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

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

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 some who don’t give every year. I am not talking about the once-a-decade donor but about the donors that give almost every year. If someone is a seven-figure donor who occasionally misses a year between major contributions, are we serving the best interests of our institutions by not recognizing them as loyal? 3 Ways to […]

Why Honor Rolls of Donors are a Waste of Time

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

In her new book The 4 Pillars of Donor Relations, Lynne Wester of Donor Relations Guru® helps you rethink donor relations practices and offers specific tips for more powerful acknowledgements, stewardship and impact reporting, recognition, and donor engagement. Get this comprehensive guide to donor relations for your shop today, and transform the way you steward, recognize, and engage your donors. The article that follows is an excerpt from Lynne’s book. In all my time in donor relations, I have never heard of a donor who gave an organization a million dollar gift because their name was in a textual list of donors. Yet I must get asked at least once a week what I think of honor rolls and their place in donor recognition and stewardship. I think they have no useful purpose, they provide opportunities to make costly mistakes, they are a huge waste of human resources, time, money, and they are otherwise foolish. Why Honor Rolls Don’t Provide Any Benefit Time and time again, we have asked donors what they want and how they want to be recognized, and the three things that appear most often in their answers are: Donors want handwritten notes from students. They want to meet those that […]

Why Good is Still the Enemy of Great for Most Colleges and Universities

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Series: Costs Down, Quality Up Historically, initiatives to improve quality have also meant added cost—smaller class sizes, more faculty who conduct research, etc.—but this is no longer a sustainable model for all institutions. What are the innovations that can actually drive the cost to educate a student lower while driving critical outcomes like student success and completion higher? This series offers provocative questions that challenge the cost-quality paradigm and the old ways of managing institutional strategy and growth. Why Good is Still the Enemy of Great for Most Colleges and Universities Many small private colleges and universities knowingly or unknowingly are what could be called high-risk institutions. They lack huge endowments, a large reservoir of student demand, significant differentiation in the market, and high brand value. Many of these institutions are either implementing or contemplating a significant innovation and change strategy to address challenges related to a declining value proposition, a lack of differentiation, budgetary problems, and/or the development of new programs and markets that provide enrollment and revenue lifting power. These are the colleges and universities that most need to utilize a data-driven and evidence-based approach to culture, process and change. It is possible to turn the threats they face into […]

Checklist: Preparing Adjunct Faculty to Teach Online

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

Department chairs and program directors are busy people, and orienting adjunct faculty may not be top of mind. But adjuncts who are teaching online for the first time need support and information to hit the ground running. Here is a quick checklist of items to cover with first-time online instructors. by Teresa Focarile, Boise State University(who also wrote: “Adjunct Faculty: A Department Chair’s Guide to Orienting New Instructors“) Many institutions are expanding their online course offerings, and using adjunct faculty to do so. While these faculty members are often teaching from a master course and therefore are not responsible for developing the class, there is still important information about teaching online that needs to be shared with these new instructors in order for them to be effective online teachers, and to ensure they understand the expectations for teaching in your program (Larcara, 2011). Checklist Some items on this checklist might already be in place. For example, most institutions have a team that can get adjunct faculty up to speed on the functionality of the Learning Management System (LMS). In addition, many institutions have developed trainings (sometimes mandatory) for faculty who teach online. But if your institution does not have those kinds […]

Rethinking the President’s Role in Fundraising

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Because your institution’s president is uniquely positioned to scan the horizon and help develop and communicate a vision of the future to prospective donors, his or her role in fundraising entails far more than just making connections and making the ask. In his recent monograph “Fundraising for Presidents: A Guide,” Jim Langley, president and founder of Langley Innovations and past vice president for advancement at Georgetown University, contends that the president’s primary role in fundraising is not to ask for money but to create the conditions that attract significant philanthropic investments. We followed up with Jim Langley this week to learn more. FUNDRAISING FOR PRESIDENTS: A GUIDE Jim Langley’s monograph offers a forward-thinking look at: Slow Persistence, Not Rapid Persuasion We asked Langley for the key thing presidents need to know about philanthropy. In response, Langley noted a fact that is relatively well-known but infrequently (or inconsistently) acted upon. “Fundraising,” he cautions, “is often depicted as a short-term if not transactional phenomenon, while the research on philanthropic patterns suggests that fundraising needs to be long-term in its focus.” Citing research on donor trends and behaviors, Langley notes that: Langley uses this data to issue a reminder to institutional leaders that […]

6 Questions Advancement Leaders Need to Ask New Presidents

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Quickly establishing a rapport with a new president is of immense importance to an advancement leader. If a shared sense of purpose and a framework of collaboration are established between the two of you in the first month of a new presidency, the institution can soar to new heights. But if this groundwork isn’t established, missteps and misunderstandings can accrue and result in heightened tension, mistrust, and, ultimately, turnover in advancement leadership.Advancement leaders can help establish that rapport by asking their new presidents some very strategic questions. The Right Questions to Ask These questions include: 1. Who were your mentors or the leaders who inspired you? What in particular did you admire most about them? Why this is the right question:The answer will provide you real insight into the president’s leadership style and allow you to mesh your style with his or hers. 2. What information would be most helpful for my staff and I to bring back as we interact with alumni, parents and other key constituents? Are there questions that you would like us to be asking these constituents on your behalf? Why this is the right question:This question will help the new president understand that advancement can be […]

Tips for Engaging Campus Partners in Recruitment Activities

Engaging Campus Partners in Recruitment Activities You can’t expect people to participate in something they don’t understand. Be strategic in how you communicate with stakeholders so they have a clear image of what you’re trying to achieve and how they can help.   As an admissions professional, it can be tough to get academic leaders, faculty, and other campus partners to readily participate in key recruitment touch points with prospective students and families. They might not think it’s their job, they might perceive recruitment activities like sales, or they may simply feel too busy. In this lesson, we’ll spotlight how 3 large public institutions have found creative solutions for bringing campus partners into the fold while generating meaningful participation for their recruitment events. Kennesaw State University [h5p id=”52″] University of North Georgia [h5p id=”55″] University of Texas at Arlington [h5p id=”58″] 5 Tips for Engaging Campus Partners in Recruitment Activities 1. Make Participation Easy Expand   Make participation easy to get more involvement from your campus partners. Examples for making participation easy include: Providing campus partners with simple strategies for participating like waving and saying hi to visiting students. Sending departments the contact information of perspective students so they can […]

This is How We Need to Rethink the Work of Student Affairs

Posted on by Daniel Fusch

The challenges facing our students and our institutions are more complex than in the past, and no single, siloed office can address these challenges adequately. That’s why some institutions have been forming student affairs innovation hubs to bring together a more diverse crew of creative minds from across campus and put them to work on improving the student experience. One of these institutions is Seattle University, and we recently interviewed Seattle U’s vice president for student development, Michele C. Murray, Ph.D., and Seattle U’s assistant vice president for student development, Monica Nixon, Ed.D. Rethinking Our Work Murray and Nixon suggest that the one-stop shop approach to serving specific student demographics (such as transfer students, for instance) has several flaws. When Seattle University set up an office to serve its transfer students, Murray notes, “the great thing was that we had one full-time staff person completely committed to those transfer students. The downside was that the transfer students felt siloed. They weren’t introduced to the fullness of the student experience, and that issue was replicated across multiple student populations.” “Another unintended consequence of the siloed way of using one-stop shop areas to serve specific student demographics — is that the students feel […]

A Competency-Based Approach to Career Services in Higher Ed

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

We had the opportunity recently to connect with several innovators in career services whom we met through a recent CAPA conference; one of these was Dr. Audrey Murrell, the associate dean of the College of Business Administration and director of the David Berg Center for Ethics and Leadership at the University of Pittsburgh, School of Business. Audrey Murrell has developed a unique, competency-based career development curriculum at Pitt Business. We asked her about that program — its key components, what other institutions can learn from it, and how it is responding to critical trends in career services. Here is what she shared with us. How Career Development is Changing Academic Impressions. Audrey, thank you for this conversation. First, can you tell us a little about how you see career services changing today? What are the trends that career services professionals need to be paying the most attention to? Audrey Murrell. Previously, universities have tended to take a very centralized approach to career development, where career services functions as a one-stop shop to meet the broad needs of students on campus. What I’ve seen is the need for more specialization. Some schools of business have a separate but complimentary career services office or […]

What Development Teams Get Wrong about Donor Relations

Posted on by Kenneth Soldink

Most would agree that there is no fund development without donor relations. Consider this article a personal perspective—informed by more than a decade of donor relations and stewardship experience—about the missed collaborative opportunities between development and donor relations teams. There is no time like now to create partnerships to address the divide. As an industry, we have segmented out donor relations and stewardship as separate efforts that take place after we have established relationships with our donors. We pass new donors along with the signed buck slip to those who have been trained to maintain the warmth of the donor’s relationship with the institution until pledges have been paid or until it seems like the right time to make the next big ask. Some Crucial Rethinking I would like to challenge the development officers out there to think about the role that you play with a new prospect. You are introduced to someone who may be interested in your cause. You may request research to identify this individual’s home value, past event attendance, known associates or interests. You check into a past charitable giving history to your organization and anything else that may pop up in a Google search. In short, you put […]

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