Fundraising for Deans and Academic Leaders (October 2024)
Learn to meet your philanthropic goals by partnering effectively with purpose-driven donors.
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Group Activity Designs
We have all been to meetings where there is uneven participation among attendees. More vocal participants tend to dominate, while others can all but disappear. This is a substantial problem for meeting leaders and facilitators as it results in fewer ideas and perspectives being considered. Group activities can be a productive way to overcome this issue. We have compiled the following group activity designs to help meeting leaders and facilitators spark meaningful engagement among all meeting participants.
Detailed Checklist: One Scenario in Planning for Advancement Efforts Overseas
Happy New Year! As we saw in the first installment in my series on international advancement efforts, it is critical to know key international holidays to best inform staff or a delegation about when (and when not to travel). Once you understand those parameters, the planning must begin and adequate time is necessary to create a successful advancement initiative based on strategic outcomes. I suggest working from nine months out. This advance planning with the academic year is necessary and intentional for several reasons: Advancement officers are not holding the responsibility alone for reaching out to constituents abroad. It is critical to keep the institution’s entire international agenda in mind and that requires a coordinated effort from alumni, development, special events, communications and marketing, and other departments such as admissions and graduate schools’ external relations offices. Advancement officers will also need to communicate with campus leadership and with volunteers abroad on a regular basis to best manage the expectations for everyone’s participation and support. Everyone involved is a “brand manager” and will have a piece of the promotional timeline. TWO DETAILED SCENARIOS I want to offer two scenarios — one in this article (below), and one in a follow-up article. […]
The Strategic Planning Implementation Clinic
Bogged down in implementing your strategic plan? Try this creative meeting design to get things moving. Successful execution of a strategic plan separates the excellent from the “pretty good.” Creating great “visions” and ennobling pictures of the future for a campus is not difficult. There are many smart, dedicated and hardworking faculty, staff and administrators throughout every campus and they have powerful aspirations. The really hard part is the implementation part, and too few institutions are good at it. Problems are inevitable during an implementation process, but they are often covered up because people are reluctant to ask for help, don’t want to appear inadequate, or are “stuck” with what they are doing and lack good solutions. Having worked on strategic planning with hundreds of campuses over the last 25+ years, I have created the following meeting design. The Strategic Planning Implementation Clinic creates the opportunity to surface the real problems and pressing challenges that campus stakeholders are facing in implementing strategic priorities, and allows leaders to tap the thinking & resources of participants to generate constructive and realistic solutions to tough problems. This meeting design: One caution: This design will only work if the campus climate feels safe enough for participants to share real organizational problems. If failure […]
Alumni Affinity Groups: How One University Formed a Highly Successful Organization
by Kathy Edersheim, President of Impactrics How does an alumni affinity group get started and, perhaps more importantly, what makes it sustainable beyond the initial excitement? There are many right answers and many challenges along the way. The key is to develop some guidelines and learn from other institutions’ successes as well as from their failures. The Yale Alumni Non-profit Alliance (YANA) is one example of a resounding success that can be a model for the formation of other affinity groups. Before you begin the hard work of forming the group, consider: In 2010, these fundamentals seemed to be in place for YANA. Here is the story. Getting Started YANA started with a casual remark to me at a cocktail reception in 2010: “Hello, my name is Ken. We met once before – Do you have a few minutes to talk?” Actually, Ken had been thinking about the idea for a new shared interest (affinity) group for a while. That evening at the reception, Ken described his idea to create a platform to share best practices and provide support for anyone interested in the non-profit sector whether as a professional, a funder, or a board member. He had questions – […]
Detailed Checklist: A Second Scenario in Planning for Advancement Efforts Overseas
In the companion piece to this checklist, I suggested that it’s critical to plan for international advancement efforts nine months out, for three reasons. This allows you time to plan and manage your resources systematically, plan ahead and confirm your spot on your volunteers’ and donors’ calendars, and identify cost-effective travel options. TWO DETAILED SCENARIOS I want to offer two scenarios for planning an advancement effort overseas on such a nine-month timeline. I offer one scenario below, and one here. These two scenarios are precursor events or meetings that will support the overall goals of a new comprehensive campaign. I offer these scenarios in a “timeline” format to guide the staff when working with volunteers and campus VIPs. I have also included tips and checklists for each month of the planning process. If you find these scenarios useful, please share them with your colleagues! Scenario B: A Campaign Prep Launch Event – Asia, Spring 2015 Context:Northbridge University, a mid-sized, comprehensive research university in the Midwest, will embark on a $2.0 billion capital campaign in Fall 2016. The last campaign successfully raised $1.0 billion and concluded on June 30, 2011. Goal:Alumni, family and friend engagement and qualification visits with prospective donors […]
How to Start a Foundation Stewardship Program from Scratch
What does effective private foundation stewardship look like? Grand Valley State has a tightly-knit community – and here’s how they got there. Based on their experience, read 5 steps to get started, 5 steps to get your house in order, 4 ways to learn about the community, and 4 ways to make it personal. Attending Academic Impressions’ “Corporate Stewardship: Demonstrating ROI” webcast recently, I was provoked to think more deeply about what private foundation stewardship would look like. This question has been critical to my work at Grand Valley State. After eight years, I’ve built a significant network, but that didn’t happen immediately; this is a tightly-knit community, and coming in from outside and forming that network took concentrated work. Here is what I’ve learned along the way. From Scratch to Steward: 5 Steps to Get Started Here is how you get started in foundation giving: 5 Steps to Get Your House in Order 4 Ways to Learn About the Community 4 Ways to Make it Personal Above all, listen. If you ever have the chance to hear what family foundations have to say about their work, try to go. While at Grand Valley, I have attended a couple family […]
Presidential Transition: 3 Things Chief Advancement Officers Can Do to Help the New President Start Right
A presidential transition can be a challenging time, and those critical first conversations will set the tone for the partnership ahead. by Sasha Egorova, Academic ImpressionsInterviewing Jake Heuser, Bradley University Welcoming a new president can be an unnerving event for the whole campus. It can particularly be a challenging time for the vice president of advancement and the advancement team. Those critical conversations in the first few weeks of a new presidency can set the tone for the partnership between the president and the chief advancement officers in the months ahead–a partnership that will be critical to the health of the institution. We recently spoke with Jake Heuser, VP of Advancement at Bradley University, about what it takes to ensure a smooth transition. Heuser has been at Bradley for over 10 years, having raised over $100 million dollars while working with two presidents during his tenure. A couple of years ago, Bradley went through a presidential transition. Reflecting back on that experience, Heuser offered some key insights on how to establish a productive VP/President relationship during a presidential transition – and three steps to engage your new president effectively in fundraising. 1. The First Meeting: Overprepare, Have a Plan, But Stay […]
7 Tips for Effectively Managing an Admissions Team
One seasoned enrollment manager offers practical strategies for making your admissions team high performing, high morale, and effective. When I took on my role in 1997 as director of admissions at Elizabethtown College, the extent of my leadership and management experience consisted of serving as captain of my college track team several years before. While I’d worked hard as an admissions counselor and was beginning to feel a genuine connection to admissions work and higher education, I did not think of myself as a leader. I suspect my experience is fairly common among those who find themselves (or will find themselves) in positions of leadership in an admissions office: lots of enthusiasm, little experience. Though I still make mistakes, I’ve learned a few things about leading and managing an admissions team. But for this post, I asked my own team for some feedback about what does generally work, and what doesn’t. Responses to my inquiry resulted in my first observation about self-management and reinforce how important it is for admissions leaders to solicit feedback from team members! I hope these observations are helpful. UNDERSTAND YOUR TEAM Understanding the characteristics and acknowledging the complexities of the team is a must. Most […]
Strengthening the Relationship Between Development and Alumni Relations Teams
Development and alumni relations teams make different yet equally important contributions to meeting institutional advancement goals. However, it can be difficult for these teams to focus on their relationships with one another when they are also focused on meeting different metrics and responding to the various needs of donors and alumni. Taking time to establish a communication plan or strategy for both alumni relations and development teams can be a real challenge amidst the day-to-day upkeep of meeting obligations and competing priorities. Additionally, knowing how to apply this communication strategy to working with other internal campus partners, like academic units, is just as important given their key roles in stewarding volunteers and donors for both units. Join us for this one-day virtual event designed specifically for alumni relations and development teams who would like to strengthen their internal working relationships to improve their success with fundraising, alumni engagement, and other advancement initiatives.