progress may be impossible to characterize with numbers. Wouldn't this be useful to alumni relations professionals too?

Experience the interactions students and alumni have with each other, and with the institution. 

Reflect on how these interactions matter, based on your goals. 

Understand what you see, what you hear, and what you feel, using your experience and reflection as the foundation.

[Collini: "Experience + Reflection = Understanding."
Is this a useful approach for alumni relations?]

A fork in the road
My views are somewhat of a backlash against the current hunger for engagement metrics. We're at a fork in the road: Do we need more measurement, or more trust in our professional judgment?

It's not an either/or choice. We should measure what we reasonably can, even when it's difficult. But we mustn't lose sight of the human aspect of what we do. 

§ § §

Agree or disagree with my viewpoint? Do we need more measurement? Or something else? Leave a comment.

Focusing on ROI is Selfish

Higher ed communications leader (and Alumni Futures advisory group member) Charlie Melichar periodically speaks about social media's place in advancement. At a conference in 2010, an audience member asked Charlie about "getting more alumni to spend time with our Facebook presence." 

Charlie replied:

Don't worry so much about whether a few more people spend two minutes a day with your Facebook content. Get the people who already spend two minutes to spend a few more minutes a day. Don't focus solely on ROI. Focus on ROA – Return on Attention.

Charlie urged us to make our existing supporters' experience more rewarding, instead of only trying to attract more fans and more followers. 

At the 2012 CASE Summit, I had a moment of clarity about why this made sense. Charlie was on stage again, this time discussing technology with MIT's Sherry Turkle. She had just described how technology can isolate us from one another, hindering genuine interaction. The discussion sparked my memory of Charlie's earlier remarks, and I suddenly realized why I found his advice appealing. In a nutshell:

Measuring ROI means assessing the value we get from our investment in online engagement.

Measuring ROA focuses on the engagement's value to our audience.

You should assess whether your organization is using its resources wisely, and ROI is one way to approach that.

However, "return on attention" puts the audience first. That's a worthwhile goal for those of us trying to connect with our audience in ways that matter to them.

 

Related Link:

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other
by Sherry Turkle

New Publication: Internationalisation of European Higher Education

I recently had the honor of contributing to a newly-published handbook, Internationalisation of European Higher Education.

My contribution is a section on Challenges in Global Alumni Relations.

The book consists of a hard copy (loose-leaf) physical edition, supplemented three times a year with digital updates that reflect new developments, best-practice examples from across Europe, and hands-on advice. The target audience is European education professionals navigating an increasingly international landscape.

Subscribers to the volume get online access to digital versions of all the Handbook's articles – useful for those who are constantly traveling because of the international role they play.

A description, full table of contents, and pricing information are available from the Handbook website:

Internationalisation of European Higher Education

The book is edited by the European Association for International Education.

I don't make any money from people purchasing the volume; but I'll gain great satisfaction if it helps a few Alumni Futures readers with their everyday professional challenges.

 

Do Events Have a Social Graph?

In a recent article titled The Next Big Thing, social network analyst Valdis Krebs pointed out that just as a person has a "social graph" that depicts how they connect and interact with others, a book can have a social graph too. His network map displays connections between the purchasing behaviors of individuals who bought a specific book on Amazon.com: 

Below is a network map of a very interesting new book – Too Big to Know [2B2K] by internet scholar David Weinberger. David's book is shown by the magenta node in the center of the network. Directly connected to his book are the books that Amazon mentions that customers also bought [green nodes], in addition to 2B2K. These books are probably more similar than different to 2B2K. The blue nodes are books that are 2 steps away from 2B2K, they are probably more different than 2B2K, but retain similarities also. The arrows show the direction of the majority of also-bought activity. 

His conclusion? Amazon is building an "Interests & Passions network...under the radar."

"Social Graph" of the book Too Big to Know on Amazon.com, via The Network Thinkers - Click to enlarge

It occurs to me that if a thing (like a book) can have a social graph, so can some of the "things" we use to engage alumni and donors. For example:

Events can have a social graph.

Is someone who attends a particular event more or less likely to attend certain other events? The answer could improve our target marketing for events.

Volunteerism can have a social graph.

Is someone who volunteers for a specific role more or less likely to fulfill another, specific role? The answer could improve volunteer recruitment.

[If a book can have a social graph, why can't an event?]

And directionality matters here too. For example, arrows would show which volunteer roles lead to future activities.

This is hardly a new idea. Overlay behavior onto a social graph and you're creating an interest graph. That's how several popular online services work, in a general way: Zappos, Netflix, and of course Amazon. But these sites mostly aggregate past users' behaviors to influence the next user's behavior, without those users being connected otherwise. A true "interest graph"–based system would interpret your behavior to help organizations understand why you attended that additional event, or how you felt about your volunteer experience.

Intrigued by this idea? Then see this article by Derrick Harris: The personalized web is just an interest graph away.

Do events, volunteer roles, and other engagement tools have social graphs?

If they do, should we be capturing and analyzing them?

Why – or why not? 

Related articles

• Amazon is building a social graph under the radar (thenetworkthinkers.com)
• [2b2k] Too Big to Know's network (hyperorg.com)
• Looking Beyond the Social Graph, Capsule Aims To Map the 'Experience Graph' (prweb.com)
• The personalized web is just an interest graph away (gigaom.com)

5 Long-Term "Ideas That Matter" for Education

A.C. Grayling with beverage,
by bowbrick via Flickr

[Updated 5 June 2011: A.C. Grayling involved in establishing new College of the Humanities in London.]

The English philosopher A.C. Grayling seems to produce a book or two every year, about things I can't comprehend. For example, is philosophical realism more epistemological than metaphysical, as a construct for understanding the relationship between one's mind and the world? Uh, let me get back to you on that, Dr. Grayling.

But every once in a while, Grayling produces something that many people can understand. In his 2010 book, Ideas That Matter: The Concepts That Shape the 21st Century, Grayling has compiled "a personal dictionary of ideas" that he finds worth examining, and suggests themes that will dominate political, economic and intellectual debate in the coming decades.

Last year, The American Scholar featured a dozen critical themes proposed by Grayling (not all of which are in his book), and among them I found five themes with direct, and potentially monumental, implications for higher education. Note: One of Grayling's constructs is education itself, which he covers in about nine pages, but it seemed a bit too meta to state here that education has long term implications for education.

I've listed the other five below with my own brief comment on their relevance. This is obviously a too-brief treatment of critical topics, but I'm curious how others see these topics in the context of higher education in the coming decades.

1. The Internet
Grayling calls the web "the largest graffiti-scrawled toilet wall in the universe," but its potential to transform education is vast. In fact, it has already done so. One remarkable thing about digital and electronic developments is that they are so new, in historical terms. We're at the absolute beginning of digital technology's influence over education (and everything else). Not all technical achievements are desirable, obviously, but they can open the door to more effective ways of doing things we've long tried to do (such as educating each other and ourselves).

2. China
Grayling's prescription for dealing with China's lack of democratic instruments and questionable human rights record is weak: "the rest of the world should continue encouraging it to practice good statehood." OK, sure. But consider China's economic and population growth, the public Westernization of certain aspects of its society, and its increasing (but so far, tenuous) links with Western institutions. These mean that many or most global education brands will try to place China securely in the forefront of their international strategy. 

[Many global education brands will try to place China in the forefront of their international strategy.]

3. Migration
Grayling focuses on the social outcomes of large-scale African and Middle Eastern migration to Europe. The international flow of students is recasting institutional definitions of what it means to be a "global" university. In fact, nobody yet knows what it means, and the moment that someone figures it out, the definition will change. Either way, increased international student mobility has implications for marketing and recruiting, fundraising and alumni relations, and competition across national borders and regions.

4. E-publishing
Grayling points out that print news media are "struggling to survive" as the written word shifts to digital form. He doesn't say why we need printed media – did people say that the horse-drawn wagon was "struggling to survive" 90 years ago? Or was it obviously obsolete?

[Did people say that the horse-drawn wagon was "struggling to survive" 90 years ago? Or was it obviously obsolete?]

Either way, digital storage and transmission of information (and its accessibility and portability) are wreaking havoc on traditional models of educational publishing and, yes, on retailing too. Campus bookstores house fewer and fewer printed books, and more and more gadgets for reading the books in their new incarnation: the digital volume. 

5. Retromania
On the heels of describing the downfall of printed news, Grayling points out that "the fashion for all things retro is already growing, and that is not a bad trend." Is "not bad" the same thing as "good"? Grayling doesn't say. But one thing seems likely: the past will be romanticized by anyone suffering from "retromania," just as people seem to think that "information overload" is a product of the digital age (it isn't). Who knows, maybe printed books will come back into style briefly, as an affectation of youth – like the cigar, the martini, the ironic fedora, and swing dancing. 

Are Grayling's trends important to education?

What aspects of their importance have I neglected?

Leave a comment.

(And for more of Grayling's opinions about education and how the Internet affects it, see his book Thinking of Answers: Questions in the Philosophy of Everyday Life. See links below.)

Related articles

• Ideas That Matter by A.C. Grayling (books.google.com)
• English Universities After the "Browne Report" (alumnifutures.com)
• Thinking of Answers: Questions in the Philosophy of Everyday Life (books.google.com)
• Educational Marketing, Authenticity, and Web 2.0 (alumnifutures.com)