RELATIONSHIPS ARE ESSENTIAL TO A development officer, whether they involve reaching out to prospective donors, landing a major gift, or encouraging alumni to financially aid their alma mater. In this virtual roundtable discussion, four officers shared with University Business their thoughts on how technological advances and attitudes toward giving are impacting their field.
Q: How is your department responding to the budget crunch and rising competition for charitable giving?
Elizabeth Power Robison: The advancement division at Whittier operated with an extremely modest budget for many years, and in turn alumni giving was very flat. As we ramp up our fundraising efforts, an investment has been made to add staff and operating funds. This year we received a 20 percent increase to our budget and have been able to increase overall giving to the college by 70 percent.
Shea McGrew: Our budget is $4 million and growing. We’re a public university in a state that’s struggling economically, so it is imperative that we have a sustained development effort. The competition for gift dollars will only continue to intensify. We are building a development operation that is up to the quality and ambitions of the university.
Joseph Kender Jr.: If an institution is progressive, while budgets might be tightening elsewhere, development does not see this crunch. It’s seen as a revenue-producing investment. We can justify our budget by pointing to a proven return on investment, which means spending somewhere around 10 to 12 cents on the dollar raised. Tightening of charitable giving is simply something we are not seeing.
Elizabeth Dunn: We have had a number of record-breaking fundraising years, including the $2.38 billion Carolina First campaign and a $300-plus million cash year in the 2008 fiscal year, the largest in the university’s history. An investment in development is the best investment that the university can make: for every dollar in the development budget, fundraisers return nearly $10 back to Carolina. This success has kept our budget stable, but we are always making the case for additional resources and support.
Q: How does technology help you make the case for giving?
Kender: We look at technology not only as a communications tool but also as part of a broader engagement strategy. For example, if we have a speaker at Lehigh, we like to put the speech online so those who cannot be here can feel just as engaged. The better job we can do in making Lehigh relevant in our alumni’s lives, the more engaged they will be. The more engaged they are, the more philanthropic they will be.
Robison: We launched a Poet G.O.L.D. (Graduates of the Last Decade) program this year, using Facebook, LinkedIn, and our own alumni online community site to build connections with recent graduates. We sent out our first-ever Flash e-solicitation this spring, to great success. And we invested significantly in a redesigned website that includes an updated online gift form.
McGrew: Michigan Tech uses Flash technology to make video appeals for the annual fund. The response has been terrific. Online giving is up 41 percent from last year.
Dunn: In the central office alone, we use Flash e-mails from the chancellor and from the annual fund, all of which contain solicitations, as well as video segments on our website to illustrate the need and impact of gifts. We will soon launch an online gift and pledge lookup for donors, which can motivate donors to make a pledge payment, increase giving, or make new gifts.
Q: How do you motivate donors of various generations?
Kender: It used to be that you had a couple of core markets you targeted: older alums, mid-career alums, and younger alums. Now there are probably at least five different segments within each target. With Lehigh becoming co-ed in the seventies, and the growing diversity of our campus over time, the experiences that students had here vary greatly. We want to look beyond age groups, building on their experiences in a personal way, rather than a one-size-fits-all strategy.
Robison: This is an area where we are still developing our strength. We tailor much of our direct mail campaigns to specific affinity groups and class years, with special messages from faculty and others who may resonate more with a particular audience. We are building our peer-to-peer solicitation program and working hard to expand our volunteer rosters. Capturing the interest of future alumni while they are still undergraduates is probably the most important thing we can do.
'We put a respectful, trusting relationship with the donor first, and we know that good things will follow from that.' -Elizabeth Dunn, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
