Translating a Positive Student Experience into Lifetime Support for your Institution

Students in Graduation gowns and caps

November 2010. Institutions’ strategic initiatives and plans are increasingly reliant on financial support from alumni and donors, yet most institutions aren’t particularly strategic in their approach to cultivating and sustaining support.

Relying solely on your development office to garner this support is both more expensive and less effective than leveraging the efforts of each department that interacts with students during their time on campus. Students will build the capacity to give over time. The more strategic question is, “How do you build propensity to give?”

Defining a comprehensive student life cycle and being intentional about every touchpoint a student has before, during, and after their on-campus or online experience puts your institution in the best position for success when you ultimately make the ask.

That’s why we’ve taken a whole-campus approach to addressing the issue of building lifetime support for your institution. We’ve asked college presidents and professionals across admissions, student affairs, and advancement for advice on cultivating students as campus stakeholders—at every point in the student life cycle. We hope their advice will be useful to you.

Chapter in This Report

  • Future Support Starts with the Student Experience
  • Student Philanthropy: The Academic Impressions Model
  • Starting with Admission: Planting the Seed for Lifetime Affinity
  • Between Convocation and Commencement: Developing Undergraduates as Stakeholders
  • Student Philanthropy between Convocation and Commencement
  • The Student-to-Alumni Transition: Encouraging Meaningful Giving
  • Encouraging a Higher Giving Rate from Young Alumni