Welcome everyone. I am Amanda tribute the vice president for philanthropy and alumni engagement at Western Kentucky University. I'm also a member of the case district three cabinet, and I'm very excited to welcome you here today for our conversation with Howard Hefner. Howard is a fundraising leader for more than two decades. He's been serving in key roles at institutions like the University of Iowa, Penn State, Michigan. And currently he is serving as the executive director of annual programs at the University of California, Berkeley, a leadership role he's held since 2019. Today we are pleased to have him join us here in district three to dig into the results of a survey that he collaborated with our NL on that included 15 institutions. The RNL 2024 national alumni survey project for a little bit of housekeeping before we get started. This is designed as a conversation with our audience I see several faces that have already popped up on the screen please feel free to share your video. After Howard shares a few slides with our audience. We're going to be happy to open up the conversation for you to ask your questions of Howard. Please turn on your, your cameras, turn on your audio and feel free to jump in and ask a question for those not on video or unable to be on video today I'd be happy to monitor the chat box, and we'll also direct any comments that you may have to Howard to ask those live and in person. So don't be shy today. Howard, welcome to the conversation and please take it away. Thank you Amanda for having me and it's also recognizing Amanda is office in a library, like how amazing is that office background that she used to have I just talk about winning coming out of the hybrid work environment world to be actually sitting in a library like I have a lot of envy about today. Well good morning or good afternoon sorry I'm in Oakland, California, so it's morning in my brain. So I'm really glad you all can join us, and happy to share some of this data with you all from this research that we did last year and talk a bit about this year's research as well. So I'm going to share a few slides and kind of give you some framing in the conversation and I'm excited to just kind of chat with you about what this, what this means or doesn't mean for us all. So, about, about two years ago, or three years ago actually I started a conversation actually have a number of companies looking for a company that was willing to engage in some partnership in the philanthropic space kind of different that we've done really looking for. How do we get closer to understanding what our alumni actually feel about us, not as a single institution, but in a collective ruffle no Levitz agreed to underwrite this work and support it not only and support it logistically and to continue to offer this for free to institutions that participated, and they also dedicated staff to it so it's really amazing so the the reason that I was interested in this was because of the two decades of declining alumni donor counts across this across really And that trend has only gotten worse since 2019 In fact, when you look at it with you're looking at private or public institutions you see these trend lines are pretty dramatic, and when you look at that data a little deeper what you're seeing is almost every institutions really struggling with don't with new donor acquisition. And so it really is the framing point for starting with this alumni survey project and really reaching out to alumni from a variety of institutions to be able to have a clear understanding of what their perspectives are on their relationship to philanthropy brings particularly in connection to higher education. So we started with a pool of 1.3 million potential responses, again with across 15 institutions a variety of institutions. We had about a 50% female identifying 40% male identifying and 2% either transgender or non binary. It was majority white, and we're looking for ways to actually diversify that to get a better sense of the population. And we have over 20,000 responses in the first year so we were very excited about that initial kind of pool of data to be able to look at to really start to dig in to ask some questions. So one of the things I think was most revelatory to me about all this is that the reality is is that our, our donors are non donors those who've never given to their alma mater are actively supporting other charities or 54% right so if you think about your alumni population you can roughly say that half of them who have never given to you are giving to other charities so we had a we've had an old saying over time right that when we talk about donors who aren't giving that we are. We need to teach them to give, and I think that that's wrong I think what we need to do is learn to listen better because they're not they're giving there's not giving to us. Also those who are generous, also good to other charities right 68% who are making gifts are are giving elsewhere, 50 some percent are volunteering, and put 20 20% of those actually ranked their alma mater at their top giving priority so that's really interesting learning to think about when you think about across all these institutions and about the fact that they are, they're giving elsewhere, and that maybe we're not the top of the list, and my brain always kind of goes to wonder how would that would have looked like 1015 20 years ago, the alumni connection and satisfaction with alma mater is on the decline. And we kind of look at this over time right the blue line here is the sense of disconnected versus connected. You can see here across the bottom under project clap class years, and then we had this kind of flip point that this connection versus connection. Some of this, you know, can be attributed to recency kind of recency effect and kind of life stage but at the same time, we're talking now about this late 90s early 2000s group where that kind of inflection point is. And it's kind of concerning right that 53% of recent undergrad alumni feel disconnected from their alma mater. There's some part of my brain that says that feels like they should, that's at a point when they should actually feel more connected. And then we kind of further that conversation about connection we kind of think about it versus like what was the experience how satisfied they feel about their undergraduate experience or their educational experience, you know alumni who report being very satisfied with their student experience are four times more likely to have donated their alma mater in the past year, whereas if they feel connected, it's 23 times more likely to give your alma mater. This sense this idea of connectivity of connection really is deeply moving to people. And so as we think about our own strategies, how are we creating a greater sense of connectivity, that's different than just that they have a good experience I think one of the things we get caught up in sometimes is overvaluing the student experience as an indicator for what their relationship as alum is going to be when really what we need to be thinking about is how are we finding ways to connect with them at this stage. The other thing we looked at specifically was the area of interest for alumni of their giving right and we looked at specifically all alumni as a baseline versus undergraduate the last decade. So you can see here on the far left there's, you know, specific department, very, very interesting to people very, very excited about that same thing as scholarships, and then these two lines kind of diverge right and and we're what we see is, you know, more interest in things like mental health services, student emergency fund kind of the diversity kind of world first gen initiatives, but for both groups that you know fairly low 22% area of greatest need being of interest. I think some of the particular mental health services and crisis or student emergency fund I think a lot of sense because so many of these folks were going through their undergraduate experience at a time when, when we were in the heart of the pandemic or recently graduated the pandemic and so I think that's become such a more prevalent conversation our campuses than it has for previous generations. So really kind of this interesting juxtaposition know of like the high level of interest for a very specific department versus our area of greatest need is another way of kind of talking about our kind of campus unrestricted fund. So philanthropy is influenced by by impact and passion. Right. I think sometimes we've gotten really fixed on impact. You know, and that's great and we and I think that kind of that kind of conversation about being kind of focused on impact really came out of a time when we weren't being very transparent particularly when some of our kind of traditional annual funds. When you think about it, though, when you look at this right. When we, we talked about they were asked about it what they what they cared about what they want to give to you know impacting something I care deeply about. So 77% said that was really motivating factor to them right verse and then as for the younger generations and more recent grads that jumped up to 81%. So being able to connect to people authentically and where they are and how do we use tools to listen better and reflect that listening back to them. I think the other thing that that is also worth noting is how low my student loan debt was as a contributing factor in their decision making about making a gift at 27%. Not on this slide deck but it's in the report when we, we looked at that for recent grads that still only popped up to about 50%. So, their student loan debt is a thing that we've talked about for a long time as a. Oh, this is a barrier. It's not the barrier that I think that we originally thought it would be. I think that I was personally surprised to see how low that ranked. And of course on this list you see things about passionate how I'm about what I'm being asked support ability my alma mater show me how my gift was utilized of course all ranking high, but really think that kind of how do we find that way to reflect back to them that we understand what they care deeply about, and that we're trying to make that connection for them. So, we also, we have done a year two of of this national alumni survey report is going to be out hopefully in February 2025. This time we actually have over 50,000 alumni responses across 22 participating schools. I'm excited for us to be able to really combine this data with with last year's data to really continue to get a deeper understanding. I just want to give you like a little bit of a snapshot of like some of the stuff that's in the report that kind of kind of talks about the nature of the relationship of our alums and our institutions, and about about where where this is all at. So, with that I'm going to stop sharing and just kind of hopefully have a conversation didn't want to make this too heavy on the slides. Please anyone that has a question, feel free to jump in and ask. Thank you, Adam NC State. I'll get us started with a question. How are you thinking about this in your program at Berkeley, how are you using this kind of data to evolve kind of some of the work that you're doing. So it's really a kind of two ways right one is really thinking about how do we deploy digital giving in ways that help us reflect the people what they care about today. We're making our traditional annual fund and putting on a crowdfunding platform or giving day platform. What we're trying to do is we're trying to utilize what we know about people's interest we've done a lot of surveying around interest actually to be able to reflect that back to them and so an example of a project like this is a couple years ago, when Afghanistan fell. There were a number of scholars who need to relocate to be able to continue to pursue their work and so we happen to have our human rights center, working with scholars at risk that they were trying to relocate and so we actually did a project and across a very short timeframe. We raised kind of extraordinary amount of money. And what we were able to do in the background though is test them this interest concept. And so those who had expressed interest in topics of international issues impacting women. There's a couple others that we that were codes that we kind of determined should be in this kind of bucket. If they had in one of our surveys respond to four of those and check for those interest boxes. They were like, I want to say three times more likely to respond to our message than if they had just respond to the survey in general. So what we found right is this really dramatic increase in people's response to this we've used that as kind of our proof of concept for a lot of our other projects. The other thing that we're working towards is to, how do we take the data we have about what people are interested in, whether that be clicks or that that be you know things that they've attended or etc. And how do we organize that in a way which allows us to better reflect back to them that we actually, we actually hear them. Right. I mean I think we all have a lot of data about our alums at this point. So it's, it's, it's a, I think that part of the challenge we've had in the past like how are we able to kind of reflect that back to we're working on that process as well. So we've got a couple comments questions and. Yeah, Howard I'll frame this up for you. Um, we've got a question here from Kathleen and as you shared in the presentation connected alumni are 23 more times likely to give, which is incredible. What are your thoughts on ways that these alumni want to be connected. Yeah, what's also in that report is that it's around volunteer service. And we didn't get too specific like a laundry list of here the ways to be connected but I can speak to particular volunteer service is that there was about 60% of those who said they'd never volunteered for their campus are volunteering elsewhere. Right, so they're volunteering for their local food bank there's more regionalized kind of experiences and so the impression I got from some of the data was that it was really about my more like micro experiences and higher education right we're so notorious for these like these very lengthy volunteer engagements and so I think a little bit of mindset mindset shift and kind of how do we think about framing those opportunities for people to be involved from a volunteer perspective I think that's one of those ways that we can see, see that connection being a little bit different. Thank you, Caitlin. I see your hand raised. Hey Howard Caitlin here I'm bringing new to the world of alumni engagement I'm the new director of alumni engagement for Frontier Nursing University, and all of our grads graduates, we are a totally online school, and all of our graduates are virtual so I just wondered I wanted Is there anything that you've tried that's worked particularly well with that, with that population or anything that you've seen that I may be able to try. Yeah, I think that's early. You have a very particular search for circumstances right and I think that what is true, though, is that almost all of our institutions have gone through a window of time now where our students are all virtual. And so, so I mean what my instinct is and what I've been thinking about for us as well as how do we, how do we kind of while they're still engaged as students, how do we build trust in the process of giving how do we build, how do we understanding and the system in which you engage and connect right, particularly in that virtual world I think that you already have them kind of engaging through these portals anyway. So how do you basically teach them the next portal they need to be part of in order to continue to be engaged. It's not like you're gonna go from like this virtual world into an in person engagement world in some ways, maybe, but like you've already got them engaged virtually so what are ways that you can basically educate them on it on the next step portal. Right. And one of the things we're working at Berkeley is a, it's kind of a comprehensive hurdle portal for all of our, all of our alumni connectivity and so we're, we're, we're kind of like the front door for alumni right where they come in, they can find their ongoing education classes they can find their mentoring, they'll be able to find these other aspects as well. And so instead of having to go a bunch of places right they can go to a single place with a single, single login so so lowering that barrier I think is important to. Yeah, thanks. Shock. Yeah, yeah right because that's what they're, I'm sure that's what their education experience is like to write they've got like a one stop shop to like go and like, like, get get their information for the classes and it's the same type of thing just for their alumni experience. Cool. Great answer. Thank you. Of course, thank you. I would have another question here from Laura in the chat and she's asking, are there any track is there any tracking of the types of schools that alumni are responding from from a community college and find that sometimes these responses are different. Yeah, I guarantee they are different, and we didn't have any community colleges in this and I did some outreach this year and didn't get any community colleges in this year for for a cohort as well. I would say that, hopefully I can convince them to do a third year, and I will be on your doorstep asking you to participate because I would love to see us have that type of that type of tracking. Because we just we just don't have that this time. And, and you're right right like you all deal with a very different. You think about transitory relationship in some ways, and that they're going to, you're kind of squeeze between the high school experience and like whatever they get their bachelor, bachelor degree from and so I think it's a unique set of circumstances and I would love to be able to get some data on that. So, long answer for a short answer. I don't have that data, I'd love to have that data. Thank you. Thanks for being here. And here's another one, Kendra is asking in your experience with gathering alumni interests, any recommendations on the best ways you have collected that data. So, I think that's a I think that is. I think that's the secret sauce right is trying to figure that out and I think it's, I feel like it's different for every institution and and what we're using a lot right now is we've baked in a, we have a survey that we set up that is part of everything we do. So when you make a gift at Berkeley online, you get part of your receiving process or part of your closeout process and you get asked to answer a few questions and some of those are interest questions. When we do we have some journeys we do for first time donors. So when we do those journeys one of the things when the opportunities to engage them in that process a little differently to ask them about their interests right is is thinking about all the different ways in which you're communicating and an opportunity to have them connect to you and to provide feedback that you could create that vehicle. And so, so I would be creative that you know we've also toyed with things like let's do let's play a game right like that's one of the things we talked about doing is like having a competition, where maybe we're giving away for us would be football tickets. I mean, honestly, you could probably give away football tickets. It wouldn't really cost us anything. We're not very good, but we're better. But you're right like thinking about those things those kind of cultural touchstones for each of your institutions like how do you create that moment in time. The other thing that I think is also really useful and again I think you might be coming from more of an alumni engagement perspective and just from a giving perspective. I can't overstate how valuable kind of crowdfunding and things like giving day are in really allowing people kind of that agency and choice, so much of our traditional processes when you communicate with people. It's really it's kind of forced choice concept right where they're giving them a single choice of a single fund because my direct marketing perspective, that is kind of the way you're supposed to do it. And so I'm starting to we're starting to toy with or work with ideas of how do we create more expansive choices for people, while still also getting an appropriate response right and so I would just look at every communication tools and opportunities, not only be speaking to them and broadcasting but also receiving. And for so long higher education been really, really good about broadcast but really poor about receiving. And so we have the tools now right like just you think about like a Google form even then you dump it into something and allow someone to just kind of give you that kind of quick hit. But one of my things that I would absolutely recommend to help it be able to store it in the database is try your absolute best to make that format the exact same every time. Right, if you're listening 22 things list the same 22 things. If you are like listening 10 things that's the same 10 things because you have to translate to your database in order to make that useful data on the back end. Right, you know, and, and our databases are often not great about being super flexible when it comes to these things. So I think there's a there's some process you have to go through there to be thoughtful about. It's one thing to have the data, it's another thing to be able to use the data. I love that language you just use agency of choice, and I had a question on, I think we have folks in this call from a variety of positions within the organization and really thinking about how do you talk to your leadership about giving donors that agency? So those personal passions, those institutional priorities that oftentimes are our presidents, our chancellors, our vice presidents are pushing us to raise funds for. I always start with the cliff. We have a donor cliff. And some of the things I like to say is like, we have a radical issue and we've been trying to solve it with intermittent solutions or incremental solutions. Sorry, radical issue with incremental solutions. It's better when I say it right the first time. It sounds better when I say it right the first time. So we have to have a radically different approach to this at this point, because it's not gonna just change because we made the letter a little bit better. Like if that was the case, we'd have all done better already but we have this cliff of donors, right? And then one of the things I look at is the data where we're losing those donors from. So for example, I can tell you that at Berkeley in the last campaign, the beginning of the campaign to the end of the campaign, we had fewer, a smaller donor count of millennials. So think about that. At the beginning of the campaign like 10 years ago, when half of them were still students or a third of them are still students, we had a higher donor count. And at the end of the campaign where they've all been out of school at least five years. And if you look at your data, I'm pretty sure most of you are probably in that same space. So that's also one of those things to kind of point out. The other way to look at that is what percentage of your donors are the age of 70 and how many of them were over the age of 75 years ago versus how many of the age of 70 now. I was able to look at my own data and see a 10 percentage point swing to that place, right? So the first is kind of establishing like what is our challenge? And then next is kind of this conversation around, okay, what have we been doing and why is it not working? And that's why I actually went down this path with this alumni survey work because it isn't necessarily just about an institutional issue. It is an issue culturally that we're seeing across the country. And it's not even a higher ed issue. There was a great article in Vox this summer that really looked at a lot of the data about nonprofit giving. They're also experiencing kind of this donor cliff. We have, there's a book called the, I think it's a generosity crisis. It talks about this as well, right? So I would do a couple of things I'm talking to leadership about this. One, what is our issue and what does it look like? Two, how is that in context of what's happening in our education? And three, what's happening in context of society in general. And then let's talk about what are the ways we can test and validate to see what's happening. So one of the filters they put on all of our reports, particularly about responsiveness is how are people responsive based on their generation, right? So what we've learned is millennials are one third as responsive to direct mail as Gen X, who's not like magically responsive, by the way. Like Gen X, like not like my generation's like amazingly responsive to direct mail. It's millennials are really poorly responsive to direct mail. And so we really try to filter as much as we can through that lens to understand what's happening in ways that are a little bit different than simply saying we have a recent grad issue. Well, the recent grad issue is now a 20 year issue. It's like, it's extended now to the fact that, our elder millennials are in their early forties. So I don't know if that helps you out, but that's just kind of a kind of accumulation of thoughts. And when I think about how to explain this and talk to folks about it, you just got to really highlight for them, this isn't a quality of work issue, right? This isn't like, we're not very good. It is a issue of, we have a changing society and we're not keeping up with it as higher education. Do we have any other questions or disagreements? I'm also happy to debate. Question. I'm curious, if we're talking about 53% of recent alumni feel disconnected from their alma mater, have you employed any strategies that have been effective in engaging alumni who are now past that point? They're 10 years out, they're 15 years out. What strategies are you employing to get them to potentially engage for the first time if they felt disconnected all these years? Yeah, I mean, I don't have like a magical, like we do these 10 things, right? I would say that we're trying a lot of things. I think some of the things we're trying again is about this, how do we create this front door for alumni to make the barrier to entry easier, right? We are leaning in more heavily to some of our kind of more digital giving options and we see that that's where we have them engaging like financially. One of the things that we're exploring is how do you do, and this is still in the conceptual stage, but how do you do like a giving circle, but at mass, right? Where it's less of a gift and less of making a gift and more participating in a giving experience where you're actually as a donor getting, the idea would be is that you're actually as a donor trying to getting to help select what the funds are that you're gonna hear from and then how does that money you distributed and then et cetera, right? Like how do you create these experiences and these opportunities that go beyond that? And then the other thing I'd relate to, and again, I know that you're kind of asking more specifically engagement, but I think this kind of speaks to it too, is traditional phone programs, kind of a sledgehammer. I came out of the phone programs, I was a student caller, et cetera, right? Like pool of prospects and you put a bunch of students to call it and you just kind of beat away at it until they like either they yield or they stop answering or whatever happens, right? Like that's the traditional way of looking at it. And so, and I think that's kind of the anti of what we wanna do at this point. And so how, so we've been doing, exploring a lot with our testing and we've had some good success with is how do you deploy a portfolio strategy with that, right? So a student has a portfolio of 400 to 500 prospects and they are working with them across a three month period. What's really interesting we're seeing in the data on that is that the initial outcomes are pretty similar to that of a population that just has the traditional way. But there's this kind of thing we're calling this like halo effect where like over the next three months, we've actually seen this amplification of giving both in dollar size and responsiveness after that engagement process. And so it's really about how do we blend these two things of connectivity and making it more personal and then also still figure out how to do that at scale, depending on the size of your institution, sometimes those are large numbers. And so, yeah, so those are some of the thoughts that I have on how to kind of, how do we create that sense of connectivity? Thank you. Question here in the chat. Are there any specific events that you find boost alumni attendance the most? No, here's the thing. I would actually start with a different question. I'm gonna do a little shift on you. I'll start with a different question. My question is, what are the behaviors that we're trying to encourage that we know increases someone's propensity to make a gift or support the institution or be engaged or get deeper engaged, right? Versus what is a singular event? And so once we kind of look at that data about the trajectory of an individual's relationship with an institution based on how they're connecting, then how do we encourage those behaviors? And then that's where I would look for that kind of like, is that a virtual event? Is that an email series? Is that a journey? Is that like a phone? Is that a student engagement? Is that volunteering, et cetera? I would always suggest or recommend, I was a chief alumni officer at one point and I would present to, I presented at the Alumni Relations Summer Institute and it was always this really interesting conversation about, we'd start with this conversation about events and I'd always go back to, but what are we trying to accomplish? The point of an event is not the event. That is, if you're an institution where you can afford that, awesome. I work in public higher education my entire career, like we cannot afford that. But what is the strategic purpose and that behavior pattern you're trying to create? And I think you always gotta start with understanding that end point before you look at what that event is or what that activity is you're trying to engage in. Because maybe you can meet that virtually. I think if you look at a school like UVA who's done a really great job at a lot of virtual events, I know that if you talk to some of the folks there, they've had a lot of success at that. Then there's others that I've seen that are doing a lot more kind of that kind of communication strategy of like having them engaging in a sequence of communications where they're actually providing information back. Like that's also, I think, been effective. But I would always start with, what are we trying to get to before we look at what are the tools we're utilizing and trying to get there? Thank you. We have another chat. Let's see, we've got two here. One from Molly. What strategies would you suggest to introduce your university as a philanthropic avenue to students so that it's not foreign to them when they are asked as young alumni? Great question. Oh my goodness, Molly. I'm so excited you asked this question. I have an entire rant about just this thing. So here's the thing. So over the last, like, you know, I've been in this work for, oh my God, 27. Oh, that's a long time. Very long time. And I have, early in my career, like I did much research on student philanthropy. Like I was trying to model at Stanford, did at Iowa, then at other institutions. Like at one point I'm on campus with students like covering up, like as a director when you're giving Penn State, like covering things up and leaving notes on it and being like, what would you do if there wasn't philanthropy? Like handing out, like, I can't tell you how many cookies I've approved for us to hand out with little flyers on it. I think it all failed. I think it was all wrong. I think we fundamentally screwed it up. Not by bad intentions, just by like, I don't think we were thinking it through. So the way we've altered our student giving program is it is now part of our digital giving program and it is about experiential learning. How can we reinforce trust in the process of giving while they're still students, right? So through like having them be part of a crowdfunding project, for example, right? They're learning. You know, I always joke about like, if it's like the, you know, when a bill comes along, the little guy on the steps and it's like schoolhouse rocks and he sings a song, right? I always want to do a song like that for a gift, but I'm not that talented. But it's that same concept, right? It's how are we teaching trust in the system? I know that when I make a gift, it goes through this process. And at the end of this process, there's someone who's sitting there that's making sure it's going where I asked it to go. And then when they're students, they're getting to see that money come into the account they're helping raise funds for, they have to build that trust. And so I've really moved away from kind of some of these ideas around like that kind of traditional, I told my team recently, like I am not buying another cookie for this. Like we're done with the cookies. Like we've got to really reframe about how do we teach behavior, build trust. We can't as advanced professionals, it is unlikely that we can actually influence how their student experience is. Not our job. There's typically a student affairs group that is working on that. What we can do is we can create trust building activities so that once they depart, they know that there is a process and the people involved in that process, they ensure that the gift they make is using the way they intended that to be done. And so I think it's a mindset shift, but I think it's a really important one for us to think about. So Molly, thank you for that question. And like I said, I was super excited when you asked it. I think we got a good follow-up here from Danielle at the University of Georgia. And she's commented that recently they've been talking a lot about how they're communicating with their alumni post-graduation in the first six months or so. Do you have thoughts on what type of communication or frequency strengthens that foundation for alumni engagement? I think it's really about the listening, right? Like I think it's really about starting up listening. You know, at different times in my career, I've had those moments and there's others you hear probably have that too, where it's like, oh, it's a six month moratorium. We're not going to ask him for anything. We're going to like leave him alone, right? And it's like, well, is that the right? I've started to kind of be like, is that the right thing? Plus also they've not paying student loans yet. So maybe we shouldn't do that. But I think in that window, particularly as I've kind of evolved my thinking from a very traditional like hardcore annual giving director sending out a million pieces of direct mail and like saying things like you got to break some eggs to make a cake. Like those are the things that came out of my mouth. And rethinking that and repositioning as far as like, how do we create those mechanisms for them to provide, tell us what they care about, to tell us what they think, how do we create opportunities for them to engage in a conversation with us? It doesn't have to be a one-on-one conversation, but how do we create those mechanisms? And so I think that as I, if I were you looking at your, you looking at that schedule and partnership with things like alumni relations and the career center and things like that, right? Like what are some ways that you can ask meaningful questions about their experience? Not as a student, but now as an alum. What are some ways you can ask them about how they need support from their alma mater, right? Like, I think that those are some ways that you can solicit them for their feedback that creates that sense of connectivity and engagement and expresses the fact that we're listening to them. Now, well, the thing that's always true too, if you ask a question, you got to prepare to do something with the answer. So don't ask a question about something that they want and not be prepared to provide a solution in that space. Like classic trust-breaking kind of thing. So, so anyway, so that's why I would probably look for those kind of like, how do we show them that we're listening and how do we value their opinion? How do we show that we value their opinion? I think we got another great follow-up here from Caitlin. And as you were just talking about listening and what we're going to do with that information, she asked, what do you think about an alumni listening session, either virtual or in-person? Yep. I think again, that's like, it's the same with the previous question too, it's just as far as like, it is also about like, making sure too, that we think about in relation to our goals, right? Like are those listening sessions helping to move that relationship forward? And it's going to take some time to be able to figure that out in some ways. And so you might have to pilot and do some small ones. I think that with the listening sessions, you have to be prepared to staff that. Like whether it be in-person or virtual, in-person's heavier staffing than virtual, right? But you have to be prepared to staff it. And again, do something with the information you gather. You know, we've used, I think at times, I've used listening sessions at like donors at different like levels as a way to move that relationship forward, as a way to get feedback, as a way to engage them further. And so I think it really depends on your deployment of that. And again, it's like thinking about like, okay, how does this reinforce a behavior that we know moves that relationship forward with the institution? And I think again about like, you know, how do we reflect back to them that we hear them, so. Thank you. I have a question for you is, I think a lot of us probably on this call don't have a lot of budget dollars to throw at these problems. And so if you could pick one thing today that you would recommend for this group to take back and do to tackle this problem, what would that one thing be? It's so funny. I could ask you like almost any question and I have like an answer, right? It's so hard to determine. I also, again, I've been working in public higher education my entire career, there's never enough money. Your top three. You know, here's what I would say is this, is that where I always start is what we are currently doing that maybe we can stop doing. What are the legacy strategies we have in place that just aren't serving the purpose anymore? And can we create space for some of these things by first stopping and reflecting on what do we have that we shouldn't be doing? And then I would probably start with initially the listening part, right? Asking the questions, like getting people to tell you what they care about. And you think about that kind of funnel, right? Because you first have to have that information in order to build some understanding and to be able to actually, because then you have to access that data in a way that you can utilize it, right? And so like the first step in that is just asking the questions. Carefully kind of positioning that, right? As far as like, you're not making commitments to what you're gonna do with that. Because again, if you ask a question in a way that seems like you're gonna do something, then you gotta do something, right? And so, but to just be asking that kind of interest question as an entry point to really begin to gather information and to understand, because then maybe it starts to influence like what type of events you hold or what your engagement strategy is or what kind of offerings you're making on a giving perspective, right? Because then they're gonna start telling you like, this is what we care about. So I can tell you over the last five years that UC Berkeley alumni care about environmental justice. They care about the student experience and they care about racial inequity. Those are the three things that come up to the top of every survey I've done. And we're up to about 40 or 50,000 total responses across the last five years in surveys. And those are the three things at the top every time. So I would be foolish if I am not, which I am, have some focus on those three topics and a lot of things that we're doing. And so even that data point allows us not in an individualized way to give feedback to somebody, but to in more of a collective way, be able to say what you've all told us is the thing you care about and here's how we are impacting that. The other kind of thing that I would just say and kind of in that same vein is kind of a more messaging point. One of the things that I've had a lot of conversations with people across the country about this idea of giving about how do you know if you have a healthy pipeline? And so one of the questions that's come out of that and one of the things that's come out of that is this idea that we have to have this mindset shift from people giving to us instead should be giving through us. How are we impacting our students, our region, our world? How does a gift enable them to move forward maybe their greater goals to impact their region, the world, et cetera, right? And so that is not a, that is not a giant organizational shift but more of a messaging and positioning shift that I think many of us can do that it's not gonna take a lot of extra budget but as a subtle change that I think our alumni would reflect back in a positive way. Another great takeaway, giving, not giving to us but through us. And I think that to your point is a very simple thing that we can do with a lot of our messaging. Do we have any other questions from our audience this afternoon? All right, seeing no more questions, Howard, would you like to leave us with a parting word on this report? I mean, there's been so many words already. I would just say I'm excited to share the data from this year's cohort and I can't wait to get that out. We're going to send along last year's report as part of the follow-up to this. If you have questions, thoughts, if you think your institution would be interested in doing it next year, and let me know because I'm trying to convince RNL to do a third year of this for free for people. I just don't know how long I'm gonna keep doing that. So if I get more schools are interested, I can say, listen, I've already got a list who are excited about this idea and that may help me keep that going. So, but if things come up, find me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty present there. If you have questions, thoughts, whatever. Again, if you wanna argue about it, let's debate too. I'm into that as well. So thank you, Amanda, so much for being such a great partner in this and host. And like I said, if anybody has questions, feel free to reach out. Thank you, Howard. This has been awesome. Joining us from the West Coast over here in District 3. There's been several questions about the slides and the presentation. There will be follow-up coming out from this. So you will get the slides and this information. Quick, shameless plug for a few things that we're doing on behalf of CASE District 3. Registration is open for our district conference in Orlando, February 16th through 18th. So please join us in live and in person. We're also working on a few other togethers that be on the lookout for in your email. December 10th, Angela Mills is gonna join us for engaging and value-added board meetings. In February, a showcase of our D3 grand gold award winners. And then in March, we're gonna look at our D3 CASE AM Atlas numbers with CASE's Jenny Cook-Smith. So we've got a really great educational program lined out for the district to keep you all engaged and informed throughout the year. Thank you all for being with us today. And thank you again, Howard, for this awesome presentation and just a wealth of information that we can all take back to our schools.

Howard Hefner

fundraising

alumni survey

donation trends

alumni engagement

philanthropy

digital outreach

alumni relations