When the Rev. Michael C. McFarland, president of the College of the Holy Cross, travels to meet alumni and donors, he often adds a stop for young alumni. While they might not have much to give, the gatherings allow him to make a face-to-face appeal to recent graduates and help them develop a habit of giving.
Thanks to efforts like that, more than half of Holy Cross’s 32,000 alumni give to the college. That figure far exceeds the national average alumni-participation rate of 10 percent, and is one of the highest rates of alumni giving for colleges that report the figures. Regularly reaching out to young alumni—and asking them to reach out to 10 of their classmates—is just one tactic the college uses to keep its annual-fund numbers high.
Even in good times, sustaining or increasing the percentage of alumni who give has been a challenge for many colleges. The annual Voluntary Support of Education survey has shown a decline over the last several years in alumni participation, and last year the survey recorded the lowest alumni-giving rate in its history.
There are many reasons for the declining rate, including the uncertain economy. Improved technologies have also helped colleges keep track of more of their graduates, which means that there are more alumni of record—those that institutions have a current address or other means of contact for—and that figures into the participation rates. Colleges with stretched resources may also focus on soliciting the major gifts that make or break their campaigns rather than emphasizing $25 and $100 annual-fund donations from alumni. But alumni participation is important because it helps develop a pattern of giving. Colleges know that many major gifts tend to come from people who have supported the college for a long time.
Robert A. Burdenski, an annual-giving consultant, says some colleges feel they can’t do much to reverse the downward trend of alumni participation. Yes, the economy is bad, he says, but “we have some responsibility if we haven’t gotten creative.”
Colleges should be looking for ways to use Facebook and other social media to both solicit and thank alumni, Mr. Burdenski says. When he gives seminars in other countries where colleges are just starting to develop fund-raising programs, people are questioning the effectiveness of the traditional American giving appeals—direct-mail solicitations and phone-athons—over e-mail and other new methods that are less expensive and can have a greater impact.
While colleges shouldn’t discard their traditional fund-raising methods, he says, they should be looking for ways to use technology to reach those who aren’t responding to a letter in the mail or a call to a home phone. “You can’t just presume that’s the best starting point for younger alumni and the next generation,” Mr. Burdenski says.
With those views in mind, here are five colleges, including several top performers in the VSE survey, that have seen success with alumni giving, and the tactics (some new, some old) that they use.
College of the Holy Cross: Engage Alumni Early
Father McFarland started hosting breakfasts for young alumni three years ago, as part of a renewed focus on alumni participation after a big capital campaign. Since then, giving rates for young alumni have gone up, and Holy Cross hopes that the young graduates will one day be able to make major gifts.
Last year, out of the 30 graduates who attended one of four breakfasts for young alumni that Father McFarland held, all but one made gifts. They also agreed to ask their classmates to make donations, even if they could afford only $5 each, to keep the participation rate high.
Last year 45 percent of graduates from the last decade donated to the Massachusetts college, while overall giving was 51 percent, the college says. The year before, when Holy Cross had a matching challenge, the numbers were even higher.
In addition to those efforts, Holy Cross has a longstanding tradition that has helped encourage alumni giving. Volunteers in each class write letters to classmates several times a year that detail how donations are being used and appeal for future gifts.
Middlebury College: Leverage Social Media
Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for college advancement, says Twitter and Facebook are responsible for Middlebury’s receiving an extra $1-million last year from an anonymous donor. The money came in response to a challenge grant intended to increase alumni participation.
To get the money, Middlebury needed 60 percent of its 25,000 alumni to make a gift in 2009. One month before the deadline, the Vermont college was far from the goal, at 39 percent.
That’s where the social media came in. Middlebury’s alumni office had worked to build Facebook groups of local alumni chapters and classes, and in the last days before the deadline, alumni started posting to Facebook that they had made a gift for the challenge and that others should, too. Young alumni who worked for the college and had Twitter accounts tweeted updates on how close Middlebury was to making the challenge goal, and those updates were retweeted by others.
The message passed from alumnus to alumna, and in the last six hours, the college received more than 900 gifts, Mr. Schoenfeld says. The rush of last-minute gifts helped Middlebury exceed the goal.
“We couldn’t have done it without online giving,” he says. “We couldn’t have done it without the challenge.”
Now, Middlebury is getting ready to start another mini-challenge: Any money donated for sstudent aid in the last quarter of the 2010 fiscal year will be matched by a donor.
Carleton College: Emphasize the Value of Community
Carleton is big on thanking its alumni. Go to the Carleton Web site, and alongside the annual-giving report are almost a dozen thank-you videos from singing groups, the student magazine, dancers, athletes—even the campus juggling team (“Thank you for helping us juggle the numbers and balance the budget,” one juggler says).
Giving to Carleton is an emotional decision driven by a connection to other people, says Chris Clark, executive director of the alumni annual fund and parent giving. Getting students involved in thanking alumni for their contributions reinforces that impulse.
Every January, the Minnesota college holds a weekly “Volunteer for Carleton,” an expanded phone-athon where students not only make calls to alumni to ask for donations, but also invite them to attend reunions, or write them thank-you notes for donating or volunteering. Like many liberal-arts colleges, Carleton relies on a team of alumni volunteers to ask classmates for annual-fund donations. About one-third of the college’s 2,000 students took part last month.
Mr. Clark believes that alumni appreciate hearing from the college when they’re not being asked for money. He also believes that the volunteer event makes a difference in students’ lives, exposing them to the philanthropy and service of the Carleton community. (More than half of Carleton’s 25,000 alumni gave to the college last year, the college reports.)
“I want them to see and think and acknowledge those making gifts and volunteering,” Mr. Clark says. “You’re part of a larger community, and many of these people you’ve never met have made a difference in your experience.”
Bennett College for Women: Show What a Gift Can Do
About a third of Bennett’s 5,000 alumnae donated money to the historically black women’s college in North Carolina last year—with 300 more making gifts than the year before.
Bennett lacks the multimillion-dollar budgets of major fund-raising operations, so its tactics are simple, says Audrey Demps Franklin, director of alumnae affairs.
E-mail messages from the president go out bimonthly, detailing the need for support for student scholarships and improvements to the campus. And students have an annual “Thank-athon” where they call donors and thank them personally for their gifts.
“We can’t always send out slick materials,” Ms. Demps Franklin says. “But our alums understand the need.”
The college has also put a renewed emphasis on endowed scholarships, creating six last year alone. “I think some of the alums who were ready to give, this was a good option for them,” Ms. Demps Franklin says.
The college, which just hired a new director of institutional advancement, wants to increase alumnae gifts by 50 percent, to $1.5-million, and also raise the number of alumnae who give.
That could help the college, which has experienced financial trouble but is now more stable, says Julianne Malveaux, its president.
She hopes to raise even more money from foundations and other donors who look at the rate of alumni support when deciding how to allocate their donations.
“Others look at your alumni giving to decide if they want to give,” Ms. Malveaux says.
Amherst College: Connect Alumni With Professors
Besides looking at alumni-giving rates, how do you know how well your alumni programs are working? And how do you know what will make them better?
Amherst College is attempting to quantify alumni engagement with a six-part measurement that tracks when alumni make a gift, attend an event, give feedback to the college, or interact with students. After measuring alumni activity for one year, the Massachusetts college believes 70 percent of its 20,000 alumni have some sort of proactive interaction with the college (their giving rate is over 60 percent).
Alumni are the “living endowment of the college,” says Betsy Cannon Smith, director of alumni and parent programs. Knowing how they are engaged will help Amherst move beyond anecdotal evidence to data about who is interested in what programs.
Amherst has a range of programs to connect alumni back to the college and its faculty. A program called Amherst Reads is an online book club featuring works by faculty members and Amherst alumni (next month’s selection is Freefall, a nonfiction book about the economic collapse, by Joseph E. Stiglitz, a 1964 graduate and Nobel Prize winner).
A newer program, Amherst Connects, features a lecture series where alumni participate in an hourlong conference call with a faculty member who gives a 30-minute presentation, then answers questions sent by e-mail. Next month an English professor will be speaking on globalizing Shakespeare; in May, two economics professors will speak on economic perspectives on health-care reform.
Emma L. Carew contributed to this article.
