alumni futures

Engaging Alumni of Foundations, Fellowships, and Other Non-Profits

For a long time, the word “alumni” referred only to graduates of schools and universities. Over time, however, we have increasingly used the term to describe individuals who share almost any specific past experience. Recently, I’ve been privileged to work on a project that revealed emerging practices in alumni engagement for charitable foundations, scholarly and artistic residency programs, fellowships, and other nonprofit organizations.

Funded by a grant from The Rockefeller Foundation, I led the creation of an alumni outreach strategy for the Bellagio Center in Italy. For decades, the Bellagio Center has hosted residents and conference participants in support of the Foundation’s mission: “to promote the well-being of humanity around the world.”

During this project, I interviewed Bellagio and Rockefeller Foundation staff members and alumni. I also spoke with representatives from nine other diverse organizations with non-traditional alumni communities. I am pleased to share the insights I gathered during that process in a white paper titled Engaging Alumni Outside Academia: Emerging Practices in Foundations, Fellowships and Other Nonprofit Organizations. I’ve highlighted some key takeaways below. (Click on the title of the paper to download a free copy from the GG+A website.)

Identifying “Non-Traditional” Alumni Communities

In crafting the Bellagio Center’s alumni strategy, we considered “traditional” alumni groups to be those at academic institutions, such universities and schools. There is a long history of alumni organizing to support their alma mater and each other, usually aided by professional staff members. In the white paper, I examine so-called “non-traditional” alumni communities, share some of the principles learned in traditional settings, and describe how these principles apply to non-academic institutions.

Applying Universal Alumni Engagement Principles

Certain alumni engagement principles apply almost universally, such as using a shared experience to drive a sense of identity that lasts beyond the experience itself. Other common principles include prioritizing ways to interact with alumni, creating a strong brand for the alumni organization, and providing alumni with information they cannot obtain elsewhere. In the paper, I focus on unique opportunities for organizations with diverse purposes and missions to apply these principles.

Adopting Beneficial Practices

This field is in its formative stages, and some practices are certainly beneficial. But it is not yet clear whether other practices are “best” or merely “prevailing” practices. The clearly beneficial practices include highlighting early on participants' lifelong connection to the organization, a special status that distinguishes them from other stakeholders. I also recommend specific ways to compensate for the short amount of time that alumni may have interacted directly with an organization.

Building a Community of Practice

In the future, organizations will adapt established practices and imagine new ones to engage these alumni. These same organizations will benefit from regularly sharing with each other their engagement strategies, as well as their successes and challenges. For this reason, I believe the time is right for establishing a more formal community of practice that enables them to learn from one another’s experiences.

To download a free copy of Engaging Alumni Outside Academia, click here.


Photo of Bellagio, Italy by @deensel via Creative Commons 2.0

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

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.

Alumni Networks for Those Who Will Benefit Most

One cliché about alumni networks is that they are hotbeds of power in government and business. The "old boys'" network has been all too real for a long time. 

But why should alumni networks be strongest among those who need them the least? Members of elite alumni networks (you know the ones I mean), by and large, already have relatively privileged access to jobs, capital and influence. 

Arguably, the people who benefit the most from alumni support are students in ordinary or in under-privileged communities around the globe. Public or government-funded high schools with few financial resources other than the local tax base don't have official alumni networks, budgets or staff. More fundamentally, their students are largely unaware of the existence of an alumni network. 

But that is starting to change.  

[Why should alumni networks be strongest
among those who need them the least?]

Late last year I gladly accepted an invitation to join the Alumni Advisory Group of a UK-based non-profit organization called Future First Global. Their work is directly in line with many of the principles and ideas I try to incorporate into my work with consulting clients around the world.

Future First Global (FFG) has a unique purpose: they work with "governments, schools, teachers and NGOs to support the growth of high school alumni networks globally," to ensure that students gain skills and experience that enable them to get a job. 

The founders of Future First Global realized that alumni networks can benefit "ordinary" people too. Now, at long last, alumni networks are helping the people who probably need them the most: high school students and graduates from ordinary secondary schools, and especially those in underprivileged or lower socio-economic communities. 

In a pilot program, FFG partnered with 15 schools in Kenya, to "build, maintain and mobilise alumni networks that support current students." For alumni professionals, this may not sound so innovative: supporting students is, after all, something that effective alumni communities commonly do.

But Future First Global helps schools without the history, infrastructure and culture of alma mater that many of us take for granted. By connecting successful graduates of rural or under-funded schools with those schools' current students, Future First will be able to show just how important alumni can be. For a school where few students will go on to further education, and where new graduates won't have many jobs to choose from, alumni connections, experience and wisdom could be the crucial difference for many new graduates. 

[Future First Global helps schools without the
culture of alma mater that many of us take for granted]

I'm excited to see awareness of alumni networks take root in ordinary communities. The elite Old Boys would hardly recognize most of these schools' alumni as "successful" by the standards they grew up with.

But that's exactly the point. “Alumni success” isn't absolute. It's relative to the expectations and opportunities in place at the start. This is how alumni achievement is measured. 

With that as the backdrop, even the smallest victories will have an enormous positive impact on these communities. 

§

Do you have questions, comments or ideas for Future First Global? 
Send an email to Abi Nokes, Research & Programme Manager: [email protected].

[Photo: Students performing at an FFG event for girls from TumuTumu Public High School in Kenya]

 

 

How Not to Rank Alumni Networks

The generally reliable Economist magazine published something a little naive early this year.

In a February column titled A ranking of business schools' alumni: Network effects, the magazine listed the business schools with "the most useful alumni."

There may be a reliable methodology for determining such a ranking, to some approximation. But The Economist's method isn't it. Their methodology is simple. To quote them:

Each year, The Economist asks students to rate their school's network. 

So what's wrong with this system?

[There may be a reliable way to find the 'most useful' alumni,
but The Economist's method isn't it]

Simply put, it is in the direct interest of every student surveyed for others to believe that the student attended an influential and successful institution. This confers the maximum perceived value to their degree.

For that reason, every student asked to rate their own school's network should rate it as highly as possible.

In this survey, that would be a 5 out of a possible 5. The students at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business seemed to understand this: they ranked their network 4.98 out of 5.

It's surprising that the ratings of the top 10 schools dip as low as 4.71. Maybe the schools should offer more marketing courses to their MBA candidates? 
 

Thank you to John Arboleda for sharing the Economist article with his network on LinkedIn, where I first saw it.

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. 

Why Alumni Relations Needs a Typology

Last week, I asked whether advancement needs a more formal theoretical framework. This week, I want to share the work of JT Forbes at Indiana University, and his colleagues in the Council of Alumni Association Executives (CAAE).  

Recently, JT emailed me about a blog post titled Toward a Common Definition and Taxonomy for Alumni Engagement.

JT's email, blog post, and linked document [PDF] are in the same vein as the ideas I shared last week, but are more practical and specific to alumni relations. He and fellow members of the Council of Alumni Association Executives (CAAE), propose that alumni relations needs "a unifying definition and taxonomy of alumni engagement that reflects the diverse and vibrant tapestry of alumni relations work."

The goal: to establish a shared language around engagement. "With a strong foundation of core concepts in place," they write, "innovation and professional practice will grow and thrive."

Grateful to JT for his request for feedback, I am sharing my initial thoughts here. JT and his colleagues encourage additional feedback and comments on this work.

[Does alumni relations need a unifying definition of engagement? 
A typology that describes its common principles?]

5 Comments on a Framework for Alumni Relations

• The rationale is strong
  Why do this at all? I agree with the draft's premise: "A shared definition of alumni engagement...provides the foundation for assessment, growth, and innovation in our field. Without these in place, we will struggle to...adapt and evolve."

• We need a typology, not a taxonomy
  A typology is more theoretical (and arbitrary) than a taxonomy, but also more flexible. A taxonomy tends to be set, and examples that come along after it is established must fit a pre-established hierarchy. A typology can be updated along the way, and lends itself to a rapidly changing field like alumni relations. [For a more in depth comparison of typology versus taxonomy, see Dave Snowden's comments on the subject.]

• Several of the domains overlap
  JT's draft recognizes this, and it's another reason a typology makes sense. For example, "global and international outreach" happens most often in the presence of "alumni community development." I.e., your institution is more likely to host an overseas event in a city with an active alumni club. This isn't bad; we just need to acknowledge the degree to which these domains overlap, mix and intermingle. 

• We just need to come close
  We don't need a perfect, finished product. JT's draft might be enough to get us started using the descriptions we'd want to characterize our work. 

• Characterizing existing programming is the next step
  One immediate use for the typology would be assessing how different advancement teams deploy the domains. What percentage of our effort is devoted to volunteer management? To clubs and chapters? Career programs? Do outcomes show that a particular distribution of effort, or a consistent set of priorities lead to more success? Do they correlate to organization type or scale?

[A definition and typology for alumni engagment will help us articulate
our purpose and whether we are achieving it]

5 Challenges We Face Next 
In addition to fine-tuning the descriptions of each program area (domain), we should address the following:

• We should agree on what "engagement" includes
  To study and classify something, we must agree on what it is. At the very least, we should address "active" versus "passive" engagement. Often, alumni feel engaged who merely read the magazine and follow us on Twitter. By our definition, they aren't engaged, and we might be under-valuing them.

• Profession-wide trends are cyclical
  New waves of interest wash over the profession until people are accustomed to hearing about something. After a few conference keynotes and a CASE Currents cover story, we shift our attention to a new topic. We should make rapid progress on this particular challenge before practitioners are tired of hearing about it. (I predict that analytics will be the next hot thing, and it should be.) 

• Advancement will resist "classification"
  The variety of models within our profession guarantees that no typology will be complete enough to stand on its own. There will be multiple versions of the definitions, for different markets, advancement cultures, and types of institutions. Advancement relies on human behavior, which defies global, standardized models. 

• We should not rely entirely on predictive models
  I've mentioned that we need to reserve a spot for professional judgment alongside our increased understanding of data modeling. We can increase our overall effectiveness by using analytics and big data. But decisions about how to engage a particular volunteer or when to ask for a large gift depend more on our human understanding of an individual's motivation than on a quantitative analysis of "people who are like that person." So far – in my experience – data-driven suggestion engines (like Amazon or Netflix) are still wrong more often than they are right. They can also prevent users from exploring unconventional solutions to current problems.

• Innovation helps and hinders classification
  Our society is obsessed with fostering a culture of innovation. And every new tool that helps us solve a problem also makes new outcomes possible. We will need to update our typology constantly to account for newly-desired desired outcomes (and newly-created problems). 

Today's financially constrained and increasingly business-like environment in advancement means we are ever-more focused on return on investment. I agree that we will benefit eventually from a more systematic and consistent approach to our profession. By itself, a definition and typology for alumni engagement can't solve our dilemmas. But it will help us articulate more effectively – especially to those elsewhere in the institution – what our purpose is, and how we know whether we are achieving it.  

What do you think? Leave a comment.

Related link: 

Toward a Common Definition and Taxonomy for Alumni Relations

Related articles

A Theory of Institutional Advancement?

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 II): The Changing Student Experience & Alumni Relations

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

§§ 

In the first article in this series, I discussed fundraising's relationship with alumni relations. The final article looks at predicting the future of alumni relations. Here in part II we ask: 

How will the changing student experience
affect alumni relationships? 

Observers are buzzing about several so-called disruptive factors in education. Some of these factors influence the student experience, which in turn affects alumni attitudes and engagement. Here are four that we must think about:

1. MOOCs
Massive open online courses, known as MOOCs, are widely touted to be changing the face of traditional education. They are certainly a departure from the traditional face-to-face classroom: students enroll, usually for free or almost free, and pursue their chosen topic alongside 50,000 or 100,000 other learners. And they do it from the comfort of their laptop or their iPad.

MOOCs' short-term impact on the traditional degree is probably overstated, but their evolution is certain to influence our field.

So far, these online students are not earning degree credit. In fact, according to one recent survey, about 80% of MOOC students already have a traditional degree. And MOOCs are being criticized for their students' low completion rates. But MOOCs are a waypoint en route to some more robust future online educational experience. As the successors of MOOCs become the norm for students enrolled in post-secondary education, the students' sense of loyalty, community, or gratitude to a particular institution is going to diminish – or even disappear. So those of us whose work depends heavily on the residential campus experience must anticipate this challenge.

How do we connect meaningfully with alumni whose education took place online – in their office, in a coffee shop, or on an airplane?

[How do we connect with alumni whose
education took place in a coffee shop?]

2. The Changing Student Profile
Second, the typical student's profile is changing. No longer are the majority of university-goers fresh-faced twenty-year olds. Mid-career changers, single parents attending part time, and those just looking for intellectual enrichment may consider themselves alumni of whichever online platform delivered their favorite lectures. In fact, they may consider themselves alumni of the platform itself, and not a particular institution. Will this diverse body of learners want an alumni organization to connect them with job opportunities, with other learners, or with additional instruction? If so, the traditional affinity model of alumni relations has to evolve, or students will abandon it. 

As the student profile changes so must our profession change. Among the services alumni organizations currently provide, career services and access to specialized networks will be the ones most relevant to alumni of non-residential programs. And they are already proving to be among the most relevant services for alumni of traditional institutions.

3. Expectations of Employment
Criticism of higher education is increasing. The most strident voices are those that reject the rising price tag of a college education.

But another group of critics may cause more stress and challenge for alumni professionals. Those are the people who increasingly want our institutions to somehow ensure jobs for graduates. And those people include the parents of many current undergraduates. The parents are footing much of the bill, assuming debt, and staking their family reputations on the extent to which their sons and daughters turn an expensive and time consuming college degree into a lucrative career.

The root of these complaints is an assumption made before a student even selects a university: that the purpose of a college degree is to help the graduate obtain "a good job" that pays well. Increasingly, this is the definition of alumni success, and increasingly it forms the backbone of numerous rankings and reports, which compare college outcomes on how much a new graduate can expect to earn. We hear little about rankings based on a graduate's inherent satisfaction with a college education, or on the extent to which the college experience turns a young and impressionable student into a contributor to her community. (Notably, the Gallup-Purdue Index will combine the "jobs" factor with the "life satisfaction" factor, measuring "great careers and lives that matter.")

If the student's primary concern is with compensation, alumni satisfaction will be at the mercy of the marketplace. However, the sheer number of students enrolled in fields that do not promise lucrative job offers suggests that the humanities, the liberal and fine arts, and the social sciences are not going away soon. And the passion those students have for their topics will continue for many years to give alumni offices the raw material they need to shape newly minted alumni into passionate and generous supporters of our institutions.

[If the student's concern is compensation,
alumni satisfaction is at the mercy of the marketplace]

4. Internationalization
Finally, a fourth dynamic is influencing the future of alumni relations: the diverse national backgrounds of students.

As students find it more appealing and easier to enroll across borders, the student body becomes ever more international. At my institution (all locations), almost 40% of enrolled students came from outside the United States in 2012. Many overseas students in North America have English as a second language, and their language proficiency heavily influences their student experience. They are in an unfamiliar land with strange customs and unexpected influences. In this situation, most of us would prefer the company of classmates whose language, backgrounds, and cultural references match our own.

These students often travel back to their home country as new alumni, without having truly joined our institutions' broader community. As alumni, they are much less likely to respond to the same messages and images that generate engagement with so many "traditional" alumni.

§§

The challenges and changes I've listed here are only a few of the forces guiding the evolution of alumni relations. Other trends, such as the demographics of younger generations, will add additional fuel and data to future discussios.

Many of us may not feel like we have time to think about the futures these trends are creating. But observing the profiles and experiences of current students may determine our success at engaging the attention and enjoying the support of these students during their lives as alumni.

 

The third and final part of this series will ask, "Can we predict the future of alumni relations?"

Related articles

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

Alumni as Volunteer Course Facilitators: 7 Reasons it Makes Sense

The future of MOOCs

R.I.P. ALUMNI-L: CASE Rolls Out New Online Communities

[Updated December 17, 2013: CASE's archive of ALUMNI-L messages will not be available after December 31, 2013, according to CASE.]

For 25 years the software called Listserv has powered millions of e-mail based discussion groups. CASE has relied on the software to host a number of specialized discussion topics since the late 1990s.

Now the professional organization is moving its members' online discussion to an entirely web-based platform, and today, the alumni relations discussion moves there. The home page for all of CASE's new online discussions (for CASE members) is here:

CASE Communities Home Page

I created ALUMNI-L back in the early 1990s while working at Brown University ("L" in the name stands for the "list" of members receiving each other's emails on relevant topics). A few people from the annual Ivy Plus alumni relations conference wanted to communicate year-round, and I volunteered to create a way for them to do that. Listserv made it easy. The group started with perhaps eight members, and over time we invited our co-workers to join. Soon, people from other institutions were asking to participate, and in under a year we had an international discussion going.

[I created ALUMNI-L with eight members in the early 1990s...
Today it has more than 2,000 members]

In 1998 I asked CASE to take over ALUMNI-L, and they agreed. The list had more than 1,300 members at that time, and today, as CASE retires the list, it has more than 2,000. Before CASE took over, ALUMNI-L was even the subject of a dissertation written by a University of South Carolina doctoral student!

Today ALUMNI-L goes away, and list members (and others whom CASE expects will find the content relevant) have received their welcome message via the new system. CASE expects the new web-based alumni relations discussion to be available to approximately 9,500 individuals worldwide.

Despite the wording of CASE's message about the transition, every message on ALUMNI-L since August of 1998, when CASE took over, is easily searchable on CASE's own servers. But they also point out that the new system supports document sharing and other features not available before. The new system has site-wide search; member profiles, and more intuitive control over how and when one receives messages.

[Today CASE replaces ALUMNI-L with a new online community] 

Using the System
Many of the same "best practices" for using ALUMNI-L apply to this (and any) online discussion forum too. To get the most out of it, keep in mind the following suggestions:

1. If you ask for links or referrals, instruct others to send them to your email address, not to the entire list. Promise to compile and share what you learn. Later you can send a brief summary of your findings to the entire list. This is how you repay other members' generous information sharing, and it will dramatically decrease the number of messages others need to scan and wade through every day.
   
   
2. Never post a message that says (in effect), "Me too." If someone asks for information, everyone else will see the response when it's eventually posted. 

Good luck to CASE with its new format for discussion, and sincere thanks to everyone who gave ALUMNI-L an unexpected 19-year run as the central forum for global discussions about alumni relations.

Related Link

• Welcome message to new community (CASE member login required)