I'm thrilled to announce that effective immediately, I am joining the consulting firm of Grenzebach Glier & Associates (GG+A) as Vice President.
As a consultant focused on alumni relations, I will advise a wide variety of institutions on alumni outreach, strategy, governance and programming. It is a pleasure to join GG+A's Chris Marshall in this effort. Chris has led GG+A's focus on alumni relations for more than two years. With GG+A's global footprint, I'll be able to reach and help many more institutions than I can as a solo consultant under the Alumni Futures banner.
I will phase out Alumni Futures as a consultancy, working part-time for GG+A at first, and ramping up to a full-time role in the coming months. However, I will continue to blog periodically from Alumni Futures, and will maintain the pages and resources available here. And of course I'll still be on Twitter as @alumnifutures.
About GG+A Founded in 1961, GG+A is a global firm with a focus on education, arts and culture, healthcare and the voluntary sector. Grounded in philanthropy advising, the firm is steadily expanding its work with alumni communities of all kinds. Given the challenges that alumni relations professionals face, this is a great time to increase and strengthen the guidance these communities receive from experienced experts.
[It's a great time to strengthen the guidance that alumni professionals receive from experienced experts]
And coming soon... Soon, I will also share with you another exciting project I'm pursuing, on the future of alumni relations. I'll be seeking your insight, feedback and thoughts on the coming second century of organized alumni relations.
A word of thanks This is also a great opportunity for me to express my sincere gratitude to the thousands of supportive subscribers, friends, clients, readers and followers of Alumni Futures since 2007. As I transition to my new role, the Alumni Futures Advisory Group will phase out its work. I offer my sincere gratitude and appreciation to all of them - Elizabeth Allen, Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar, Andrew Gossen, Paul Jamieson, Charlie Melichar, Jeff Schoenherr and Michael Tate – for their advice and wisdom over the years.
To discuss consulting of any kind, contact me via my GG+A email address: [email protected].
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.
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:
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.
my personal effort to generate discussion about new ideas and possible directions for our profession....I hope you'll participate by adding your own ideas and visions for where the field of alumni relations is heading. I expect we'll branch out to other areas in higher education and beyond.
That's exactly what we've done, with your help! I am grateful to all of you. Now, eight years later, Alumni Futures has generated 400,000 page views, over 400 blog posts, and more than 900 comments from readers!
Since 2014, I've also been posting each new article on LinkedIn as well, which (for better or worse) gets more visibility and generates more reader engagement. And it loops in people from outside of the advancement professions and the education sector.
I'm looking forward to writing more frequently this year, and I hope you'll come along for the ride. With more than 2,200 subscribers, there's a diversity of opinion and expertise that I am eager to tap into.
I have left my position as Associate Vice President at Carnegie Mellon University to return full time to consulting, speaking and writing about education, engagement, technology, communications and fundraising.
This gives me the opportunity to work with diverse organizations around the world, and to help others understand the trends affecting our professions. Five years ago I left another institutional role to pursue a similar path, and I found it tremendously rewarding.
I'm excited to be back in the marketplace of ideas as an independent consultant.
Want to discuss a possible project? Just email me: [email protected].
In the coming days I'll publish a full Consulting Services page with additional details, examples of past projects, and a past client list.
§
On a personal note, I want to express my sincere appreciation to every member of my talented team in Alumni Relations & Annual Giving at CMU since 2011. I am privileged to have worked with real stars and I will miss them all very much!
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.
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.
"Institutional advancement" is the euphemism for the collected professions of fundraisers, communicators, and alumni specialists in education. In 2011, an interesting discussion with my colleague Philip Lehman led us to wonder: could there be such a thing as "advancement theory"?
If it could exist, how might we characterize it for others to build on?
Complexity and Unifying Theories In her book Complexity: A Guided Tour, Melanie Mitchell explores whether her own field, called "complexity science," might benefit from synthesizing its varied threads. Complexity theory has its roots in chaos theory, theoretical physics, and abstract math. So...not much connection to alumni relations or fundraising. However, her exploration of complexity's framework made me ponder a systematic look into advancement.
Mitchell asks, is it worth seeking "general principles or a 'unified theory' covering all complex systems?" I wonder, are there structured ideas within advancement rigorous enough to be considered "theories"? If so, should we gather, evaluate, and organize those ideas in relation to each other?
[What is the "stuff" of advancement? What are its building blocks?]
Mitchell points out that some sciences are almost ready for unification, others are not. Physics for example is "conceptually way ahead." It is 2,000 years old, and has identified the two kinds of "stuff" that things are made of (energy and matter). Physics has related energy and matter to each other (E=mc2), and has unified three of the supposed four forces of nature. Complexity, on the other hand, hasn't identified anything in its realm comparable to forces or "stuff."
There are steps to evolving a theory and using it. First you have to articulate the theories, and account for their conceptual building blocks. Then you can establish the likely relationships among these building blocks, so the model describes the way the discipline behaves in the real world. Then and only then can you start to unify related theories into an overarching description of an entire branch of knowledge (or practice).
Advancement: Hardly Scientific What is the "stuff" of advancement – its building blocks? The practice of fundraising, communications, and alumni relations? We need specific, detailed descriptions of what our work includes.
A first step would be to articulate common advancement principles that apply to all institutions. Further description of these principles would then follow, with practitioners trading, and improving on generalizations that grow from specific instances that represent the underlying principles.
This is how highly structured fields prune and shape their theoretical foundations. Can advancement do this? Should we bother? Or is advancement too unstructured, too diverse, and too unscientific to be crafted into a conceptual framework that would be of any use?
First Steps JT Forbes at Indiana University and other members of the Council of Alumni Association Executives have drafted some definitions and descriptions that get alumni relations started in this direction.
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:
