Welcome, everyone. The Council for Advancement and Support of Education is pleased to present this online webinar. Collaborating in a crisis. Advancement. Student Affairs and Emergency Funding. My name is Anne Weller and it's my pleasure to introduce our speakers today. Dr. Caitlin Crocetti is the director of Advancement for University Life at George Mason University under the leadership of Vice President Pascale. Dr. Katie managed Mason's initial emergency funding process, including creating a workflow, establishing inclusive policies, and managing a team of individuals responsible for reviewing and processing applications and allocating funds. Dr. Chetty also worked closely with her colleagues in Advancement and alumni relations to communicate data and student needs, which led to the institution raising $970,717 in emergency funding in ten months. ROSE Pascale is vice president for university life at George Mason University. She has also served as associate vice president for university life, associate dean for campus Life and associate director of the Women's Studies Research and Resource Center at Mason. This pastoral leadership and work has focused on increasing student engagement and academic success and the building of just communities. Vice President Pascale has worked on campus climate, student engagement and student success for over 20 years. She's taught in the School of Integrative Studies, Sociology and Women's Studies Academic units. Welcome. Thanks again and hi everybody. Caitlin and I are glad to be here today. Glad to be able to share our practices and our collaboration with advancement in an effort to support our students. And it is supporting our students and collaborating in a crisis. And so we feel like this topic is timely, particularly as a result of the global pandemic. But there'll be another crisis and we will still want to support our students. And so hopefully what we share with you today will be helpful to you in the in the days, in the months and years to come. It's also the case that emergency aid itself and emergency aid funds are not necessarily new. They many universities have emergency aid funds, but we saw our efforts needing to really multiply during the current crisis. And we know that these funds have significant impact on our students ability to graduate. It's particularly true that public institutions that have strong commitments to access you may have seen really this staggering statistic that was listed in the description of this session, which is that about 3 million students drop out of college each year due to a financial crisis of less than $500. That's something that we can do something about. And the emergency aid fund is really designed to respond to that. One of the things that we noticed, particularly true during the past year, that when we asked students what their main reasons were for leaving or their main struggles were, they were primarily financial. And so students with academic McDivitt faculties, that was like fourth or fifth on the list. So it became very clear to us that we needed to focus very intentionally on helping students with their financial needs. So the learning objectives for the webinar presentation today, we're hoping those of you who are tuning in can not only evaluate the current process you have, or maybe you're starting out and hoping to establish your own emergency funding process, but we really hope that you take away the ability to create a short term immediate strategy to establish or maybe enhance your institution's process if you already have one, and you're just looking to revamp or you're just interested in seeing what we happen to do at George Mason University, we hope that you have some of those key takeaways for your own team and your own process. We're also going to talk a little bit about partnerships because certainly university life, our student affairs division at Mason, we've done the lion's share of maintaining this process, but we don't do it alone. And so we're going to be talking about the key partnerships on our campus, particularly the role of advancement and the role they play in supporting us and supporting the process and really helping us raise awareness for emergency funding. So our presentation is divided into four sections really, and you'll see those on the screen. And it's you know, we should note that the whole emergency funding process and as we talk about how our process has evolved over the past year, it was definitely not this linear and did not fit into these nicely four little categories. It was very iterative. We're constantly reinventing, we're reimagining, we're evaluating or returning back to the assessment as we're planning and executing. So, you know, just wanted to make a note of that. We've organized our presentation in this format and we'll move through each of these sections and then we'll come back around to an assessment. But do know that this is very iterative and something that you know and certainly meant not to insinuate that it's linear and one step, second step, etc.. So let me say just a little bit by way of the description of George Mason University. We're located in Fairfax, Virginia, and we are the largest our one public in Virginia, where the most diverse public institution in Virginia, with a very strong commitment to access to excellence. You can see some of the description there on the slide. And it's really important to understand your student demographics when you're thinking about emergency funding and who you want to serve, who you need to serve. So as you can see, about one third of our of our undergraduates are Pell eligible. Our low income students. And many of those students face financial difficulties. Even in a typical year, it became really apparent to us as the pandemic began that financial issues weren't just threatening students ability to stay enrolled at Mason, but they were really impacting every aspect of their life, and they really needed financial cushion to pay for things like rent and medical expenses, even meals. And that's when we really moved into action. And you can get a sense from from this slide at the number of requests we received and the amount that we were able to to award to students. And so you can see about $5 million was awarded in a short period of time in 2020. And as 2021, as we're about a quarter of the way through, we've awarded a little more than $1,000,000 was in emergency aid. Students had big requests. Students were asking for as much as $25,000 in the requests and explain some of the discrepancy between the amount requested and the amount awarded. It also had a lot to do with the amount of money we had to to award to students. And so you can see that the average award in 2021 is a little more than $1,000, which is somebody to go for emergency aid funds. We wanted to provide students as much as we possibly could in order to kind of help them thrive and also help them stay in school as we go through this. Go ahead, Caitlin. Great. So one of the things that we want to kind of make sure that we focus on and that we'll stay focused on through this presentation is the impact on individual students. And we'll use one of our students a mirror as an example, and you'll see a mirrors a mirror story throughout the presentation. First of all, when you're working with these huge numbers, sometimes it's easy for individual students to get lost in our meetings and in our conversations, but so important to keep students at the center of this process and so important, particularly when you're fundraising to to bring real stories to life and tell real stories about our students. And so a mirror was being supported by her brother and a sponsor, both of which lost jobs due to COVID. The Mirror is an Iranian national, and so there was no financial assistance she could apply for in the United States or in her home country, and she was in need of tuition and fee support. Also, basic living expenses, in order to be able to stay with us and persist in her final semester. She will follow us throughout the presentation. As Caitlin said, there are four phases to our process and the first is assessment. And really our presentation starts and ends with the assessment, beginning with kind of an assessment of our current practices and our vision for what we want it. And you can see right there kind of the structure that we followed, we wanted to assess our current practices. What did we do pre-COVID in terms of student funding? We did have an emergency aid fund called Stay Mason. It was a centralized fund, a much smaller amount of dollars that were in the State Mason Fund annually. But we also had a decentralized emergency aid funds in most of our nine colleges. So we had that decentralized process engaged. So in terms of identifying key institutional factors, we knew because of a decentralized process that we had to really create a whole lot of buy in from all in every one of our college units in terms of our key institutional factors. We also want to be very clear about our student profiles. So as I said previously, knowing that at about a third of our students were eligible, our assumption was that students would need additional financial assistance and would would be requesting money through the financial aid emergency aid process. We wanted to look at our obstacles and so because we wanted to organize ourselves around one process, one application that any student could apply for, we had to figure out how to account for very is pots of money, pots of money that were donor driven in each individual college. And we needed to identify additional funding sources as we went through. We wanted to, as I said, create buy in to a levels. And again in order to ought to offer just one process that our students would have to to to apply to. And then finally, we wanted to be clear about what success looked like. So, as I said, really important to keep students at the center of our process. One application, one spot where students could apply in easy and efficient ways. And we also wanted to honor donors intentions. So although a donor may have provided funding in a particular college for students of a particular college, we wanted to be able to make good on that promise. Even though we had one application, one central, one central process. And so now we're going to be moving into phase two, which for us is planning. And so this is where we're going to be taking a deep dive into the actual system that we use. We're going to be looking at the application and we're going to be talking more about the funding pots that Rose talked about, the three different pots of funding that we have access to for emergency funding. So before we go to deep, I thought it would be helpful just to provide a high level overview of our process. And of course it starts with the student submitting an application. As Rosa mentioned, we have the one centralized point of application for each student, and from there what happens is a student is reviewed to see if they're eligible and we'll go into detail on what that eligibility criteria is in the next few slides. But either they're deemed eligible or ineligible, and if they are, they're moved on to the next phase, which is where a committee of university staff will review their actual application and they will assess, make decisions and decide if they're approved or not approved. Of course, if they're approved, then we get to make some decisions and then it's a matter of deciding which pot of money are is going to make the most sense for us to use to award that student based on their eligibility criteria. And so, of course, one of the main factors is is a student title for eligible or are they not title four? And then there you'll see how that plays out with the three funds that we have access to. So if they're funding Title four eligible, then we can fund them with the CARES Act versus our State liaison fund, which Rose mentioned, which is state dollars or funding them with with donor funding. So the the point of this slide is really to show we do have one central application, but at the end of the day, we're pulling from multiple resources, multiple pots of money to make those awards. In terms of the the application system itself, we wanted to kind of show the evolution of how our process has really, you know, transpired over the past year. And when we started, I mean, obviously none of us knew that the COVID 19 pandemic was on the horizon. So we didn't have a emergency funding process that we have now. We had something similar, as was mentioned, the state Mason's student support fund. But we really needed to quickly, in a very short amount of time, just a couple of days, set up a process where we could allocate this funding. And so when we first got started, our system was what we would call it, in-house system. It was very barebones. There was nothing fancy about it, but it got the job done. And so we were really relying upon online forms, shared Excel spreadsheets, shared drive, you know, a secure, shared space where we could put documents that students were submitting to us. And while we were able to get that up and running quickly. So that was an opportunity that we had in using our in-house system. It didn't it didn't necessarily serve our needs long term, and we knew that. So we knew over time we would likely need to revamp our system just because there there is advanced technology out there that can help really automate some of the parts of our process that were really manual. So we had a lot of individuals involved in our process who were packaging applications and getting them ready for that reviewers to review. And there were a lot of people that had their hands involved in our process. And so over the past year, like I say, we were using the process. We started in spring 2020, but this summer we finally made the leap over to using a third party vendor. And so it's a company that Mason was already using. It's a case management system database, and it's really providing us the opportunity to remove some of the more manual parts of the application process. Now, I'll say it's still very centered around people, so we aren't removing the committed you know, there's still people that review, there's still people that check if students are eligible and read the narratives. It's just automating some of the more technical parts of our process, some of the assessment pieces, and making it just a little bit less time intensive for some of our staff that have been working. So on the screen again, you'll see some of the opportunities and challenges with whether you go with something in-house versus a third party vendor. It's just there's a lot to consider. But if you're listening to this and you haven't gotten started and you're just thinking it seems insurmountable to even begin, you can do something small and use, you know, have use whatever you have access to already at your institution. And you can certainly make a process that is going to be working for you. Students. So staffing is going to be key, you know, to keep in mind when you're managing your emergency fund process and at the center of hours, we have two staff members who work in university life who are financial well-being staff. And one of those individuals was already hired to work in the financial well-being capacity, pre-COVID. And then that person's job really evolved to focus on emergency funding over the past year. But we quickly realized through the spring of 2020 that this process was massive and it really required daily oversight. And so we are lucky that we were able to hire a second financial wellbeing staff member to help manage this process. And so all the circles that are around the, you know, the outside circle of the financial well-being, the image there, these are volunteers that work in university life that are working above and beyond kind of the typical day to day responsibilities and helping to make sure that we can continue on with this emergency funding process. So staff members are volunteering their time to help process applications, to help communicate with students and be our frontline communicators, as if we need to get additional documentation or if we're answering an email where we get hundreds of messages. We have staff that are volunteering to help us make sure we can respond quickly and efficiently and accurately to students because emergency funding is just that. It's an emergency. It's not something you can wait three months to get an answer. So it really, really takes a village and it has taken a village to help maintain our emergency funding process at the level that we've been able to. Of course, we have partners outside of university life and they're listed in the purple box on the left and financial aid student accounts and our international tax office. We are in regular communication with those three units and could not do this without their expertise. And of course, utilizing their systems, pooling information. You know, it's we're just constantly working together to make sure that we are doing everything we need to do within Mason's current processes to get money into the hands of students. Now, with advancement and marketing communications, they've been key partners as we think about how do we tell the story of our students, how do we demonstrate the need that we have? And in general, just raising awareness that we all were aware of COVID, but we maybe weren't aware of the ways in which Mason as an institution, we were supporting students who were struggling throughout the pandemic. And so those units were key. And then, as Rosa mentioned, we're very decentralized in our structure. So having partnerships with the colleges and schools was vital. I mean, it was so important that we are reporting back to them on the work that we're doing with the emergency fund as it relates to their students, their needs and all of those those individuals outside of university life. I mean, it really was a team based approach and it really couldn't have done it without everyone on the screen and so many more for the sake of time. We're just mentioning these campus partners. So when we think more about the funding streams that we had access to, there were really three. And within the three you'll see it can get even just a little bit more complicated. But all of these pots of money, regardless of which one we were dipping into to fund a student, students were receiving customize award letters where they were seeing which fund they had their award from. Now, that's not to say students had a choice because they didn't. We decided based on you can see on the screen who is eligible and how that eligibility criteria was determined. Some of it was taken out of our hands. The federal government was telling us how to allocate the CARES Act or in the case of some of our donor funding, perhaps it was a fund only for students who are undocumented or only for students who are business majors or from health or human services. So we didn't always have a choice as to. How. We could allocate some of these funds. But you can see, obviously we had access to a variety of different fund funding sources that we could we could pull from. And there's a few different notes like I added on the screen, just to give you an idea of how we made some decisions in some areas, you know, again, the cares Act, we could only award to title for eligible students with State. Mason. One of the biggest considerations, if we were going to use that fund, there are some international tax implications that we learned as we with this process evolved that relied on us keeping in constant communication with that office, making sure we know what visa status students are holding, and therefore donor funding within the GMU Foundation, we had 16 separate emergency funds that were spread out across the university, and so School of Business had an emergency fund that Health Human Services has an emergency fund and so on and so forth. So each of those funds had their own criteria as well. So again, our process is highly individualized, which can make it time intensive. But I think it makes it really special because not only are we able to honor donors wishes, as Rosa was saying earlier, ensuring that the donor to the School of Business, their funding is going to a business student, but we're really, you know, able to kind of shift and pivot as some of these funding sources were depleted, we were able to rely on a different funding source. So we luckily were at the at a point where we've never really ran out of money flat, flat out, because we always were able to rely and turn to if cares Act funding is low. We relied on donor funding. When that was depleted, we could rely on state Mason So diversifying the funding stream has really helped us stay afloat and provide continual funding to students. So we're going to return to a mirror for a moment and just make a note and then see how this plays out in a real life scenario. So at the time that Ameera applied, she was not eligible for CARES Act funding because she's not a Title four student. And so we knew we couldn't use CARES Act. And again, with her visa status, being an international student, there was a tax consideration that we had to keep in mind. So as we move forward with her scenario, those are just some things that we wanted to point out at this point since we just. Talked about are doing. All right. So on to the third phase, which is execution, and this is where we're going to talk about the application in detail. So specifically the criteria that we use and give you a screenshot of the application, talk about what we fund, what we don't fund, and certainly go into the role of advancement and how they were key partners for us. So the eligibility criteria that you see on the screen is what our is, is what our criteria is currently for summer 2021. And this is the criteria, regardless of what fund we use to award a student, they must meet this eligibility criteria. That was a decision we made at the institution, also at the VP level. This was something that was important to us for equity in making awards. We didn't want to change the criteria by fund because we wanted emergency funding to be fair and equitable. If we're doing one process that's meant to serve the whole institution. So the summer or sorry, the spring of 2020, I should say, the eligibility criteria looked very different because again, things were unfolding really, really fast and it certainly wasn't a free for all. We had criteria in place, but it wasn't as strict as the criteria you see on the screen. So obviously that evolved because we needed to conserve our resources. We don't have endless amounts of money, and so we wanted to make sure that we were being equitable. We weren't over funding certain students who who then got used to the emergency funding process. And we don't want students relying on our process as a first line of defense in financial crisis or financial need, I should say. But we also wanted to make sure this was accessible to students. And so we set this criteria and what we're constantly revisiting it. So every since spring 2020, every semester, we're revisiting the criteria and making sure this is something that's still working, that still makes sense, is still accessible enough where students can see themselves and find, you know, meet this criteria and be eligible for funding. And so, again, constantly revisiting what this looks like. The additional criteria we wanted to mention again, just by way of trying to make the process equitable, students can only receive funding once in each semester in a maximum of three times during their enrollment as an undergraduate or graduate. So again, we don't want students to abuse that. We have this emergency funding and they're not. But, you know, we needed to put some mechanisms in place to make sure that didn't happen. And we're also looking back at previous awards. So as the review committee is looking at a student's application and they've been funded before, they're looking back to see what have we funded them before and how does that fit into what they're requesting. Now, a lot of this is to help us move towards more of a financial wellbeing, financial planning mentality where we're helping students see how they can make long term better decisions and maybe not get into situations where they feel they constantly need emergency funding. And then the other criteria to mention is we make clear to students these funds don't need to be repaid unless the student withdraws. And so when a student submits their application, they're checking a box at the end saying they agree to all of these terms. And that is one of them. We make very clear if you withdrawal after you receive funding, you you will have to repay that funding. Okay. So I know this line has a lot of texts, but we wanted to put in one place are eligible and expenses and expenses that we don't fund through the emergency funding process. And again, as you can imagine, this list got much more detailed over the past year. So part of that is because as as we saw what types of expenses students were constantly seeking, we were we were able to make decisions and make more firm criteria around really what it is that we should be funding With emergency funding and what is something that we really just should not be funding. And so the ineligible expenses column has certainly gotten larger as as the year has progressed. And when a when the review team is reviewing applications and we'll give a screenshot of the application on the next slide, they are seeing students narrative about why they need emergency funding, but they're also seeing documentation for each of these expenses. So it's not just a check of a box like I need utility and child care support and health insurance support. They are they have to upload specific documentation related to those expenses. And with that, our reviewers have a guide that helps them. So they're not making just snap judgments. They have a guide that we developed over the past year that outlines maximums and caps. So for example, there's a cap for the amount of money we will award for technology. Now, if a student is requesting below that and we approve them, of course we're giving them less than that. But if a student wants a fancy new MacBook for $2,000 and our cap is set 50, well, even if they've already spent that 2000 and they're looking to be reimbursed, we're actually not going to reimburse them for that full amount. So that's why we get a lot of partial awards, because students will shoot for the stars sometimes with what they're requesting. But we have caps to make it equitable and fair across all applications and all decision making. And I will also mention our review team, which is for full time staff, their full time job is not to review, although maybe sometimes depending on how many applications we have, they're spending a lot of time. But some people are reviewing daily, some are reviewing a couple of times a week. They are just reviewing and making a decision. They're not the ones that decide where the funding comes from. That goes back to our financial well-being staff. So the review team, they're just reviewing and saying yes. And if they say yes, they're letting us know what amount it is based on that guide that we developed that has our caps and our maximum. How much a student is, you know, should be awarded for that expense. So as I mentioned, this is a screenshot of our application. And what you'll see here, again, just a part of the application, it's a little bit more extensive, but not so expensive that it prevents the student from wanting to complete it because we don't want to make the process so cumbersome that a student is exhausted and doesn't feel like they can actually go through with it. It's too taxing, it's too much that they won't submit, but you'll see there's categories. And so students, when they go through, they are checking a box and saying, okay, here are the types of expenses that I am interested in getting support from George Mason Most students are not checking all these boxes, so we found that students really come to this application with a very specific request, and maybe it's housing and utilities, or maybe it's just a laptop. If there's died, they're not taking advantage of the system and checking through everything, and that's because you have to provide documentation. So as I mentioned before, a student has to submit an upload before they can move forward in the application. They have to upload PDFs of or use housing as an example. In that case, if they click that they need housing, they have to upload a current lease or a mortgage statement showing that information. And again, we don't do this to be nit picky or to be so you know, detailed or to have students like run around gathering all this paperwork and information. But we need to make sure there's documented need. And in the case of housing, for example, students have to give us a lease that shows their name, their monthly payment, and the number of roommates they have because we don't want to be in the business of funding, you know, students for $2,000 for their rent. If there's four roommates and really their portion of the rent is $500. And so using documentation is really the key to our process. And if a student can't produce a document depending on what it is or why, we will work with that student to find an alternate way if there's an alternate need. But if they can't produce a document, then unfortunately we can't produce funding for them because we do need to make sure our funding is going to students who have the highest need. As demonstrated need with disbursements. It depends which fund they are being awarded from will dictate how their funding makes it to them. For CARES Act funding. As most of you know, funding has to go right to the student directly. It can't go through the institution to the institution if it's tuition and fees, for example. So anything that's Cares Act gets sent in a check and our student accounts office manages that part of the process. If we deem eligible for the CARES Act funding for, say, Mason, it's a little bit different because we can reduce their balance if they have one. So if a student gets awarded $2,000 and they have $1,000 balance, that money will be put on their account. It will reduce their balance. And then the overage in that case, $1,000 would go to that student in a check. And then for donor funding, this is the fastest turnaround we have because we can do a check right to the student. It doesn't have to pass through, you know, a different office or through student accounts. It goes from the George Mason University Foundation, right to the student via mail. And so when I said earlier that we have a very highly individualized process, I mean that because when we read a student's application, if we see that a student has immediate urgent need and we can fund them with donor funding, we have it available, we might decide to do that because that's the fastest way we can get money into the hands of students who has a true emergency. And so it's nice that we have options because then we can see what the student's situation is and make a decision based on funding availability, of course, and eligibility criteria, but also based on what are they asking for. So that that's just a key point and something great that the foundation has worked with us on in terms of making sure the turnaround is fast. So it's within a week, sometimes less, depending if we get something to them and they're cutting checks the next day, we can get a check in the mail to a student within 24 to 48 hours if we need to. All right. So we're revisiting Amir's request to see how her request played out in real time with what she would submitted in her application. And so you'll see that she was looking for tuition, rent and utilities and her request you'll see. And then what there was approved is up there as well. Now, key to know with timing. Amir was in her last semester, so she was about to graduate and she requested she submitted her application two months before the semester ended. So you'll see for rent and utilities. She she asked for three months worth of support, but she was only going to be a student for two more months. So that's why that was pro-rated, because we aren't going to fund the student after they graduated or if they're not, they have to be funded. They have to be currently enrolled to receive that funding. So that's why that was capped at two months. And then, of course, just the caps in general. So utilities, we only do 150 a month. So again, playing into that guide is very helpful that we have that so we can be equitable in our decision making. But for the tuition we only do tuition on special circumstances. And this really was a special circumstance because Ameera was about to graduate. She was on one of our payment plans. She was current on her payments up until that point and she had one payment left and we did not want 1300 dollars to be the reason why didn't graduate. So we were able to fund her the tuition payment. And so she her award, you'll see there was 2750, which is definitely a bit higher than our average likely because of that tuition piece with her request. All right. So on to communications, which is the last section before then we return to the assessment phase. And when we think about communications, there's the communications we did internally within our community. And then we'll also talk about the external communications that Advancement and alumni relations did in regards to donor funding. And Vanzant But the marketing campaign that we had out in the community for students looked very different last spring than it did this spring. And obviously that's because as everything was unfolding, the campaign was really about we have emergency funding because that was kind of a new process for students. So, yes, we have it and here's how you access it. Here's the website, here's where you go with questions. So that blitz, that marketing blitz was really about this is just emergency funding. This is where you get it. This is this is the nuts and bolts. Whereas now it's evolved a little bit more into, yes, we have emergency funding, but here's the purpose of that funding and it's not meant to be the first thing you do when you have a financial need. It's really meant to be a last resort and just a temporary short term, one time funding award, not something you rely on every semester. So that's a little bit how that that marketing has shift shifted and the same goes go goes for faculty and staff. We really are targeting Mason's huge. So there's so many faculty and staff that we just probably haven't even reached yet. But we're really targeting academic advisors, our colleagues in student affairs who are working front line with our students, making sure they know that we have emergency funding and making sure they know the purpose of it and who's eligible or not eligible. So really helping, you know, using our faculty and staff to make sure we're educating our students as best we can on the purpose of this emergency funding for Leadership Weekly. This is just one of many reports that we sent, but this is kind of the most high level report we would send or do send every week to Rose and so that includes really high level information, the number of applications the money requested. You know, how many students are requesting funding, how much are they requesting on average awards, etc.. So that's going to be really important because especially as time has gone on and, you know, we've kind of settled in, not settled in in the pandemic, but in terms of it wasn't as crazy now as it is in the spring of 2020, it's easy to lose sight that these are still continual needs that our students are having and that they're not going away. And so sending this report every Monday is our way, I think, of keeping top of mind that this is still happening. Here's the statistics and here's what we really need to keep going. And then for advancement, obviously our advancement colleagues are key in telling our students stories and not only the story of our students, but their needs. And we're able to. The next slide, we'll talk about data so we're able to or produce very tailored reports for our colleagues in advancement that are segmented just the business school students or just the arts students, just the humanities and social sciences so that they know the needs of their students, but also can communicate that to their donors and to their communities and their networks. And so I included advancement as a category in this internal communication slide because it's and part of it is because my role as a student affairs advancement professional, but it's a constant communication with my colleagues who are the lead fundraisers in their units. You know, we're constantly asking, okay, how much money is in your emergency fund? We have five students, you know, can you fund them? So it's a back and forth and they are really our best partners and really care about making sure their students get the funding they need. And so, you know, certainly would put those at the top of the list of key partners for us in this process. So data, we all know how important data is to our day to day. But certainly when you're setting up or refining your emergency funding process, you have to keep data at the forefront of whatever system you're using. And I see that as kind of a lesson learned. You know, when we set up our process really quickly, we didn't have all these things in place. We didn't have mechanisms to collect statements of impact or thank you notes for donors. We didn't have this high level detailed report that's listed on the left. We we then went back and made sure to work those into our system. But if you're just starting word to the wise, definitely factor that in from the very beginning. So with the quantitative data at the drop of a hat, we are able to give a detailed report segmented by college or school that showcases all of those various demographic factors for students, and we can do that as a whole so we can look across all applicants or we can segment that down into just the business students or just the art students. And that's really something our colleagues in the units, whether it's a dean or an advancement professional, that's something they're really interested in. They want to know this is great high level, but what does that mean for my students in my college? And so we're able to segment that down to the specificity of, okay, here are all the students of this college that have been funded by the CARES Act versus donor funding versus they. Mason So, you know, definitely making sure the quantitative data and the numbers are there because you're going to need to regularly report out on those. But as we mentioned, and we're trying to, you know, incorporate a mirror story throughout the presentation to hopefully drive home the point that it's all about the student story at the end of the day. And that's something our colleagues in advancement and communications and marketing have been really helpful in. Demonstrating is is just that story. But we need to get students to agree to tell us story. And so one thing that we added in after the first semester into our application, when a student signs off at the end, one of the things they're agreeing to is that we are they're giving us permission to use an excerpt of their narrative on marketing materials. We don't use their identifying information, but we may use their compelling story of need that they gave us in their narrative to in a solicitation. Or when we're talking to a donor or if we're making a video, we might have that as a voiceover. So students kind of our mass, you know, they're giving us permission in their submission of an application, but then we're also following up and we're talking to students individually. Like Ameera. She wrote us a really, really nice thank you note and and just saying how thankful she was, which you don't always get from students. But it's wonderful when you deal and through her her email you know I communicated with her and said you know we're really trying to find somebody that will tell their story so that we can it's not just about raising money, but we can tell our community, you know, the impact of what we're doing. And Amir was very willing to share her story in a publication we recently published. And you know, these are her words on the screen here. And so it's so helpful if you can get students, whether they want to share their identity or not, if they want to remain private or confidential, it's just really key to be able to capture those stories when you're trying to demonstrate the impact. And it's nice, it's a nice reminder to circulate these words to your staff that are running the emergency fund, who are constantly in spreadsheets. And, you know, behind the scenes, it's easy to lose sight of the impact you're having. And so being able to share quotes like this is been really important for our well-being and morale on our team as well. And so just another note on advancement before a rose takes us home with the assessment final stage. But it should not go without saying that advancement, you know, being key partners in all of. This. With the fundraising campaign over ten months time, we were able to raise, you know, over $900,000 for just emergency funding. Now, that money was split out over the 16 different emergency funds that we have. And so that got segmented on where the donor wanted to to give. But the campaign that advancement put out in April 2020 was Patriots helping patriots. And so what really happened is we were planning for giving day in which was going to be April 2020 and COVID hit and we really just had to turn it upside down, turn it on its head, and refocus and reimagine what do we need? Okay, We were going to fundraise for this initiative, but really all hands on deck for emergency funding doesn't matter which fund you give to just please give to an emergency fund, help a student and Patriots. That's our mascot. So Patriots helping Patriots was born and it really went beyond just one day, which is a giving day is normally a push for one day. This was ten months long and evolved into I just listed one of the many things but evolved into a comprehensive website where we're highlighting how alumni can help one another. We're providing resource for careers, health, wellbeing, really everything was under the moniker of how can we help one another through this really challenging time. And it was through videos. You'll see a screenshot of some videos, stories, quotes. I mean, having advancement and alumni relations be the storytellers and the fundraisers, but primarily the storytellers was key because when you are managing the emergency fund, which is the role that we took on in university life, it's hard to manage and also look up and out to tell the story of what you're doing. So by having colleagues that can be on the receiving end of spreadsheets and data, here's the need, here's where we're at. We need more money for this type of student or in this school or college. And then they did the rest. You know, that That was amazing. And certainly part of the reason why we were so successful in fundraising was because we constantly communicated and shared information in a way that was really focused on student success and helping to make sure that every student, Mason, who needed funding, was able to get funding. And I think it's back to me. Thanks, Caitlin. That was a really comprehensive, high level overview of the process. You know, side note here, I want to say that have been Caitlin having, you know, Dr. Chickadee with a background in student affairs and experience in student affairs has really made all the difference in our ability to, to, to understand all the nuances, the connections between advancement and student affairs. To anyone watching out there, if you're in student affairs and if you're working with development or advancement and you don't have your own development officer, I can't overstate the importance of making sure that the advancements team works with student Affairs hand in hand. Caitlin was involved in so much of the detail here and so much of the refinement, and I absolutely am certain that's because she had expertise in both student affairs, in student development and and also in advancement. So I highly recommend that that collaboration exists, whether it's in the body of one person or working with the group of folks. The other thing I want to say is as Caitlin was talking about communications, I also can't overstate the importance of having the regularized weekly reporting. And so even in my world, I think I was asked almost every week either about a particular segment of students and whether we had awarded them emergency aid numbers of applications coming in, amount of money that that we were giving out. It was just great to have that kind of consistent has been great to have that kind of consistent reporting and to be able to continue to make the case because. Right. The pandemic is is not over yet. The emergency is not over yet. And so we know that this is going to this this will continue. So we end where we began with the assessment as as Caitlin said, and so important as the process has changed, as the nature of the pandemic has changed, as the economy has shifted over the last year and a half to two continually improve on our process in order to help the most students. And here's part of what we've done right is so to ask the critical questions. So you heard Caitlin talk about the the awkwardness of our manual process, this and needing a more automated process in order to move applications through the system. That was one thing that we realized early on. Caitlin talked a lot about the data and using data not just to inform and raise awareness, but also to inform the decisions that we're making. So for example, one of the consistent groups of students that we worked with were our Dakota or undocumented students. Mason happens to be the public with the largest number of undocumented students here in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And so it was very important to hear their voices and also to hear their hesitancy in applying for emergency aid that they so needed because of some of the documentation requirements that we had. And so we met several time in order to figure out how we could shift our process to make it more all student friendly, reevaluating our benchmarks. You heard Caitlin say it, but success for us in 2020 looks different than success in in 2021. I mean, we started this process with the goal to fund students as much and as quickly as possible. And, you know, we're now more focused on really financial literacy in helping students and their families move forward. And then finally, you know, as I'll continue to say, got to continue to talk to students, particularly to find out what's working more, to find out what's not working, They will they will tell us, they will tell you. And and then also other stakeholders like financial aid and student accounts to make sure that our processes are consistent and that we're working well with those teams as well. Here's some of the lessons learned. And and again, hopefully this has been consistent throughout the presentation. Again, continue to make sure the process is student centered. Can't overstate that. Remember, the individual students, their individual struggles, it will help you to ensure that the questions you're asking are the right ones, that the application process is the right one. At making sure that, you know, you're you're hiring the right amount of staff or redeploying staff, Particularly during the past year, most universities were not hiring. In fact, there were hiring freezes or losses and furloughs as a result of the pandemic. We in student affairs were able to redeploy several staff to help this with this effort. And and, you know, some of that was challenging. But the goal here is to respond to student needs in the moment. And in that way, we were able to redeploy a group of folks who understood the critical need at this point. I also want to say make sure you reward those folks when you can. So doing the extra work and being willing to shift. And so there are many ways within all of our institutions that we can reward our staff members who are who are kind of going the extra mile. You heard Caitlin talk about prioritizing data and the importance of that for so many reasons. I want to say a little bit about targeting marketing campaigns, and I think the key here is redundancy. When students are in crisis, send them the same message said differently as many times as you need. Once, twice won't necessarily do the trick when you're trying to figure out how you're going to pay tuition, how you're going to pay your rent, how you're going to pay your medical expenses for your next meal is coming from, It's really important that you continue to send messages to students telling them that there are funds available. And then finally, just, you know, ensure that you're working with offices like financial aid and student accounts to make sure that you're you're kind of staying within the lines and staying within the confines of of all the federal and state guidelines. One of the other things I want to say, as you are doing this or as you think about doing this, that this process really breaks down all the traditional silos within the institution. So student life, financial aid, student accounts, you know, alumni advancement. I mean, we all, as you know, have typically have separate processes. And to combine them. All. In service to students is really about breaking down institution silos in order to, you know, to increase student success. Caitlin, Do you want to say more about lessons learned on this slide? I mean, I feel like a broken record in talking about the data piece because that's such a big one that we perhaps didn't account for as robustly as we should have at the beginning. But I mean, we learn so many lessons throughout the past year. And I just think the fact that we were open to constantly re-imagining our process was really important. And so that that's a big lesson learned is is don't think you ever have it perfect because something's always going to change, whether it's, you know, the government funding changing or the landscape or the needs changing, you know, just really being open to to reimagining and never feeling too settled, I think is is definitely a key takeaway. Three things. And in our next two final slide is just next steps. And you know, you heard us talk about automating the application system. We really do know that we need to focus on and will continue to focus on student financial well-being. We don't want emergency aid to be the go to fund. And at this point, we really want to help students find long term solutions and also connect them to other services on student the on campus, whether it's our food pantry or, you know, loaner laptops or housing insecurity issues. But what are the ways that we could connect students who are in concert assistant need? And then also, what are the ways that we can work with them so that they can be self-sustaining and then again, to continue to refine the eligibility criteria as we move forward? I think that's it. Thank you so much. This concludes the webinar. Today's program is Copyright 2021 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. With all rights reserved for additional case on demand webinars, please visit uww. That case stored on demand.

Council for Advancement and Support of Education

online webinar

Collaborating in a Crisis

Advancement

Student Affairs

Emergency Funding

Dr. Caitlin Crocetti

Vice President Rose Pascale

George Mason University