With continuously changing regulations and compliance standards, financial aid offices sometimes find it difficult to balance legal obligations and customer needs. Gettysburg College recently undertook a restructuring of its financial aid office and dramatically improved customer service without adding additional staff members or making significant changes to the budget. We turned to Chris Gormley, Gettysburg’s […]
Often you hear that “the phonathon is dead”; perceived barriers to bringing in dollars through your phonathon include fewer alumni owning phones, fewer alumni answering the phone, and the difficulty of maintaining an accurate database of cell numbers. Yet a small number of institutions have seen some significant success in approaching their phonathon effort in […]
To develop a stronger donor pipeline, the key is to start earlier. However, institutions attempting to raise giving rates for young alumni are often rebuffed. In a study of the attitudes of young alumni conducted in 2010, the Engagement Strategies Group confirmed that the majority of young alumni are reluctant to give due to high […]
Early alert programs have been emerging on college campuses for the last 10 years to varying degrees of success. Too often after the initial startup, many early alert programs fail to fully meet their designed purpose of identifying and reaching out to academically at-risk students — in part because these programs are often focused on […]
For most shops, the past several years have been a financial roller coaster for annual giving numbers. As annual giving recovers momentum this year, now is the right time to invest time and energy in planning for the long term. One of the most critical lessons that can be learned from the past few years […]
Social media and mobile technologies offer low-cost opportunities to increase the impact of your alumni events, because you can extend the reach of your current efforts to online alumni communities such as a Facebook alumni group or Twitter feed. Andrew Gossen, senior director for social media strategy for alumni affairs and development at Cornell University, […]
2012. Academic Impressions surveyed professionals from 79 institutions of higher education, asking them to grade their institution’s level of customer service and to comment on the challenges faced in improving it. The responses were revealing. A “C” in Customer Service 29 of our respondents rated their institution with a “B” letter grade for level of […]
A 2010 US Department of Education study found that adjunct instructors teach 60% of the college courses in the US. They represent a critical first line of instruction for many students, yet often receive minimal faculty development and minimal institutional support for serving students. This week, we interviewed Jennifer Strickland, the interim director for Mesa […]
Post-secondary institutions are traditionally both risk averse and slow adopters of new technologies. In facing the rapid adoption rate of mobile technologies by the general population, it can be difficult to know where to start and how to know whether your initial efforts are working. But this is the time to jump in and learn. […]
Included in This Report: Adopting Mobile: Reasons for Urgency What Mobile Can Do Examples of Innovations with Mobile Technologies Moving to a Mobile-Enabled Approach A Letter from Amit Mrig, President, Academic Impressions November 2012. One has only to look to iPhone and iPad sales, the intellectual property battles between mobile device makers, and the fervor […]
