alumni futures

Three Trends in Global Community Engagement

I am privileged to work with a diverse array of alumni communities: institutions from different countries; public and private universities; independent schools; and even non-governmental organizations, public agencies, and foundations. This year, I have noticed several themes emerge across all of these types of organizations. Below, I share my year-end thoughts about three of the most prominent themes - related to volunteerism, engagement structures and strategy - that should be of interest to any non-profit organization, large or small.

1.    Volunteers expect to see their impact.

Over the past several years, the motivation behind philanthropic donations has steadily shifted from supporting an organization to supporting a cause. This trend has now moved beyond donating money; we are also seeing it where people donate their time. I see this in my work with regional chapter presidents to members of national boards and every volunteer in between.

Committees, boards and councils have historically had a largely honorary or advisory role. But today volunteers expect that the time they are giving, and the work they are doing, is something the organization needs in order to accomplish its mission, as well as something with a tangible outcome for the institution.

For alumni communities in particular, this can go beyond volunteering time with the institution. Alumni don’t only work to support the parent institution; they also support other alumni. For example, graduates provide career support and access to professional networks for students and for fellow alumni. They can also recruit high-quality students, who raise the academic quality of the institution. Over time, this increases “degree equity,” the long-term value of the credentials of all alumni whom the institution has graduated in the past.

The relationship between the institution and its alumni is mutually supportive – a “two-way street.” Volunteer leaders represent the needs and desires of members at large, while promoting the institution’s overarching mission to other community members and to the outside community as well.

2.    Non-profit organizations are investing less in “permanent structures.”

There are generational differences in community engagement. For example, younger members expect to engage with organizations on their own terms – when, how, and as much (or as little) as they wish. This conflicts with the long tradition of formal, permanent structures as the primary portal for connecting with one’s shared community.

My colleague J T. Forbes, Chief Executive Officer of the Indiana University Alumni Association and GG+A consulting vice president, is articulate on this in the context of alumni communities. He notes, for example, how more fluid and informal alumni networks are replacing many traditional regional chapters. Many younger professionals see “joining” a club as an old-fashioned idea; they want to participate in communities, but on their own terms. The result is looser and more adaptable group formation. Small groups can convene on short notice and without official approval for every meeting. This activity is driven by grassroots interest and not by corporate mandate, financial resources, institutional policies, or professional staff. Many groups exist without the knowledge of the parent organization, using online tools and individuals’ interests to drive their activity.

This means the organization must shift its scarce staff time and financial support away from permanent structures and toward more responsive answers to audience needs and expectations. This is challenging for institutions wedded to long-standing, bureaucratic arrangements; but for rising generations, those structures inhibit the creativity, flexibility, and responsiveness they need when working via social or professional networks.

The shift away from permanence is also visible in governance structures, such as boards and their committees. I often advise clients to let standing committees give way to task forces or temporary ad hoc working groups that form and disperse more easily and more frequently. There are still important roles for permanent committees: an executive committee for strategic decision-making; an awards committee for recognizing individuals’ service or achievements; and a nominating committee to select new board members. But for communications, career services, and events, it is more common than ever to have project-based, impermanent groups.

3.    We're trading breadth of engagement in exchange for depth of engagement.

Traditionally, community-based organizations (including alumni associations) have tried to appeal to as many people as possible. The goal was broad participation, even if many participants were only minimally engaged. As times have changed – and due in part to the increasing importance of fundraising for many organizations – the focus has shifted. Now, there is greater acknowledgment and acceptance of reaching fewer, but more selected people, and thereby engaging more deeply with each person we reach.

In this tradeoff, organizational staff must decide at every stage whether to continue trying to reach as many people as possible, or to reach a smaller fraction of stakeholders, more deeply. Think of it in terms of “opportunity cost:” every minute or dollar spent reaching one additional person could instead be spent making an existing supporter even more committed. Over time an organization must do both, but also needs to strike a balance and maintain it through a combination of strategic planning and outcome measurement.

§

These are not the only issues facing our organizations today, but they are ones that bear careful consideration and periodic reassessment. Are they relevant for you? What additional trends or shifts will you be watching in 2017?

Leave a comment. 

Photo by Andy Shaindlin: St. George's College, University of Western Australia

The 2016 Ross-CASE Survey: Alumni Engagement in the United Kingdom

In two recent blog posts on the Grenzebach Glier & Associates website, my colleagues Adrian Salmon and Lori Yersh highlighted key top-level trends from the Ross-CASE report, and delved into the implications of individual versus organisational support for UK universities. As Lori mentioned, the Ross-CASE report groups institutions into five categories (Fragile, Emerging, Moderate, Established, and Elite). I use the same cohort labels in this article.

The data reported in the recent Ross-CASE Survey on UK Fundraising for higher education doesn’t focus very much on alumni relations. The data around alumni programs is mostly about inputs – not outcomes. However, on a strategic level, the report can help to inform your alumni relations approach.

First, let’s look at a chart that my colleagues at GG+A compiled using data from the Ross-CASE report. It shows Total Advancement Cost per Alumnus and Cost per Donor (click image to enlarge):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The more invested per contactable alumnus, the less expensive it becomes per acquired or retained donor.
(Source: Ross-CASE Survey 2016) 

This chart shows, in pounds spent, two metrics:

• The very short, blue columns represent total spending on fundraising and on alumni relations per individual graduate, by each cohort’s member institutions. We see measurable increases from the Fragile cohort onward, and then a quite large relative leap as we move from Established to Elite institutions, as defined in the Report.

• Next, the taller gray columns show the institutional cost per donor obtained (for all kinds of donors, including alumni).

What does it tell us?

• Acquiring and retaining donors does incur a cost. How much? The mean cost across all institutions in the survey is £440 per donor, and the median is even higher, at £608. This is a very useful metric for advancement professionals checking the targets their leaders expect them to achieve, against the resources allocated to achieve them.

• Even though the more established programs are spending more on advancement per contactable alumnus of their university, their cost per donor becomes progressively lower.
  
  In other words, as they invest more in advancement per alumnus, their fundraising efforts become more efficient.

[Alumni relations is not simply an expense, it is an investment, 
because it has a long-term return]

Many institutional leaders worry about rising costs and say, “We must control spending!” Thus they limit their allocation for alumni relations staff and activities. The report shows that outlays for alumni relations at Fragile institutions amount to only 0.07 percent of total institutional expenditures. As a percentage, this is just half of what the Established institutions are investing.

As a cost-containment measure, severely curtailing alumni relations spending makes sense if spending on alumni outreach is solely an expense. But it isn’t.

When pursued with long-term outcomes in mind, alumni relations is not simply an expense, it is an investment, because it has a long-term return.

The Total Advancement Cost Per Alumnus chart above suggests that if you make false economies in fundraising and in alumni relations, and if you do not invest adequately per contactable alumnus, your fundraising becomes extremely inefficient. This is true whatever the absolute results may be.

You are, in effect, deciding to spend much more, per each pound you raise from donors.

Alumni relations in general doesn’t usually show short-term ROI (financial or otherwise) so many decision makers believe that spending on alumni outreach is a waste of scarce funds. However, investment in alumni relations moves you off the starting line for fundraising with new donors and helps you overcome the resistance that often accompanies a fledgling engagement effort.

Building new relationships doesn’t typically show immediately visible results. These come over time, and mature advancement operations show this.

What kind of return can you expect in the short run when connecting alumni to one another and to their alma maters? Well, fortunately, alumni give in other ways, and these are visible, if not easily quantifiable in monetary terms:

• Alumni who do not currently donate financially can participate by attending events, providing expertise to students and alumni, sharing access to their professional networks, and hosting or organizing alumni gatherings.

• Behavioral researchers identify reciprocity as a key ingredient for positively influencing others . People are much more likely to respond to requests of any kind from those who have already provided us with something of benefit or value. Seen this way, alumni relations is not just a counterbalance to fundraising, but a prerequisite for fundraising as well.

A word about resources: Success doesn’t require that you spend as much or hire as many staff as large alumni offices in North America. Rather, it suggests pursuing relative increases in your own efforts, compared with your historical effort.

[Any reduction in uncertainty represents a form of measurement]

Finally, I want to encourage measurement and benchmarking in alumni work. You can benchmark alumni relations, although it is a little different from tracking philanthropic gifts. Below are two approaches to consider. They are not surgical in their precision, but they may offer more insight.

• First, you can estimate alumni relations expenditure per contactable alumnus:
  • Take your alumni relations budget – staff plus programs – and divide by number of contactable alumni.
• You can also estimate the number of alumni per alumni relations staff position:
  • Divide the number of contactable alumni by the full-time equivalent (FTE) number of employees working on alumni relations.

• The mean in the UK appears to be approximately 16,000 alumni per alumni relations staff member. The report’s Fragile and Emerging institutions, with about 25,000 alumni per staff member between them, are operating at 50 percent more alumni per staff member than the UK mean. This is not a viable formula for long-term success.

You can track your own investment over time (internal benchmarking) as well as your efforts compared with those of peer institutions (external benchmarking).

And with all these metrics, remember this useful definition of measurement, from author Douglas Hubbard: “Measurement is any reduction in uncertainty.”

You do not need to know everything quantitatively to improve your understanding of alumni engagement. You just need to know a little more than you knew before. 

 

I am indebted to my colleague Adrian Salmon for contributions to the insights above.

Is a University a Cause?

I recently came across a podcast (from Achieve). The title caught my attention: 

University is a Cause.

[Scroll down to play the 10 minute podcast, or visit Achieve's Podcast page.]

They rightly point out that in the eyes of students and alumni (especially recent ones), a university is not a cause. This helps explain why it's increasingly difficult to attract and retain these individuals as donors.

The folks at Achieve would agree with that, but I wonder whether their prescription for addressing this will be helpful in the long run. A key component of their advice is that universities should use "cause-type language" in messaging and solicitation.

The problem?

Sounding like a cause does not make you a cause. And donors know this.

Universities exist largely to enable the creation and dissemination of new knowledge. While that has the makings of something broad, societal and over-arching, to accomplish this goal universities are organizations first, and causes second – if at all. Therefore, they generally lack the immediate impact, broad appeal, and problem-solving identity that characterize social causes.

[Sounding like a cause does not make you a cause – 
and donors know this]

Donors know that a gift to alma mater is generally an indirect way to promote renewable energy, eradicate poverty, alleviate hunger, reduce violence, or decrease pollution. 

Of course, universities must raise money! And Achieve's overall assessment is valid. But it can't address the underlying attitudes and expectations of the Millennial prospects that this advice targets.

Doing that will require:

• a change in the student experience itself,
• a change in the stated purpose of alumni organizations, and
• a change in the way universities align their work with that of other world-changing organizations. (I will write much more about this last point in the near future.)

A university is not primarily a cause, it's an organization (or a group of organizations). But by connecting with other organizations and contributing part of the solution to global problems, a university's researchers, students and alumni can support outcomes that transcend the needs of a single institution.

And when they do, they will be much more relevant and engaging to their alumni and donors. 

What do you think – is a university a cause? Leave a comment.

 

 

 

Emerging Opportunities in Advancement: An Online Discussion

On March 31, 2015 I joined host Andrew Gossen on Higher Ed Live, an online discussion specifically for professionals in alumni relations, development and marketing. 

The discussion lasted one hour and is available as a free streaming archive on the Higher Ed Live website:

A Conversation on Emerging Opportunities in Advancement

The topics we covered included these, among others:

• Emerging opportunities for our profession
• External changes affecting our work
• How one might design a new advancement shop from the ground up
• The never-ending questions about "return on investment"
• The growing role of digital outreach 
• Changing attitudes among students and alumni about their relationship with alma mater

Thanks to Andrew for hosting me on the show.

Please leave a comment below if you have anything to add to the conversation!

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. 

Six Recent Innovations in Alumni Relations

An anonymous user recently asked the following question on the "answer site" Quora.com:

What are some innovations in the way that universities are handling their alumni relations?

My answers might be "trends" instead of "innovations," but it's clear that these changes are underway or well-established.

We've seen the following in the last decade or so:

• Increased connections between the alumni office and fundraising (e.g., combining alumni staff with annual fund staff; including the alumni association in campaign plans).
   
• More emphasis on career services, networking help, and professional success for alumni. More coordination with the campus career center.
   
• Educating students more intentionally about their future as alumni, well before they graduate and become alumni themselves.
   
• Steadily evolving regional structures. The traditional "chapter" or "club" with a board, a newsletter, regular meetings, and bylaws is evolving into a less structured, adaptable and responsive "network."
   
• Using social media and other digital channels as "listening posts" to learn what alumni care about and what they need. Less of the old fashioned broadcasting of institutional news.
   
• Increasing reliance on third-party digital tools to deliver content and services online. More companies with apps and platforms designed to drive alumni engagement.  
   

These trends are not universal, nor are they growing uniformly. However, they represent the overall shift that alumni programs must make as alumni themselves do more things on their own that had been the sole province of the alumni office or association (e.g., broadcast communication; event planning; fundraising; finding former classmates).

What other innovations do you see, and how are you incorporating them? Leave a comment.

Related link: My original answer on the Quora site.

Photo by Sarah McGee Via Creative Commons 

 

Volunteer-Led Fundraising: SSE Riga's "Beat Stanford" Campaign

Before reading this article, take a little less than three minutes to view a video that explains part of the effort discussed below:

    Click the following link to view the video: SSE Riga's "Let's Beat Stanford" Fundraising effort

[Update, 27 October, 2014: New York Times article about this topic, quoting Raimonds Kulbergs and me: Using Social Media to Shake Up College Fund-raising.]

 

§§§

'There will always be more people who want to have fun, than people who care about the cause."

This is how the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (Latvia) introduces its approach to annual fundraising.

The business school is relatively small, new, and outside of Europe, not that well-known. Their recent "Let's Beat Stanford" effort – to increase alumni giving – took a behavioral approach to participation in financial support. SSE Riga alumnus Raimonds Kulbergs is driving this aggressive effort. Their goal was to defeat Stanford's Graduate School of Business, as measured by alumni participation in giving, since Stanford is seen as the most effective university fundraising machine in the world. 

Much of what Kulbergs and his colleagues accomplished has been done elsewhere, but there are lessons in Kulbergs' approach. He created an online experience to engage people more fully than many alumni programs do. And SSE's "Let's Beat Stanford" campaign has just earned them a presitigious European advertising honor, an Effie Award. The Effies (so named because they recognize advertising effectiveness) "recognize any and all forms of marketing communication that contribute to a brand's success." SSE Riga won a Gold Effie in the "Product or Service Launch" category.

And SSE Riga wasn't competing against other annual funds. They were in a program that recognizes the advertising success of firms such as Audi, Sony, Lexus and Coca-Cola. 

["There will always be more people who want to have fun,
than people who care about the cause"]

So what did they launch?
A creative way to improve fundraising results. Kulberg told me about his efforts a couple of years ago, after a dramatic rise in alumni giving, from 0% to 11% in four years. SSE then tried their new approach and leapt to 33% in the first year of Kulbergs' experimentation. I said to him at the time, "That's great, but unless you retain donors and maintain that level of support, your approach is not a viable long-term strategy." 

He contacted me again recently and said "We've retained donors and we reached 35% in 2013." So I took a closer look at what they've done.

Kulbergs' common sense approach uses the basic building blocks of behavioral influence, with an emphasis on how people interact online. In Kulbergs' words, "We bet it all on the assumption that we can significantly change the giving behavior of alumni by addressing their human needs, like recognition, playing and being social."

Specifically,

1) SSE Riga published nostalgic photos online to remind alumni about SEE Riga, their student experience and the community of alumni.

2) They gamified the donation process with:

    - competitive elements
    - infographics that change in real-time to show fundraising activity
    - reasonably priced naming opportunities (e.g., naming a classroom seat for 200 Euros) and
    - social media integration, of course.

3) They brought it to life with a face-to-face social event at the institution. 

[SSE Riga gamified the donation process with competition, infographics, naming opportunities and social media integration]

The infographics deserve a slightly closer look
They are simple, yet not often deployed on other giving sites I've seen. For example, a circle representing a graduation class grows as the total of its donations increases, relative to other class cohorts. This is just a variation on the "progress thermometer" which has been around for years, but animated online it takes on new life. Similar graphics expand nations on a map, in proportion to the giving from alumni in each country. And firms' employees can compete with fellow alumni working at their industry competitors. Finally, individuals are listed – and ranked – for their giving on separate donor honor rolls.

The campaign's creators more or less invented a school mascot (a unique creature named Hardy Rock) based on an architectural element of the institution's building. They then deployed imagery of the mascot "defeating" the mascots of universities with higher percentages of alumni giving, along the way to the top spot, occupied by Stanford. Stanford is represented here by its tree mascot, being defeated by Hardy Rock, who has laser beams coming out of his eyes – which is awesome:

 
But what about that goal of challenging Stanford?
In 2011, Stanford's business alumni were giving at a rate of 34% and SSE made that their goal. No European business school at the time had a participation rate anywhere near this, and SSE's own alumni were giving at 11%. But as noted above, in 2013, SSE Riga hit 35% participation – a percentage point higher than Stanford's.

Raimonds calls this a "David versus Goliath story," but I am not sure that's the case. Stanford's business school is much bigger than SSE, but a larger alumni population doesn't necessarily lead to a higher participation rate. In fact, smaller networks tend to be more densely connected, which can drive higher results than one would see in a larger population. In a small network, like SSE Riga's, any two members are more likely to know each other than in a larger network. Targeting about 1,500 alumni worldwide meant a scalable effort that didn't require a large insitutional investment in a professional fundraising operation. Stanford GSB claims 28,190 living alumni by comparison - almost 20 times as many as SSE Riga targeted with their campaign. 

Another noteworthy aspect of SSE RIga's results is that it is volunteer-driven. Raimonds says,

We formed a volunteer team with experise in business, IT, and design. Alumni working at ad agency DDB volunteered some of the creative capacity for this project – making nice-looking visuals and witty text for social media. They set out to reimagine the donation process and built a platform with game elements, integrated with social media, where alumni were given control over the donation campaign, and progress was fully transparent to the alumni in real time.

I think that their "outsider" perspective allowed the volunteers to see things with fresh eyes, something hard to do when you are immersed in the traditional every day machinery most of us work with in annual giving and alumni relations. 

A final lesson
This effort incorporates the building blocks of crowdfunding, which other educational institutions are adopting for small projects among their larger fundraising efforts. Without the background of a giant campaign to build endowment, or an army of gift officers securing large pledges, this crowdfunding approach becomes the core of a small institution's fundraising persona. It will be interesting to see if it drives the growth of a more traditional development office over time – a kind of reverse evolution of the fundraising office.  

Incidentally, Kulbergs recognized that the tactics they employed on behalf of SSE Riga could potentially aid any institution trying to engage more people more effectively in support of alma mater. So Kulbergs and his current colleagues quit their prior fulltime jobs and created a company called Funderful. They are already working with other European institutions to bring their approach to more universities, including this simple approach for Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands. 

In case you skipped it up above, here again is the short (2 minutes 45 seconds) video about the overall approach and results from SSE Riga's award winning effort. This video is worth watching, to get a better sense of the game and social elements incorporated into the project:

Video: https://www.itsfunderful.com/sseriga_case

Also, visit SSE RIga's Alumni Giving page: https://donate.alumni.lv

 

Related link

Advancement Live: Raimonds Kulberg & Kristaps Silins of @itsfunderful

International Education: Using Social Media to Shake Up College Fund-Raising

The Future (Part I): Fundraising's Relationship to Alumni Relations

This is the first of three articles that I have adapted from my remarks as the alumni relations keynote speaker at CASE V in Chicago, in December 2013. The title of my talk there was Alumni Relations & Advancement's Future: 3 Questions.

For part II of this series see my article about the changing student experience and its effect on alumni relations. Part III is about predicting the future of alumni relations.

§§

In 2013, we celebrated the centennial of alumni relations as an organized profession. While the profession has evolved extensively over the last century, we still work with our predecessors' original goals in mind: forging and nurturing meaningful bonds between alumni and alma mater.

The first 85 years of organized alumni relations (from about 1913 to 1998) was stable, with mostly incremental change. But the last 15 years have been revolutionary. The rapid rate of change in our profession suggests that the alumni office of 100 years from now – if alumni programming exists at all – would be virtually unrecognizable to us. 

Recent changes fall into two interdependent categories: technological change and human (social) change. First, digital communication, online social networks, and powerful search continue to have enormous impact. Directories, event management, research, and fundraising have all changed dramatically in the last decade, thanks mostly to the effect of new tools.

But it's not only technology that has changed our profession. Alumni and students also have evolving attitudes toward the role of organizations. (Andrew Careaga mentioned this recently - see topic #1 in this recent blog post.) Author Clay Shirky says that when it comes to many organizations, "What was once a service has become a bottleneck" from members' viewpoints.

With this in mind, I offer the first of three questions for alumni professionals to ask themselves and each other. Discussing and answering these questions will help us prepare for our graduates' and our institutions' future needs:

 What will the relationship be between
alumni relations and fundraising in the future?

A few alumni relations traditionalists still maintain that they are "friendraisers," not "fundraisers." But things have changed. 

In alumni relations, we are certainly in the relationship business – if it can be called a business. It's even in the name of our profession. And we talk a lot about our institutions' community, history, and current needs, the projects we're funding, the students we're supporting, and the buildings we're building. 

But organizations can't just "tell stories" about projects. More than ever, we need to focus on our cause, not our activities. But our cause isn't always clear. Education? Research? Not as clear as other causes that mobilize broad support. Think about political campaigns. However you feel about the tenor of political rhetoric these days, election campaigns achieve enormous fundraising results from the public at large. And it's not because of proposed legislation – it's because parties and their candidates seem to many to stand for ideals and ideas. 

For a university, it's the difference between describing a laboratory building versus describing the world-changing research that will take place inside that building. It's the old sales truism: "Don't describe the features, describe the benefits."

The passion that drives support for big ideas can be difficult for us to channel. We're so accustomed to describing our organizations that it's difficult for us to talk about the effect our organizations have on the world. Done right, educational fundraising is not in the service of an organization. It's in the service of an ideal that is broadly shared across a vast swath of our audience. That focus, that dream, that message about what really matters – it can no longer be conveyed with a mass mailing and an appeal code.

That passion comes from the heart, not from the Office of Donor Relations. 

[What really matters can no longer be conveyed
with a mass solicitation and an appeal code]

We do try hard to be sincere, to tell genuine stories that matter, and often we succeed. But increasingly, we are talking to strangers. We have an audience that we invite to events, but maybe 5% of them actually turn up in the course of a year. And if 20% of our alumni were donors last year, then 80% may not really know us. They aren't paying attention to our needs, and in our appeals they don't recognize a relevant cause. So, many of them are out of touch. Disengaged.

Their commitment to our cause pales in comparison to a family member's commitment to a niece or nephew's personal pursuit. Passion drives support, which helps make the crowdfunding movement so powerful. And nothing invokes passion quite like a cause. Think about political campaign advertisements that have angered you; human rights movements that expose shocking abuses; and social justice efforts that succeeded because they stopped at nothing short of obtaining what is right for people who have been wronged. True causes, the kind that inspire passion, drive people to give up their day jobs, to protest until they get arrested, even to lay down their lives.

For or better or worse, nobody ever went to jail or died trying to get the annual fund participation rate to 30%.

So where might alumni relations and fundraising cross paths most effectively in the short run?

The most obvious place for alumni relations and development to combine efforts is in annual giving. Alumni officers and annual giving staff are talking to the same audiences: students, their parents, and alumni. Why put a generous donor on hold while you transfer their call to the development office, because you aren't sure about how to handle a year-end gift? 

[Friendraising is dead]

Furthermore, we have long given alumni the impression that asking graduates for donations is the institution's sole (or at least primary) purpose. Many alumni assume that the envelope or email from the alumni association is a fundraising solicitation. And we reinforce the delicacy of asking for donations by relying on euphemisms, "development" and "advancement" being the most common ones.

We need alumni to understand that their financial support is critical, but we also need our institutional leaders to understand the value alumni relations can bring to advancement. At institutions that bring alumni relations and annual giving into closer proximity, alumni will be better educated about how their donations will be used, and will be comfortable knowing that financial support for the institution and its people is an expectation. And eventually, they might respect us more, for our honesty.

It's very important to note that giving is not the sole obligation we should convey to alumni. We also want our graduates to volunteer their time and expertise, to attend events (either face to face or virtual), and to be proud brand ambassadors for alma mater. But we can and should mention donations in the same breath with these other forms of support without having to blush or lower our voices.

Friendraising is dead. Alumni relations and development are, I believe, destined to be ever more interwoven, and that's a good thing, for our donors and for our institutions.

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In part 2 of this series I'll ask, How will the changing student experience affect alumni relationships?

3 More Questions (and Answers) on Alumni Engagement

During our Higher Ed Live online discussion about alumni engagement, we answered a few questions from readers and viewers. But we didn't get to all of them. Here are answers from Charlie Melichar and Andrew Gossen to some additional comments and questions.

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Question:
How can our offices become proactive and future-thinking, versus playing catch-up (e.g., LinkedIn replacing alumni directories)?

Charlie:
Start with a clean slate. We still view problems through the lens of old solutions. Look at the news business, for example. The industry was so entrenched in papers as the delivery vehicle, they were slow to adapt to a new model to do what was ultimately most important – deliver information in the most timely way possible. We need to focus on the need, the opportunity, or the problem – and be open to changing our ways. People want a network, not a directory. People want a job, not a careers program. People want to make an impact, not a gift. How can we facilitate all of this?

Andrew:
You can’t do this unless there’s someone in your shop whose job is to pay attention to how the world is changing. They need the time to do this, and they need the experience and perspective to recognize emerging opportunities. In Cornell Alumni Affairs & Development, we ask two questions when new opportunities present themselves:

1.       Does the opportunity enable us to pursue an existing strategic goal more efficiently or effectively than we are doing now?; and

2.       Is there an emerging critical mass of alumni activity that warrants our involvement? 

Charlie’s focus on value from the user’s perspective is also essential. We aren’t employed to perpetuate ourselves and our programs; we’re employed to engage our audience. Focusing on our alumni and their evolving needs will make it much less likely that we’ll be left behind.

[Melichar: "People want a network, not a directory. People want a job, not a careers program. People want to make an impact, not a gift."]

Question:
Most donors engage without having to "be present." They send a check whenever they want. What are some non-financial analogs to this?

Charlie:
Social media is a great example of asynchronous engagement. People pick and choose the content that is meaningful them, from the sources they care about, and then do “something” with it. They like it, share it, mash it up. We need to get away from only counting engagement when it happens on our own terms (e.g., events we organize, conversations we convene) and find mutually beneficial ways to join with our constituents.

Andrew:
As Charlie suggests, it’s content. Social media. Archived video. Asynchronous games. Infographics. Memes. High-quality, on-demand engagement is a great fit with today’s highly digital lifestyle.

We could also focus on the convener role, trying to connect alumni so that they can engage with each other when it’s convenient for them, around their priorities. We make the introduction and get out of the way.

[Gossen: "Emerging platforms & techniques blur the distinction between giving and other modes of engagement – the boundaries start to collapse."]

Question:
In fundraising, should we just count donors and not worry about dollars? It's much easier to measure...

Charlie:
It depends on what you’re counting and why, but both are critical. There are engagement models that would take size of gift, whether it is a first-time gift, renewal at a higher level, and so on, as engagement measures. This underscores that there is no "one-size fits all" model. We need to tie these measures to institutional and program-level goals. That’s the way to stay relevant and nimble.

Andrew:
Emerging platforms and techniques blur the distinction between giving and other modes of engagement so thoroughly that the boundaries start to collapse. Take crowdfunding, for example. A $25 donation is definitely "giving." But receiving an almost-instant thank you from someone involved with the project is both stewardship and person-to-person engagement. The frequent, informal updates sent to donors by the project team are stewardship, but they’re also communication that fits well with culture of the social web. This may complicate measurement, but it almost certainly will better engage the donor. 

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Related articles

Online Discussion: Higher Ed Live Explores Alumni Engagement

Preparing Advancement for an Ambiguous Future: Guest Blogger Andrew Gossen

Andrew Gossen (@agossen) is Senior Director for Social Media Strategy in Cornell’s Division of Alumni Affairs & Development, and is a member of the Alumni Futures advisory group. 

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Have times ever been better for advancement in higher education? Stanford University recently wrapped up a $6.23 billion campaign. Princeton’s Aspire Campaign raised $1.88 billion. At Cornell, in the midst of the $4.75 billion Cornell Now campaign, we have just completed the most successful year of fundraising in the university’s history.

But an undercurrent of anxiety runs through higher education; the world is changing rapidly in ways that may make the status quo unsustainable. Can an advancement organization position itself to succeed in an ambiguous future? Cornell’s Division of Alumni Affairs and Development (AA&D) recently embarked on an experiment that we called the Skunkworks, in recognition of the history and spirit of Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs organization. 

Vice President for Alumni Affairs and Development Charlie Phlegar convened the Skunkworks in Spring 2011. The group included 14 staff from across the Advancement Office – from Major Gifts to Advancement Services; veterans mixed with newcomers. Our charge? Take a broad look at the challenges, opportunities, and trends that will influence institutional advancement in higher education over the next twenty years. We were given complete freedom to explore in whatever manner we chose.

The group met regularly for a full year. Members took turns leading discussions on many topics, such as:

• The Digital Life of Alumni
• Rethinking the Endowment
• Storytelling and the Institutional Website
• Crowdfunding and Microfinance
• Young Alumni Giving
• The Psychology of Happiness in Fundraising, and
• Women and Philanthropy

By the end of the year, our conversations revolved around three main themes.

1. Increasing competition for the attention of our audience.
It is more difficult to connect our audience to Cornell meaningfully. There is rising competition from other non-profits, rapid and dramatic change in communications, and an imbalance between sharing our message and listening to our audience.

2. Changes in the philanthropic environment.
The demographics and behaviors of our audience are making traditional programs and approaches less effective. For instance, women are assuming a greater leadership role in philanthropic decisions. Different generations display different attitudes towards giving. Direct mail and phonathons will become less effective as technology and habits change.  Keeping accurate contact information for alumni has always been a challenge, and will get harder as people abandon land line phones and answer fewer calls, thanks to caller ID and mobile technologies.

3. Organizational agility.
Traditional fundraising and engagement programs have served our institution well over the years, and we are organized to sustain and improve them deliberately and incrementally. However, the world is changing so fast that this deliberate pace is no longer as effective, especially with competition from the “new and nimble” non-profits that are making inroads into our audience and threatening our donor pipeline. 

Overall, we concluded that broad one-size-fits-all fundraising, engagement, and communications strategies will become less and less effective. We need to focus on user experience, personalizing and customizing interactions in ways that meet the audience expectations shaped by companies like Amazon and organizations such as Kiva.org. We must also segment our audience beyond their giving history, and account for generational differences, gender, ethnicity, and other variables that may affect capacity and inclination to engage.

And changing the way that we think about our audience is only one piece of the puzzle. Equally important is adopting an experimental mindset. The only way you will know if something works is to test it. Some experiments will fail and that’s ok, because that’s how you learn. Organizational culture must evolve toward pilot projects and rigorous data analysis, and away from the risk aversion and conservatism that characterizes so much of higher ed advancement.

Our final report to the Vice President recommended a list of pilot projects designed to test specific hypotheses that emerged from our discussion. Among them are experiments with crowdfunding, developing advancement strategies focused on professional cohorts of female alumni, gamification, and enhanced presentation skills training for faculty, senior administrators, and advancement officers. The organization has already incorporated elements of these into broader efforts to raise annual giving participation.

The Skunkworks approach demonstrates that an advancement office faced with change and uncertainty can position itself for the future by mobilizing talent already present in the organization.

 

Skunk Works logo via Wikimedia. Copyright Lockheed-Martin