Category: Blog

Fundraising After a Disaster: Learning from the Christchurch Earthquakes

by Ashlyn W. Sowell, Naomi Wilde

Ashlyn Sowell: During my recent leave from Gettysburg College, I travelled to Christchurch to speak to the Educate Plus New Zealand local chapter.  I was quite moved by the challenges that my international colleagues face in fundraising after the devastating 2010 and 2011 earthquakes. One woman said to me, “I know we are supposed to have 50% of the money in hand before we start construction on a new building, but we don’t have any buildings!” I followed up with Naomi Wilde, the Community Relations and Development Coordinator at St. Andrew’s College, an independent school, with one question. Her response led to a great deal of valuable information for all of us, and her responses are very worth considering as you look at crisis planning and post-crisis fundraising at your own institution. When I asked her, “What has been the biggest challenge in fundraising since the earthquakes?” she answered: “The biggest challenge is probably building the case for support for your own institution, because of course you’re not the only institution affected, and your donors, especially those that live locally, are deeply affected too, and there are so many unanswered financial questions. The Case for Support needs to clearly mark your […]

3 Lessons from New Zealand for Advancement Leaders

by Ashlyn W. Sowell

A COLUMN FROM GETTYSBURG COLLEGEThis article is the fourth in a series by Ashlyn Sowell, Gettysburg’s associate vice president and campaign director. The previous articles are:Developing Your Campaign Reports: Getting it Right the First TimeSpring Clean Your Major Gifts Portfolio4 Lessons Learned from Campaign Volunteers at Gettysburg College Today, Sowell shares some critical reminders that are fresh on her mind after spending half a year with her New Zealand colleagues. For the past six months, I’ve had the good fortune to be living in Auckland, New Zealand while my husband is on sabbatical from Gettysburg College. Depending on whom you ask, the Kiwis are about 10-20 years behind the United States in creating a culture of philanthropy and in growing their advancement programs. And there’s nothing like looking at a young country to remind you of some important building blocks for development and alumni relations — building blocks that we might otherwise neglect in the rush of our work. I had the chance to experience these fresh reminders firsthand as I got to know colleagues across this small and wonderful country. Even for those of us with more mature programs, the following reminders from three of my New Zealand colleagues can […]

These 5 Soft Skills Are Critical to Managing Capital Projects

by Mark Hartell, Capital Projects Consultant Capital Projects: Consider This Scenario Is a capital project that delivers on time and within budget automatically a success? That depends on who you ask. The facilities manager who has to spend tens of thousands of dollars each year maintaining the cheaper compact shelving might not agree. The staff, still grappling with new procedures, new layouts and increased user expectations may not agree. And the IT department who had to devote their budget to the purchase of largely redundant hardware to de-risk a physical migration may not agree. The reality is that a large-scale capital project must deliver something that can be operated, maintained, and sustained for years — maybe decades. Such projects involve broad and diverse sets of stakeholders whose aspirations, fears, beliefs, and motivations must be addressed in order for the project to be a success in the long term. To achieve this, it is critical that a project manager deploy soft skills, not just the formal methods of project management. In this article and those that follow, I will examine what those skills are, why they are needed, and how to apply them. Rethinking Project Management You have to look beyond the […]

Handling Footage in a Campus Crisis: Your Footage

by Cindy Lawson

THE NEXT LEVEL IN CRISIS COMMUNICATIONSThis article is part of an ongoing series on taking your crisis communications and response planning to the next level. You’ll also want to read the previous article in the series, “Handling Footage in a Campus Crisis: Others‘ Footage.”We also recommend this online training from Academic Impressions:Managing Student Threats and Risk: Effective Policies and Practices You open up your student newspaper and are confronted with a picture taken by a student. The picture depicts your university, an event or a situation that has just occurred in a less than flattering light. Mainstream media picks up that picture, as do various social media sites. Your challenge: how to counter the negative impressions those particular visuals likely have created in the minds of various constituent audiences. There is probably not a one of us who doesn’t recall any number of “first impressions” of crises that have occurred over the past decade as the direct result of pictures taken by citizen photo journalists, also called “participatory journalists.” One only has to think of the landing on the Hudson, captured not only by first-responding rescuers in nearby boats, but also by security cameras along the riverfront. Citizen photojournalists also […]

Assessing the Training Needs of New Advisors

by Karen Thurmond

Karen Thurmond coordinates the day-to-day operations of the general education program (core curriculum), degree audit system (DegreeWorks), and an 24/7 system for academic advising appointments (AppointmentPlus) at the University of Memphis. She has written extensively for NACADA, and recently completed work with a team to automate the graduation process at The University of Memphis. Congratulations! You just hired a new academic advisor! Whether your new advisor has just graduated from a master’s degree with a specialization in academic advising, or is making a transition from another area of higher education, is on a college campus for the first time, or is a faculty member taking on new academic advising responsibilities, they have a lot to learn. Academic advising is a wide interdisciplinary activity that will challenge them personally, professionally, academically, emotionally, and physically. How will you prepare them for this challenge? You should be waiting for your new advisor on the first day with an agenda for their development into a quality academic advisor. This agenda will include the details the advisor needs to know to answer student questions and assist students with making and meeting goals, an understanding of what quality academic advising is and how it impacts student […]

5 Secrets to Developing a High-Performing Team in Higher Education

Higher education will face daunting and complex challenges over the next decade, and campuses will need high-performing teams, especially a high-performing senior team, in order to face those challenges. Building and nurturing a great team is a daunting and noble task for any leader. It takes courage and care, perspiration and aspiration, and investment of time and attention—all of which are in short supply on campuses. In this paper, Patrick Sanaghan and Jillian Lohndorf: Expose 6 potentially destructive myths about teams Help you create a new plan for developing a high-performing team, presenting 5 strategies used by some of the highest performing teams across sectors [not_logged_in] For a limited time only: We have opened up our leadership content to registered users. Please login or create a free account to read this paper. [/not_logged_in] [restrict] Read the report. [/restrict] You can also learn more at our prerecorded webcast, The 10 Differentiators of Exceptional Teams in Higher Education.   Check out the High Performing Teams Survey

The First Critical Outreach Point in Intrusive/Proactive Advising

by Joe Murray, Casey Hudson, Cory Phare

Gain strategies to engage and direct at-risk students on a path to success. The “intrusive,” or proactive, advising model helps advisors anticipate students’ needs and connect students to appropriate resources and support early in their academic careers. While intrusive advising can prove to be a complex and involved process, there are three major outreach points to keep in mind: Beginning-of-term Mid-term End-of-term As Joe Murray, director of university advising services at Florida Atlantic University, shares there are several tactics you can use at each of these points that have shown effective results for many institutions. Here are the tactics that will prove useful for beginning-of-term advising. How to Help before Classes Even Begin Many institutions now offer summer bridge programs for students who need extra help before fully matriculating, but what about students who need just a bit of college-prep work? What about first-generation students? Murray suggested some pre-term options for these students: Pre-Term Classes: When awarding financial aid, the federal government does not care exactly when your fall semester begins; it has simply designated August 1st as the beginning of fall term. So one creative way to help students who need a small amount of developmental education to become college-ready is […]

Worksheet: Rate Your Behavioral Intervention Team’s Effectiveness

When Did You Last Update Your Behavioral Intervention Process? by Louise A. Douce, Ph.D. (The Ohio State University), Gregory T. Eells, Ph.D. (Cornell University), Ruben Robles (University of Redlands), and Lisa LaPoint (Academic Impressions) After the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, most higher-ed institutions established behavioral intervention teams (BIT) to better manage potential issues of student and campus safety. But have you updated your BIT?A lot has changed in recent years, including: Confidentiality limits and ways to work within them Formal processes and procedures for intervention and dismissal National and local standards for violence prevention If you haven’t kept your team’s processes and procedures up to date, your BIT may not be effective in keeping your students safe. To help you pinpoint areas where your BIT may need improvement, we offer the worksheet below and the following interview with experts Louise Douce, Special Assistant for Student Life at The Ohio State University; Greg Eells, Associate Director for Gannett Health Services and Director of Counseling & Psychological Services at Cornell University; and Ruben Robles, Associate Dean of Student Life at University of Redlands. Douce, Eells, and Robles suggest that there are three areas in which most BITs fall short: [wcm_restrict] Problem […]

Why You May Be Excluding Some of Your Most Loyal Donors From Recognition

PRACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPMENT This article is the third in a unique series by Heather Greig, senior associate with Bentz Whaley Flessner. The previous articles in this series were: Building a Strong Case for Support for Your Annual Fund 4 Keys to Building a Stronger Advancement Team by Heather Greig (Bentz Whaley Flessner) Over the last decade, many colleges and universities have launched programs intended to encourage annual giving through the recognition of donor loyalty. In every case that I can think of, these societies are recognizing consecutive giving, which makes sense—we want people to give every year. I am a long-time fan of the loyalty society and the value it can add to a program as part of a comprehensive donor retention strategy but that’s not what this article is about. This article is about what might be missing from the equation.   By defining loyalty as consecutive giving, we are in fact, excluding some of our most loyal donors from recognition.   Most likely, many of your major donors have not made gifts each year, and while philosophically, we strive to create a culture that promotes annual giving among our top donors, the reality is that there will always be […]

New Strategies for Funding Academic Research

by Ed Mason

A SERIES ON INNOVATIONS IN FUNDING ACADEMIC RESEARCH Ed Mason, president of EMNR & Associates, is writing this series to assist academic leaders in finding creative strategies to merge public/private funding for existing and new research initiatives. Mason has studied an array of collaborative partnerships between the two offices most focused on external funding (the development office and research & grants), and he will be sharing some of the models he has observed, as well as directions for the future. We hope you will join us for this innovative series: Increasingly, universities are compelled to develop new fundraising models because of several prevailing trends: Additionally, federal programs are beginning to ask for matching funds from either state or private sector. Searching for Other Sources of Funding Hybrid models of funding academic research — leveraging relationships in both the public and private sector — are the current reality for universities. Hybrid approaches to funding have multiple models: Funding agencies are supportive of the hybrid approach because it leverages community resources more effectively, disseminates research, expands outreach programs and lowers administrative costs for grant audits. The hybrid approach utilizes federal, state, private foundation, corporation and donor sources of funding for programs. To what degree […]