alumni futures

Three Engagement Breakthroughs for 2018

Since joining Switchboard last year, I’ve seen the reaffirmation of three critical principles that drive successful alumni engagement. These golden rules apply to every type of alumni community—schools and universities, other non-profits, and corporate alumni networks alike. I know this from having worked in alumni relations professionally since 1989, blogged about the profession for 11 years, and consulted on it for about 50 organizations in a dozen countries.

Through it all, these basic tenets have held true.

They’re the kind of things that sound obvious when you hear them. Mentioning these guidelines generates vigorous and sincere agreement from alumni professionals, but scanning the profession, I see that many organizations ignore them in practice.

Embrace the goals described below, and you’ll measurably increase effective alumni engagement in 2018:
 

1. Listen to stakeholders, and shape engagement accordingly

Many alumni teams still see themselves as community Town Criers. They broadcast “one-to-many” messages in a way that worked before the web made everyone a potential publisher.

Don’t just broadcast one-way news. Digital communication is an entirely two-way street. By listening to your audience you will

• be seen as a community partner, not a top-down controller;
• learn what people care about and the problems they are trying to solve; and
• find a rich source of expertise, influence, and support for institutional initiatives that alumni find relevant to their own lives.

Stony Brook University’s approach to alumni relations is a prime example of this strategy. Their alumni relations team gets more done by asking what people need first and acting second, both with other offices on campus and alumni themselves.

2. Support alumni who self-organize

Until very recently, we labeled alumni and student interaction as “official” or “unofficial.” The implication? If the institution didn’t initiate, sponsor, promote and host the activity, it didn’t count.

But the mindset is shifting, and yesterday’s fretful “Not invented here!” is giving way to shouts of “Look! A genuine community!” These grassroots communities are easier than ever for alumni to build, thanks in large part to technologies that connect people wherever they are.

Alumni and students who self-organize deserve

• recognition for their loyalty;
• credit for trying to solve their own problems; and
• resources to enhance their efforts.

We wrote about about this approach to engagement on the Switchboard blog back in August.

3. Balance broader engagement with deeper engagement

Metrics have evolved. We have moved beyond merely “reaching as many alumni as possible.” Why? Because with shrinking staff time and budgets, plus growing alumni populations, reaching more people means engaging them less deeply.

Alumni communities benefit when already-engaged members are engaged even more deeply through follow up communication, volunteer opportunities and other signals that recognize their commitment to the cause.

When you balance deeper engagement with wider engagement, you

• increase the quality of the overall alumni experience;
• acknowledge those who have already raised their hands to say, “I’m in!”; and
• avoid cajoling or begging marginally engaged alumni to deepen their commitment.

Opportunities for deeper engagement will bring out those who truly want to participate. Oakland University’s Leadership OU program, for example, offers motivated students deeper involvement in their community and provides engaged alumni an opportunity to give back to their alma mater.

 

Adding even one more bullet point to your goals for 2018 might be a tall order, but more likely than not, these three points are already present in your list.

Your job now is to be sure you act on them in your work with alumni and student communities.

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.

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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

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

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.

 

 

 

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.

§§ 

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

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)

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

Alumni as Volunteer Course Facilitators: 7 Reasons it Makes Sense

Last week we heard that Harvard University is recruiting alumni of a popular humanities course (The Ancient Greek Hero) to serve as volunteer mentors and discussion leaders for the MOOC-scale, online version of the class. No sooner had the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on this than a disillusioned reader commented,

Sure, we won't actually compensate you helping supervise this BS "class", but think of it as "service" to your alma mater.

Good grief... this is truly scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Another sarcastic and bitter soul opined,

Good news for adjuncts who thought they were at the bottom of the academic barrel! Harvard has come up with an even lower category. 

I'll assume for the moment that Harvard isn't proposing the alumni component as a way to further demean adjuncts, nor to trick alumni into doing something they ought not to. So then a question worth asking is why would Harvard ask alumni to serve in this capacity? Who benefits, and how?

[Why ask alumni to serve in this capacity? Who benefits, and how?]

A few reasons come to mind...

It makes the online course more functional
Content facilitators can make any course more functional, especially a humanities course where the educational currency is discussion. And it's even more true in a course with 27,000 enrolled students (as reported by the New York Times).

It connects alumni to students and to each other through volunteerism 
This is volunteerism on mutual terms. Instead of just saying "you need to help us because we don't have enough staff," they're saying, "you can put your education to work in a new way."

It may attract alumni who wouldn't volunteer in other ways
Many alumni are uninterested in socializing at mixers, or attending weeknight talks about the capital campaign. Many alumni are interested in the classics, in literature, and in the humanities. For them, this is a unique way to exercise that interest.

It adds to degree equity indirectly
If my alma mater runs open courses and those courses have high quality instruction, the quality of my own degree is maintained or even slightly increased as a result.

[Compared with handing out name tags...
this is directly connected to the graduate's educational experience]

It can connect volunteers more deeply than a generic activity can
This is a role that not just any graduate can fulfill effectively. Compared with handing out name tags, staffing the registration table, or setting up chairs and tables, this is directly connected to the graduate's educational experience.

It incorporates the academic and teaching mission of the institution
It goes beyond professional needs of alumni, and beyond the fundraising needs of the institution.

It reflects something unique to the institution
You can't take this particular class just anywhere, and you can't take it online from anyplace else. At least, not yet.

Agree or disagree? Did I leave something out? Is there a downside to this effort? Would it work in face to face classrooms, as well as online?

Leave a comment...

 

Related articles

Harvard Seeks Alumni Help With Free Online Course

Harvard's Ancient Greek Hero Course Online

Harvard Ask Alumni to Donate Time to Online Class

In Which I Attend My Own Reunion

I just got off the phone with a newspaper reporter from California. She's writing an article (see SacBee.com link below) about the effect of social media on high school and college reunions. I've worked in universities for more than two decades, so I probably should have stuck to that aspect of her topic. But I talked about Facebook and high school reunions instead.

Why?

Because today I am flying to New York for the 30th reunion of my high school graduating class. 

I attended a small public high school about 20 miles from New York City. The high school itself has long since moved to a new building, and there has never been an alumni director or an alumni organization of any kind. But 30 years later my classmates and I are eager to see each other, to make up stories about how cool we were, and to check on those yearbook "superlatives" (Spoiler: "Most likely to succeed" wasn't me!).

What I told the reporter, simply, was this: My high school reunion might not be taking place if it weren't for Facebook. The popular online platform made it easy to find a place where the vast majority of class members spend time on the internet. Facebook members reached most of the non-Facebook users via email.

Despite its reunion, there's no such organization as "the Nyack High School class of '82." But there's a community of friends and acquaintances with that name. And a very small number of dedicated volunteers, over the last several months, orchestrated the weekend of official and unofficial events that form our reunion. Significantly, during the weeks before the reunion, those of us active on Facebook have shared literally thousands of messages, Likes, photos, and comments with each other. 

[Once you're friends with someone,
you want to spend time visiting with them]

Over the last few years, some have said that Facebook's rise would doom physical reunions: "I've already heard everything about this person online – what is there left to talk about when I see them?"

But many realize that they aren't learning everything about people via Facebook. They're just becoming friends (again, or for the first time). And once you're friends with someone, you want to spend time visiting with them.

Social software doesn't complicate alumni activities. Used creatively and persistently, online networks merely enable a predictable, long-standing form of human behavior: hanging out together on the weekend. 

Photo: Vintage postcard of my high school

Related Articles:

Is Facebook cutting demand for high school reunions? (sacbee.com)

Who needs a reunion? I've got Facebook (nytimes.com)

Is Facebook replacing the need for reunions? (allfacebook.com)

Is Facebook good or bad for school reunions? (cnn.com)