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Amid the decline of state support for public institutions and a less forgiving fundraising climate, establishing a more reliable pipeline of invested donors is critical — and to develop a stronger donor pipeline, the key is to start earlier. Yet institutions attempting to raise giving rates for young alumni are often rebuffed. In a study of the attitudes of young alumni conducted last summer, the Engagement Strategies Group confirmed that the majority of young alumni are reluctant to give due to high tuition costs and a lack of understanding of how institutions of higher education are funded and how institutions do (and don’t) draw on endowment spending to finance their needs. Colleges and universities need to solicit more support from their former students, but what reports such as the Engagement Strategies Group survey demonstrate is that the best opportunity to create an ambassador for your institution is to cultivate them while they are still students on campus. It is more expensive and much more difficult for the development office to repair relationships after commencement. You can’t remedy the student experience after the fact, and you can never fully recover the lost opportunity to get your students bought in, from the beginning, to the […]

According to a national survey of higher education alumni conducted by the Collaborative Innovation Network for Engagement and Giving and presented to the Annual Giving Directors Consortium (April 2010), only 52 percent of alumni believe their alma mater keeps them closely connected and values its alumni relationships. This lack of engagement represents a significant impediment to engaging alumni philanthropically. We turned to Jim Langley, president of Langley Innovations, for his advice on how institutions need to rethink their strategy for engaging future donors. A Diagnosis: How Institutions and Alumni Misconnect “The underlying malady,” Langley remarks, “is a loss of emotional engagement with the institution. Alumni remain appreciative of their degree and of their time at the institution, but feel emotionally detached from the alma mater after graduation.” This disaffection can take different forms for different generations of alumni: Young alumni are likely to have graduated with a significant load of student debt and are now facing the challenges of building a career amid a sluggish economic recovery; when asked to give back financially to their alma mater, their response may be that they are already giving back — by paying their tuition bill (via debt) over the next decade Alumni later in […]

The funding landscape for higher education has changed in ways that make it necessary for institutions to rethink their approach to advancement. Donors, both individual and corporate, are increasingly less likely to make unrestricted gifts, and alumni indicate that they feel disengaged and unvalued by their alma mater (according to a national survey of higher education alumni conducted in 2010 by the Collaborative Innovation Network for Engagement and Giving, only 52 percent of alumni believe their alma mater values its alumni relationships). As a result, many institutions are trying to meet advancement goals in a challenging economy by calling on fewer and fewer donors. This is an unsustainable advancement strategy. Only by focusing on engagement strategies with all of your constituents — including everyone from students to faculty to business to alumni — can your institution break free of this pattern and build a sustainable constituency base of support into the future. This requires a fundamental rethinking of your institution’s approach to engaging donors and other constituents, and it requires that the whole institution share responsibility for the work of advancement. This entails: Bringing more functions within the institution into the work of cultivating prospects Bringing these functions into the work early on, well in advance of […]

Alumni and other prospects desire more meaningful engagement with your institution, meaning a continuation of the learning experience, connection with their peers, and (if they are to become volunteers and donors) a sense of shared purpose and of shared work toward a common cause. Jim Langley, president of Langley Innovations, argues that one of the most effective ways to build a sense of shared purpose is to share successes — and he notes that while colleges and universities often publicize their successes through press releases, they frequently miss many more meaningful opportunities to leverage success stories to build constituency. Langley suggests that institutions have many unrealized opportunities to engage those individuals who may not have been previously connected with the institution but who have an impact in the lives of the institution’s best and brightest. The basic idea is that when celebrating the successes of students at the high end of educational attainment (for example, students who have received a distinguished graduate fellowship or who are graduating in the top 5 percent of their class), institutions could also be reaching out to those students’ personal networks and inviting them into the celebration and afterward into sustained engagement with the institution. We asked Langley […]

Not only are there many times when a dean or a department chair will need to be involved in the conversation between a potential donor and the institution, there are also many times when that academic leader may need to be the only official involved in the conversation. This is because the donor may want to hear from the academic leader in his or her field of interest, rather than from a professional fundraiser. And as more institutions, both private and public, look to ramp up fundraising efforts in a sluggish economy, the role of academic leaders will become increasingly vital. For advice on engaging your academic leaders in the work of development, we turned to Leonard Jessup, currently the dean of the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, and previously responsible for Washington State University’s foundation. Jessup has served on both sides of the table: the academic side and the foundation, so he brings both perspectives to bear on the issue of how best to bridge the gap between the advancement shop and the academic side of the house. Here’s his advice. The First Hurdle: They Have to Believe in the Value Academic leaders can be passionate about advancement work — if you […]

Increasing demands for capital expansion combined with a continued weak economy make partnerships with private entities an attractive option for financing new campus facilities. But before forming partnerships, an institution must review the possible trade-offs, including implications of those partnerships on the institution’s risk profile, debt capacity, and credit rating. To learn more about how a rating agency will evaluate the credit impact that any given public/private (P3) project will have on the affiliated university, we interviewed Karen Kedem, the vice president, senior analyst, and co-manager of Moody’s U.S. Higher Education and Not-for-Profit Team. Kedem spoke with Academic Impressions recently about how Moody’s analyzes the credit risks associated with these transactions, as well as how institutions can work more effectively with the agency as they prepare to enter into a P3 partnership. Increasing demands for capital expansion combined with a continued weak economy make partnerships with private entities an attractive option for financing new campus facilities. But before forming partnerships, an institution must understand various structures and options, as well as possible implications of the partnerships on risk profile, debt capacity, credit rating, and even town-gown relations. Here are several key points Kedem shared with us this week.   AI. What does Moody’s look for when […]

Corporations are giving less frequently and in smaller amounts, and in many cities the corporate landscape has changed dramatically during this recession due to mergers, consolidations, and bailouts. These conditions make it critical for corporate and foundation relations staff at institutions of higher education to rethink their opportunities for deepening and stewarding their relationships with corporate donors. Recently, we interviewed Chris Groff, executive director of corporate and foundation relations at Fairleigh Dickinson University, for tips on how CFR officials can take a more forward-thinking approach to cultivating and stewarding corporate donors. Groff draws attention to a recent white paper published by the Network of Academic Corporate Relations Officers (NACRO) entitled “Five Essential Elements of a Successful Twenty-First Century University Corporate Relations Program.” The white paper makes the critical point that “corporations no longer consider themselves ‘donors’ to academia; they consider themselves ‘investors,’” and that as corporations approach colleges and universities on an enterprise level rather than a philanthropic level, they are looking to institutions as partners in solving some of the needs of their organization. Groff adds, “Companies are now very accountable for the funding they give to philanthropic efforts; you really need a broad and deep relationship with the company. CFR needs to be […]

Last June, Ball State University released a study showing that of college students owning phones, 49 percent owned smartphones; the number had doubled since 2009. In the year since, many colleges and universities have launched mobile marketing initiatives or mobile apps for students and alumni, and a few admissions offices have begun experimenting with uses of Quick Response, or QR, codes, those black-and-white matrix barcodes that can be scanned into students’ smartphones to provide URLs to specific online content. Given the increasing use of smartphones among the college-aged, this year is an excellent time for your admissions staff to familiarize themselves with QR codes and with mobile marketing in general. In an interview with Academic Impressions this week, Web marketing guru Bob Johnson, president of Bob Johnson Consulting LLC, offered the following practical tips and caveats for experimenting with QR codes. AI. Bob, thanks for joining us for this interview. Recently, we’ve seen a few examples of fresh uses of QR codes in admissions and orientation. For example: Orientation staff at Washington and Lee this year welcomed new students while wearing T-shirts with QR codes; when scanned into students’ smartphones, these codes took students to mobile-friendly websites for a variety of campus services […]