Hi, everyone. I'm Jennifer Cunningham, I'm the Associate VP of Alumni Relations at Lehigh, and I'm going to let Lisa introduce herself. Just real quickly and then I'll go back to why we're doing this, and also Jacob Estes from CASE who helped make us live today. So Lisa you want to introduce yourself a little bit. Absolutely. Thanks so much, Jennifer. I'm Lisa English, I'm the Associate Vice President for Operations in the Advancement and Strategy Division of Rutgers University Foundation, and Jennifer will give you some background as to why we know each other and connected, and although I am a little bit more indirectly involved in alumni relations at this point I'm very directly involved in Advancement Services, and have been at Rutgers for 25 years. So, so Lisa and I know each other from CASE, we were both faculty at the Summer Institute for three or four years. And I think that Institute if you haven't been if you're a little bit new to CASE, or to the industry it's a fantastic experience and one of the things I learned was the importance of collaboration with your different colleagues. So Lisa and I know each other. I've been involved with CASE at, like I mentioned the Summer Institute, faculty at Engagement Strategies and a few other conferences on on the Commission of Alumni Relations, I write articles for Currents, and I'm on the D2, District 2 board I think you're all District 2. All that said, there's still so much to learn. And, and this is one of the areas where I think we need to break down silos in a huge way. CASE, as I hope you all know launched the CASE Insights on Alumni Engagement in 2019, and we've seen a little bit of growth from institutions that are filling in that data. And, and that shows me that people understand the value of tracking this, this stuff. And so it was the result of I think a couple decades of work by several hundred people at CASE and volunteers for CASE, and I kind of got here in the middle of all of that, where people were saying it was important to to track things. But there was still this weird dynamic where vice presidents and advancement services and development folks were still questioning, why do you need to count, you can't count alumni engagement it's, you know, it's, it's an art, not a science and so we spent a lot of time trying to combat that, that notion. I'm not sure it's completely gone and that's partly why I want to, what I want to talk about with you all or I want you all to talk about today to make sure that that is not a battle we're still fighting but maybe we are so I want to hear about that. But now also we, we are so many of us are doing a pretty good job counting, but counting is just the first step. Counting is just kind of getting people to register to things, getting your colleagues to tell you who the volunteers are, getting that into your systems, getting the reports out, that's wonderful. But now we got to go another step. And in order to make that step where we're actually doing more analytics and we're using our data to make better business decisions. But at the same time, we really, really need our Advancement Services colleagues to, to help us shape what this looks like. Their brains work differently in wonderful ways, but that also creates some challenges and how we, how we communicate with each other. I've made a lot of mistakes in this area. And I wish that someone would have taken me aside 15 years ago and said, here's how we all should work together. So that's kind of why Lisa and I thought let's do this together because we're at that stage in the industry where these conversations are really critical to helping alumni relations and helping development and the whole industry really use the analytics in smarter ways. So Lisa, can you add anything to that on that sort of other side the flip side of that and give some context for today. Sure thing. Thanks, Jennifer and I think it's important today we set this up as a discussion, and happily there are 82 of you so far and counting in here so if we were in a room we'd be walking around we'd be able to point you out so we're going to hold your hand or put something in the chat if you'd like to discuss as we go along. Jennifer and I are going to give some of our top three examples and then and then pose two real questions for you to really get the discussion going. I think where we are is a really critical piece, and I can see some of my Rutgers colleagues on and I appreciate you so much taking your time to be here today, and and the way we talk engagement about engagement and the way we talk about Advancement Services and for the purpose of this discussion I'm going to I'm going to kind of narrow that down to reporting and scoring and engagement metrics. And it's leadership is saying, I don't know how are we going to do that well we know how, and we know the things that we can count and obviously give help go connect, and those buckets of pieces that that our alumni participate in are making this possible. Actually I have to shout out to Karen Kaminsky who I work with at Rutgers and she forwarded an article that Case posted, which I believe I can cut and paste into the chat in a second. There's some great examples in there of dashboards, and really different ways to look at how your alumni engaged which parts of the population, you should be counting. You know, are you taking this year over year for improvement, are you taking this forever in a lifetime. And I think in all of this I want to frame, some of the examples I'm going to give later, just to use Matt Salvatore's quote in the article and he said it's important to prioritize conversations with key partners at the outset of the dashboard creation process. This ensures a shared sense of ownership facilitates faster adoption, increased usage and ultimately enable staff members to realize the true value of the tools. So I think one of the keys in there you're going to hear over and over again from us today. Thank you Jenny for putting that in the chat. Is that stakeholders at the table and ownership and coming with your back held up straight as alumni engagement or alumni relations and saying no we are the experts in this field and for the same thing for the advancement services side saying, we do research and reporting all day long we know the difference between reporting and analytics. Let's look at this, let's look at data governance let's look at data health so when Jennifer talks about what stage are we at, we're in a very different place Even then, when we were on faculty at SIR, the industry's really grown and and matured in a way that you can put these metrics and and and measures to the work that we do, and really legitimize it in the same conversation as fundraising. Fantastic. Yeah. I'm going to give just three things that I learned, or that we're doing at Lehigh that might that I, and then Lisa is going to do the same. And I want that to kind of spur your thinking about what you've done well in your shop, whether you're on advancement services, business intelligence, data analytics, or the alumni relations, or other side. And then, as Lisa said we want this to be a conversation. We're not going to. I don't know enough to actually like present how to do this right that's where we are and I want to learn from you all too that's why we're doing a together and not a webinar where we're the experts. We're just getting everybody together to discuss this so I'll just share a couple things that I've learned and things we're doing at Lehigh that I think put us on the right track. I think the most important is that our advancement services colleagues really want to help us this is really interesting to them and different than what they know what they've typically been doing just for development. The issue is that a lot of times their time is not their own, the vice presidents, obviously really care about the giving metrics and the giving dashboards, the trustees are down their back saying, you know, I want. Can you slice this data for me just slightly different or how about this or how about and they're, that's, they're under an immense pressure. And also the databases that they're working with are not the slickest. A lot. They've inherited some legacy systems and so it's not just as easy as like we'll push this button. So, that's something I've learned over time. And in that vein, it's so much better to just even schedule 15 minutes to talk through something then to email, because they don't think about engagement 24 seven like we do and. And there's the way they think about the data is just very different than what we do so that those 15 minute discussions have been invaluable. One thing we're doing at Lehigh that I think is getting a step in the right direction is instead of just counting I'm also looking at the number of event attendees and the number of volunteers who give in the same year that they do those activities. It's a pretty simple percentage. But it is sort of telling. It is sort of telling about whether engagement does lead to or does inspire giving. So, I think I can get a little bit more sophisticated than we are right now I also want to look at event attendees who become volunteers and how that moves along the engagement continuum. But we're in the middle of a CRM transition and so it's, it's good enough for me right now to be able to see event attendees and volunteers and I guess that's the other lesson is sometimes it's good enough, and don't get too, too caught up about the details, if it's a percentage off or on or what you're counting so those are a few of the things that I've learned on the alumni relations side and I'm anxious to learn a whole lot more once we launch the CRM and we're sort of starting new. But Lisa do you want to give a few and then I want to, we have a couple big questions. So you all get ready to unmute. That's great. So what Jennifer describes is what my former boss used to always say is, don't let the perfect get in the way of the good. And we are also in a CRM transition so thank you for that perfect segue, which PS yes we did plan. So, my, my top couple of things that that, as Jennifer said I'm learning that we are learning is, is building we are in the midst of a Salesforce transition and we're building an affinity quest CRM on top of the foundation of Salesforce, and what we're learning is that to elevate engagement in the same way that you elevate dollars takes a lot of teamwork, but you very likely have an enormous amount of brainpower at your organization at your institution, whether it's a small school or a large university, you've got people who specialize in, let me go find the data for you, and let me analyze it in a way that's meaningful to you but the only way those two things are going to happen is if you really put those high value stakeholders around the table you have to connect each other I know this sounds so one on one, but you've got to hear each other's perspectives what matters to them, what they're already doing that could then translate to excuse me to engagement, because it's very likely and it's what we're doing in the Salesforce transition that the things we're asking for. We're already counting, we're just not aggregating them in a way that anybody's thought of before, and I will say Jen, Jen, Jennifer used to be kind of the unicorn in alumni relations and she's like, she knows data too and she likes it. That used to be like sort of, you know, I mean, it's at SIAR, we used to hold you up for that and and thankfully, people are hearing you and other people have that that passion as well. And you've got to find that passion because it legitimizes engagement and analytics in a way that marries them, and then you can march towards those goals together so as we're building the CRM, as we're mapping, deciding what data points are coming with us, that's just as important. And then the fun question of, well, what's the data integrity, can you really get this data point every year what happens if that single data point goes away does your entire metric crash, because you were so heavily dependent on that one thing. So it's all of those conversations. And again, yeah, in person matters. This is where a great example of where you can get a lot of work done on zoom, but in person matters, because you really need to come prepared to listen. To be fair, you also need to prep your colleagues on how to listen. So, things like data dictionary, being able to explain what that acronym means in a meeting. Finding a way to have more productive dialogue is kind of the second lesson. This is not just order taking. This isn't showing up to the meeting and going well I'll just listen to whatever they're reporting to see or you know the advancement services people have to say, no, no, no, no, you're going to say help me learn your language, help me get a human's view of what you do in in the data piece, so that I can say, oh, we do have that we don't count it that way. We don't put start and stop dates on those things. But now we have to do we want to count it annually, what matters to the President. So, we are looking in fundraising dollar metrics and reporting and analytics that we can move over and do the same thing to an engagement. And we are using the case standards as the foundation for that and then looking and saying, where can we get this and sometimes it's not within your own organization I know everybody's set up a little bit differently whether you're a separate 501c3 whether you're, you know, owned by your institution whether it's just you and one other person who are the entire shop. You've got to pick your battles and you've got to pick what wins, what you're going to count that people are going to pay attention to. And those two things in particular. We've, we've learned through this process and in in implementing the CRM. I think the last little one is great is again, clarity of function towards the goal metric articulating the value, like, take time to figure out what your index card is on what are your metrics and everybody needs to say the same thing so that what leadership hears is, oh wow this is really valuable, is it valuable to the pipeline. Is it valuable to predictive predictive modeling. Those are all of those things because AI is coming in, and we're all hearing it but the predictive modeling can apply when you use engagement scoring or engagement metrics to then feed what happens in fundraising. Yeah, perfect. I always think like, okay, 30 years from now will my will my successor be cursing me or thanking me, because these databases last that long. Okay, so I would like to pose some questions so do get ready to unmute yourselves or Jacob I don't know if they can unmute themselves or if they have to raise their hands first, they can unmute themselves. Okay. Going back to what we were mentioning before. Do you all think we need to keep making the argument for vice presidents, and I say vice presidents because they're generally the ones that kind of dole out the resources, you know, add an FTE for data analytics or carve out time with advancement services staff. Do we need to keep convincing vice presidents and board of trustees and university leadership's that we need more analytics that this is really important that it's not enough to just keep counting. And I'm putting the question in the chat so you can see it. Okay. Nobody responds I'm going to call on people like my evil fifth grade teacher. I have a. Hello. Hi. Great, great kickoff. Um, and Jen the way you position that question was do we need more analytics. And what I immediately thought was, you know, I feel pretty good about like the data generation, I want more analyzers, and having people who are interacting with data because I think at RIT I get handed a lot of data and I have access to a lot of data I, we have our, you know, we use advanced as well. And I'm able to pull reporting. Um, but I am not you know classically trained in in going through these big spreadsheets I do pretty well and I can do a lot of anecdotal like you know observations but I would love to have more dedicated time with teams who are able to look at all of that and say like, I pulled out the trends that I have found are statistically significant. And then us around the table as the partners who understand strategic engagement are able to say, Ah, okay, so that's what that means to me practically. But I'd love more analyzers, instead of just analytics. That is awesome. Tammy I see your hand raised. Hi everybody. Hi Jen. Um, I do think that we need to keep making the argument to leadership and VPs, a little because a lot of, I would say in terms of the context of alumni relations. There's just much more facility with development numbers then with alumni relations numbers and engagement. So while you know advancement VPs will generally have the language around the case standards, making the argument for relevance. So, you know, the previous the previous comment about being able to analyze for strategic engagement. I think those are the pieces that make more sense in terms of the ways in which we frame the need for analytics around alumni engagement to VPs because they may not draw that conclusion if they haven't already had it. And too often, there are still some holdovers from, you know, previous, you know, themes like alumni relations as just friend raising or alumni relation costs a lot because of the events and where is that taking us in different styles. So I do think that there needs to be measured arguments for the importance of analytics and the importance of engagement to, you know, the overall bottom line and how it aligns with institutional goals and strategies. Amen. Really great point, Temi. I think that's where we need to drive and Karen, I see your hand up, we'll go there next. We need to drive the conversation and educate. Again, I'll say the same thing I said, educate our key stakeholders, give them the language that says this is why it's valuable because your perspective, leadership person may only be Temi, what you just said that, oh, you know, events just cost a lot and then what do we get out of it? Well, if we use the strategy right, we get a lot out of it. So Karen, what was your addition? The first thing I want to say was Jennifer, just FYI, I do not expect you in any way, shape or form to remember me, but you are one of the, in 2015, I think it was, I attended a conference in, it was an academic impressions conference that you were a presenter at on engagement metrics and you lit the fire in me for engagement metrics. You don't need to know that, but, and now I get the lovely pleasure of working alongside Lisa, but in all of this, the only thing I wanted to add was we had this conversation this morning for the people that are doing the analytics, the piece that seems to be missing everywhere, are the people with the alumni engagement background who also have the interest in the data and can understand, because you have this, you have this separation between the analytics people who've been doing the fundraising analytics forever and not necessarily understanding what we need in engagement. And, and so if you have people who have an engagement background that also have a data interest, they can, they can speak the language that needs to go both ways because alumni engagement professionals, they know they want data and analytics, they want, they want to make data-driven decisions, but they don't always know what to ask for. And then the data analytics people are like, well, just tell me what you want and I'll give you a dashboard. And you're like, I don't know what I want. And then in between there too, your records when, and Lisa alluded to this of like, when we are tracking the engagement, you know, the records team is just like, tell me what you want, I will code it, but who's thinking about how it needs to come back out. And the alumni engagement people are the ones who understand that, you know, that like, here's how I need to see it in the end, but there's a missing piece in the middle of an alumni engagement person who also understands data to be able to bridge that gap and ensure that the data is going in in such a way that when we want to get the analytics back out, we actually can. Yeah. Is there anyone from the advancement services side that can speak to that or any school there where they've kind of solved that language problem? Unmute yourself or raise your hand if there's anyone. Nobody's solved it yet. Okay. So let me, let me interject something that again, I lifted out of that article. This is Alison Dewitt and I'll try to paraphrase, but start where you are. Yes. Yeah. Very, being very candid with advancement part partner saying, this is just the beginning. We're committing to evolve. Yeah. We track what we, we know what we track now. In fact, that's a lot of work, you know, create that spreadsheet, start tracking what you can now and expand as your go, as you go again, don't let the perfect get in the way of the good. And I needed to say that again, because some of you, I can see the look in your eyes. You're like, no, that's not happening. Yeah. You could do this. Yeah. Nina, that's a great point. The interested in showing us how to pull our own reports. And I think that sort of feeds into what we're saying. Yes. Having your own reports is great, but if you don't know how to analyze data but if you don't know how to analyze data, or if those reports are not in real time, so I can get a monthly report, but then I have reunion and I have to wait another month to get that. So if it can be more dynamic and also, you know, I'm pretty good with Excel because I have to be, I don't have a Tableau license or any of that. And so just pulling the data, just getting the great reports is one thing, but that's also looking backwards. So to the point, how do we get more analyzers? I think that's a really, that I wrote that down in a couple of different ways, because I think that is at the crux of how we get to the next level. And some of that begins with alumni relations, relationship building. That's what we did with our RPM team, which is research prospect management. They do have Tableau and there's a Tableau expert on the staff. And then of course there's other people who do programming, but to Jennifer's point, reporting is not analytics. Right, right. And I wonder too, one of the next questions that we were talking about is, whose job is it to make sure that alumni relations is using the data that everybody's working so hard to collect and code and report on? Whose job is it to make sure that we're using it? And then as we all know, engagement does lead to giving. So is this my job as the ABP of alumni relations to make sure that these reports I'm getting, that I'm doing something with it? Is it Sean's job, my counterpart, ABP at Lehigh in the business intelligence and business services? Who goes to the VP and makes the case for this FTE? And then where does that sit? And what do you all think? Is this an advancement services or an alumni relations? Where does it sit in the organization? Any ideas? Jenny, you made a comment in the chat. You want to say that out loud and maybe your thoughts on that? Oh, sure. I think, and hi everyone, I'm with CASE. Hi Jen, hi Lisa, and lots of lovely familiar faces out there. The reason I put that in is, we at CASE have been spending a lot of time on, I love this idea of we need more, we don't need more analysis, we need more analyzers. And that's kind of what we've spent a lot of time doing and looking at this data. And I think a real outcome has been, one, this actually is very specific to your university or college or school, because I think there are so many outcomes of engagement. And we've talked about giving, because I think that's the one, even from the CASE framework, we can make some connections on. But if you start to think about, if your goal is really building up your volunteers or building your mentorship or being able to tell the story of how alumni can really help recent graduates get jobs or advance in their careers, all those pieces, I think figuring out as a group, what do we care about, makes it so much easier than to say, okay, well, we don't have that. So let's get that data. So you see, that's about what's our goals versus like, how do I get this variable? And then I also think the flip side then becomes much more, how do we then understand what we want to visualize to see if we're getting to those goals? And what I like about that is then it becomes shared. Now, if we're looking at a racing model, who the ownership is, I think, I love that question, and I'm really curious to hear thoughts, but I do think there's some opportunities for some real shared goals there. Yeah. Calvin asked in the chat about data is tricky and maintaining and so forth, and that's so very true. Data integrity cannot be left out of this conversation, and ownership of that probably, at least at our institution, rests much more squarely on the alumni engagement team in conjunction with the gift administration records team, because what you're able to replicate year over year, what you're able to consistently get sometimes in a lovely reporting fashion, and other times manually on a cocktail napkin. So that's, again, that situation. Back a few in the chat, people are saying, priorities and focus, and it's nice to have versus need to have. It would be really great to know everybody who bought a ticket at your art school for whatever, it doesn't really matter what they did, but everybody who engaged with a ticket, well, there's an opportunity to get them possibly involved in supporting the arts at your institution, but you have to decide where does that fall. Is that a significant, you know, you have to put that on scale. Is that like, oh, well, that's cool that those 300 people did that, but in the scheme of things, like what did 3,000 people do, or whatever the number, whatever the scale is for your institution, be mindful of that as well, and then the data integrity will follow. And again, can't say it enough, the title of this session is partnershipry, and you better have partnershipry with, be it, you know, if you're at an independent school, it better be with your faculty, and obviously your head of school, and your different divisions. If you're at a community college, it's those, you know, departments that are externally facing, perhaps, where you're like, oh, they're the ones who actually know where the people went and got the jobs. So, you know, whatever the nuances for your institution, you do need to absolutely be thinking of scale and data integrity when we're talking about alumni engagement metrics. So, Calvin just gave us the next partnershipry, prospect management and alumni engagement, and I think that's, at least at Lehigh, I think we have a great prospect management, but I haven't, every time I listen to that team, I'm like, oh, there's so many opportunities here, but again, it's one that I think that's an industry that's also in the midst of a lot of change, and AI is certainly a conversation there. Is anybody partnering with their prospect management team in a way that we could all learn from? And by we all, I mean me, because I would love some tips. I'm Christina Ramsey-Mattelfer, the professional school of management in Ottawa. I work very, very closely with prospect management team and development team. I'm an engagement specialist, and so it's almost like we work, I don't have any takeaways for you, but we do very closely and collaboratively on a file together because I'm engaging them, and then do I bring in another person into the mix to make that ask, or am I the one making the ask with her strategy or their strategy in mind? So, I built that relationship with the prospect management team or development team, whichever, but yeah, it's sometimes, it's a symbiotic relationship, and you have to make that, create that relationship with that person without having any egos in the mix either, because you're trying to bring your end goal together. I don't, there's no real takeaway or magic that I have, but I work very, very closely with them. Christina, thank you for jumping in. I think the magic you just said is symbiotic. How does this benefit both of us? Because at the end of the day, that kind of analytic knowledge is painting a more in-depth picture of your donors, of your alumni, and knowledge is power in this business. So, Christina, is it that you, like, you'll do an event, you get 20 people, and then you sit down with your prospect management, kind of go through the list and look at wealth screening, and then? Yeah, and I almost bring them into, from the onset, the, of the strategy around that event, you know. So, let's say it's a women in leadership initiative, and I've got a high-profiled alumna, and I know that I really want to properly engage her to launch that next scholarship or something. I'm bringing in that prospect manager or that major gifts development officer from the onset, and like, listen, I'm doing this. I need you to be right by my side, because when you're pulling the trigger, you're going to be right there with her, and that relationship is going to evolve together. So, she's in the mix in that strategy and with me. Yeah, got it. I just spent a couple days in Ottawa. What a lovely city. And Rachel, our team is so wee that our advancement team are all on PMT, other six people in advancement, so you, so just by the nature of the size, it's easier to collaborate there. Yeah, yeah. Let's see. Oh, Carolyn is asking, do you have any key efficiencies you can recommend? As a one-person alumni engagement team competing for PM attention, I know I need to be better at it. Oh boy, efficiencies. Carolyn, can you expand on that question a little bit? Yeah, for sure. I, as mentioned, I am one person, I'm the only full-time person working on alumni relations at our institution, and I know there's definitely a couple of things that we could be doing better in regards to identifying those key alumni prospects, and I know definitely developing the pipeline as we move along, and I know we're going through a bit of transition, we've had some leadership change as well, so any key efficiencies anybody has, any suggestions to help really kind of amplify the profile of alumni relations would be greatly appreciated as we make a case for additional FTE. So one of the things, I'll just jump in, one of the things that I haven't done yet, we also are going through a vice president transition, I guess raise your hand if you're not going through either a database conversion or a VP transition, because it seems like we're all sort of trading these things, but one of the things that I was talking about our previous AVP of the communications piece was narrowing down the number of alumni that I am responsible for. So Lehigh has about 85,000 alums around the world, probably 50,000 of them are emailable, and then there are a bunch of them that do nothing, they don't click, they don't, they do nothing, and they live in Kansas City, you know, where we don't do even do a lot, or they're just, they're, you know, 100 years old and are probably not, you know, participating in webinars and things. So I would love to see, like, could you segment your database so that you're focusing on the people that have engaged a little bit that you could push to do more, or the people, like we were just talking about, figure out from your development office who are the most important people that they could, that you could engage and get them warmed up. Just make your database a little smaller, and then that also makes it easier if you don't have a data analytics person, you can learn some Excel trips, tips, pivot charts, and that kind of thing that can go a long way. So those would be my things, and I see Rachel has her hand raised, so. Hi, I was just at the Northeast Annual Giving Conference in Pittsburgh with Mary, she's on here too, and one of the speakers I got to go to is Ashley Budge, she's at Cornell University, and she's got a book coming out with somebody else, I can't remember her name, starts with a D, but it'll be out this summer, and it's called The Email Book, and her session was really fantastic, lots of great tips, and actually when I was trying to find if I could get her the recording or the bullet points, you know, from the session, I found a great YouTube of her, sorry, it's called Voice and Company Taking Email to the Next Level on YouTube, and it has a lot of good tips there, and then just find her on LinkedIn or plug in for when the book comes out, because she had lots of great tips, a lot of simple things, but a lot of data-supported things, and you know, Cornell does all right, so some really good tips. That's awesome, yeah. I'll put it in the chat. Yeah, that's great, and she was just named, Jenny, I can't remember what they're called now, it starts with an L, Legacy or Legendary or something, Case? Oh, Laureate. Laureate, Case Laureate. Yeah, she's a former colleague, I used to work at Cornell with her and watched her just take that program from zero to a thousand. She's amazing, highly recommend. Let's see, Christina, wonder, wait, chat. Christina's saying she does attend prospect review meetings and we have a bi-weekly development engagement meeting to workshop files, and does Advancement Services attend those? If anyone else meets regularly with development officers to do this kind of work, does Advancement Services attend those too, and if so, what's their role? I think in the case at Rutgers, what's happening is that we, so we had a question in the chat about what does advancement services encompass? You know, who's in that shop? And I think that definition has been very fluid as of late. And so for us, we're, you know, again, I mentioned RPM, it's research prospect management. Within that, there are three verticals. And one of the verticals is data intelligence. So they are working directly with the prospect managers, as are the direct researchers. And so we do meet with them. But in its infancy, it's just, we're just figuring out and they are getting very excited about, oh, we can help you. We can help alumni engagement metrics. We can, oh, this is all related. Yeah, we already have this. And here's how we can slice and dice the analytics that we already do for frontline fundraisers. So that's kind of a half an answer to, are we doing it? We're doing it that way. Are we literally sitting, I mean, I have, but are we literally sitting in like pipeline or prospect portfolio review meetings? No. However, I can see the future of two things happening. One, certain members of the alumni engagement team will have portfolios. You can imagine who that might be, the person who's responsible for the alumni association board, some of the other people who are embedded in either units or campus units for obvious reasons, because that interaction matters. But the other, the flip side of that is doing potentially a portfolio review of people that data intelligence has bubbled up and said, you know, they keep coming back. What should we be doing with them? Or should, is it, are you even aware alumni engagement that these might be your volunteer rock stars or future, we should put them in the pipeline. So again, kind of a half answer to what's actually happening at Rutgers right now. But yes, this is something that, again, if you have shared language and an understanding of how you could really help each other, this is way deeper and way more sophisticated than, oh, Bob went to seven events last year, so I guess we should throw them in somebody's pool. Yeah. And that's why we're here. Yeah. Trent University. I wonder if you're maybe in a conference room together, but if one of you could speak to this, the integrated plans, I would love to know what the data committees, like what are they even called? Well, they are all in a conference room. And where are you located? Peterborough, Ontario. Fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. So I just didn't catch the last part of your question there, Jennifer. We were with you right till the end. Yeah. I want to know, you mentioned in the chat that you have data committees with representatives from alumni engagement, philanthropy, leadership, and advancement services. So what are those data committees actually working on? What are the names of those committees? Yeah. So, well, you can see we're a close group, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I would say the primary one is our data advisory committee. So that committee sits and looks at what data we're storing, why we're storing it, how we're using it, definitions of the data, all of those pieces. And as a result, I think that informs kind of the analysis that we're going to do, what we're spending our time and effort tracking, that we're all kind of in agreement on those pieces. Anything else? Because I have the chair of that particular committee here. Awareness should be happening in different groups regarding what kind of data we are storing right now. So this kind of awareness of what we have for different teams, it's very helpful to give them insight that what we are storing and what kind of data we have. So these kinds of things could be discussed in this committee. Yeah. Yeah. And it works well? Very well. Yeah, very well. And also out of that committee, we'll identify training needs too, right? So that's kind of a secondary result of that particular committee meeting. And then so subcommittees form out of that, like, you know, if we're doing something like a communications review of how we're tracking communication preferences and things, usually that'll stem out of that group as well. Okay. Yeah. That's an interesting point too, training. So I think we've talked a little bit about that of in this phase two, I guess, of analytics, how do we as, well, both advancement services and alumni relations and giving offers, who trains people? Like, is it my job at Lehigh to get up and at an all staff and take people through alumni engagement data? Should I be asking a case to come up with some more courses on this so we could all learn like any ideas on that? How we train each other? I'm thinking like a for dummies kind of thing. Oh, Brian, Brian from RPI has the answers. Oh yeah. Hello everyone. We, so we have a larger group here. I know that we have about 10 people in our alumni engagement field and we have about 40 that are in like gift officers. So to your point that we do a lot of where we succeed is regional meetings. So if a gift officer is assigned a certain region, they are meeting with the alumni engagement officer that's assigned to that. And the data management team is also coming in and, and giving the kind of the rundown of the people who are prospects there. So the alumni engagement isn't always necessarily so involved with some of those higher level prospects, but as far as the collaboration between the two, if there, so I guess all to say that if there is a great prospect, maybe we set up an event as far as alumni engagement goes and vice versa. And I think, I think to your point of who, who explains to who I always think it's my role to explain to somebody else why I think part of me coming on this call is I, I struggle with how to relay and some of those metrics around telling, telling the office of alumni or, you know, the fundraisers why engagement is so important. And so I really liked the, you know, taking the, you know, all of our, all of our volunteers, how much do they give people who attend our events? How much do they give? And I think, I think that's, I took that away from this because right now we're trying to figure out what really the fundraisers care about money. They don't, they, but I think what they need to understand is that what we do, I'm in alumni engagement. And so what we do, how does that translate? And I'd love to hear if there's any, like, what, what's the metric that gets their attention. But I think it's our, I think it's alumni relations job to, to prove to the fundraising division, what our worth is. And so I think, you know, what I, what I really want is, you know, people's attention spans are so short that I almost need, like, here's the two things, you know, here's how attendance and money links. And here is the total number of attendance that we have, you know, or, or people who are responding to emails, you know, here's 10,000 people that that's who we affect on every day who opened these emails. And so, yeah, I didn't know if there's, there's more to that, but I do think it's on us to explain, because I think from the top down, the university wants the money. So that's, you know, money talks, the, you know, the fundraisers, that's, that's the, that's what they're doing. And so I think down here, not that maybe we're down here, but over, we need to explain to the people higher up that have the money, why this is so important. And I, I think most of case is doing that. But having that like direct metric is what I think that in a simplified way is what they need. Right. Jenny, I see your hand raised. Give me just one sec with, with Brian, and thank you for that. I think in that context, what is really important is showing them a different metric than they're used to seeing, which thankfully case worked so hard to get rid of the participation metric across a lot of the measures that we see in, in media, but then educating them on these matter. And if you can make correlation great, but if you can't make, you share the numbers that build your strategy. We know to go to Chicago because we have this many alumni here and this much donor population across these many schools, or this much consistency and loyalty or whatever it is like build the data to tell the story you want to tell. And also what's the only thing I would add to that is also add the opportunity. So we think we have an opportunity to engage and then unearth and, and do some discovery on alumni from, you know, be it a region, a class year, a discipline, a degree, whatever it might be, you know, you're going to know your data best in your institution size and your institution, you know, organizational makeup is going to determine that. So I think it's, it's, we have such a unique opportunity right now to literally build the narrative and opportunity as a part of it as well. So Jenny, Jenny. Oh, you did. Sorry. I was actually just going to also add on to Brian's note that, you know, I think if I always love, like we all want one metric, right. But we know that's the problem is complex. So it's hard to have one, but I think on one of the things, if you can calculate at RPI, the value of alumni that are engaged across, we'll use the case language, all four modes and compare that against your, those that are just giving. I think that can be a real eyeopening lens. We've seen things like five times higher value, six times higher value. So I think that's one place. And I'd say on the flip side of that, I also think you've got an enormous opportunity to say, you know, let's look at the unengaged because that's the group that your team can really help move the needle on and think about why are they unengaged and are there reasons and are there ways that there can be some real strategy around that? Also, they might not really be unengaged. Yep. Might be a whole nother together, but we are trying to find alumni that get together with each other without telling us. The young alumni have WhatsApp groups that are like hundreds of people and we're not infiltrating those WhatsApp groups, but we are trying to find the connectors. But yeah, I think there is a definite, what Jenny is saying is really, and I think there's a role for case in this too, of guiding us on that next step. Karen, you'll get the last word. We got two more minutes. I'll make it super quick. Just building on what Jenny was saying to the same point, I try to always think about what's in it for them. And so with the case, the simplicity of the case metric, it's zero through four, right? And so one of the things that I explained to our prospect research team the other day and to the development officers that are utilizing and annual giving as well, there's going to be people that we're engaging that aren't giving, right? You can use this metric so simply and just say, look, if you're looking for low-hanging fruit for annual giving, we'll look at the people that are attending events. Somebody's doing something experiential, somebody's volunteering, they're connecting. If you use the engagement metric, it's so simple. Do they have a zero in the give bucket, but they have a number in one of the other ones? Easy peasy, right? You want to engage new people in some sort of event because you want to present a new funding opportunity, right? And so again, using the engagement metric is so simple to use if you keep it in that simple form. We went from a weighted, crazy zero to a hundred, all kinds of, and we are switching to the zero to four because the simplicity is the way that we can show the value of looking at everything we do, not just how many butts in seats and did the volunteers give more money, but also how can we help you do your job better by analyzing the work that we're doing? So, okay. Try to keep it quick. Thank you so much, Karen. It is one o'clock and it's Friday. So there's some really great questions in here. I'm so happy to talk about any of these things with anybody, and I'm sure Lisa is too. So definitely reach out by email if you want to schedule some time and we can just, I love just chatting with colleagues and brainstorming. Again, I have, the more I think I have figured out, the more questions come up. And so I'm not an authority, but I just love brainstorming with other colleagues. So feel free to reach out and we can chat. So this is awesome. Lisa, I think you would agree. Absolutely. And I really appreciate, I've just put it in the chat, but I really appreciate everybody taking your, whether it's your lunch hour or just your free hour on Friday or your maybe last hour of the day for the, for work, that would be nice. But really appreciate you spending the time with each other. Jacob, I assume there's going to be some follow-up, but it just really, we just make each other better. And this is really, it's just so wonderful to see the industry as a whole maturing in a way that is just making us all smarter and really legitimizing all the work we do in all of the shops we belong to. Yes. Hallelujah. And have wonderful weekends and hope we'll see you again.

Jennifer Cunningham

Lisa English

collaboration

advancement services

alumni relations

data analytics

decision-making

higher education industry

silos