Hello, everyone, welcome in. I'm so glad that you can join us. Hi, everyone, thank you for joining. Welcome to our case webinar, the National Alumni Survey and Future of Advancement Work Industry Conversation Seminar. My name is Lauren Briscoe, and I am the Education Programs Coordinator, and I'm so delighted that you could join us. Before we get started, I have just a few housekeeping notes. This webinar is being recorded and will be provided to all registrants. You'll receive a follow-up email after the event with instructions on accessing this recording. The presentation slides are also available for use at learn.case.org platform. I'll include the link below in our chat session. We will also be taking questions, so please feel free to utilize the Q&A box to submit questions as they come up, and at the end of the session, we will get through as many as we can. Without further ado, I'll go ahead and turn it over to our incredible presenters, Sarah Kleberger and Howard Huebner. Thank you. Thanks, Lauren, and a big thanks to CASE and also to everybody joining us. We invite you to say hello in the chat. I think we already maybe saw some familiar names, which definitely makes us smile, so thanks for sharing your time with us. We love that you're here. As Lauren mentioned, my name is Sarah Kleberger. I've been with R&L for about 18 years now, so a pretty long stretch. My background is development and fundraising. Prior to joining Ruffalo, I served at a couple of smaller nonprofits and then in the advancement office at a college in Minnesota, which is home where I'm based. It's been a privilege to work with lots and lots of institutions and organizations during my tenure with R&L, and today I feel very lucky to be joined by my pal, Howard Huebner. We've known each other for quite a while now. Howard's been a fundraising leader for over two decades and has served at great places, including the University of Iowa, Penn State, the University of Michigan, DePaul, and UC Santa Cruz. As many of you know, he currently serves as Executive Director of Annual Programs at the University of California, Berkeley, and that is a leadership role he has held since 2019. Howard is a respected thought leader, has a strong affiliation with CASE, and it's been so much fun to partner with him on this alumni survey project. So thanks, Howard. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks so much. In today's session, we're going to provide an overview of the National Alumni Survey project. We'll take a look at the seven insights that surfaced and that we highlighted in the report. Then we'll pivot a bit and Howard will share more about the second phase of the project, which was a series of smaller focus group conversations and one-on-one conversations that he facilitated with fellow practitioners and leaders. And finally, what's next? How is the data and also maybe some of the qualitative feedback, how is that actionable? How does it inform or shape our work moving forward? As Lauren mentioned, please use the chat to interact with each other. You can also post questions or comments for us in the Q&A. Lauren's also going to help us post several poll questions as we try to keep our time together a little more interactive. We know there's an awful lot we can learn from each other, from all of you, the collective knowledge and experience gathered today, and we definitely like to tap into that for sure. Hey, Sarah, just real quick. I just want to encourage everyone to use the Q&A as well, the Q&A function, because the chat is, you guys are awesome. Like the chat is blowing up, everyone's identifying where they're from. We can't keep up with the chat, but if you want to have questions throughout, please put them in the Q&A tool and we will do our best to answer as we go along. So just a little tip to make sure you're getting your answers, your answers questioned, your questions answered. I'm so proud of your answers questioned because that is on brand. So anyway, sorry, Sarah. Thanks. No, no, no. Perfect. Perfect. We're going to actually start with a poll question. So gathering direct alumni feedback through the survey instrument was central, of course, to this project. And we wanted to get started with a couple of poll questions for you. First question, when was the last time your institution surveyed its alumni? And here we've got some options. So recently, within the last six months, in the last year or so, maybe it's been a few years, more than five years, more than 10 years, unsure, maybe you're new in your role or new at the institution or organization. And then finally, to my knowledge, we've never surveyed alumni. So that's question number one. Question two is a follow up. What did your institution do with the survey results? Again, unsure, maybe you're new in your role, very little or nothing, analyze the results and maybe use some of the data in your work, but maybe didn't share with a broader kind of audience or beyond your department and then finally used it a lot. So share the results across campus and use the data in strategic planning, programming, marketing, etc. So we'll give you a couple or a minute or so. Again, just a couple quick survey poll questions to get us kicked off here. Lauren, I'll let you kind of be our guide as to when we've got when we've got folks. All right, let's take a look here. Looks like we've got about a third who have surveyed alumni maybe in the last year, about a third been a few years. Maybe some new folks who aren't quite sure. And then it looks like folks are doing some analysis, which is terrific. So yeah, I don't know that that any surprises here, but it's good to see. Again, I think, you know, from our perspective, it feels like inviting alumni to share direct feedback is pretty important. You know, we can learn a lot if we if we really listen and so if you haven't recently, we'd certainly recommend investing in survey work. Howard, anything to add? OK. Perfect. A little bit about the survey. It was launched in a few ways last fall, wrapping up in December of 2023. Core questions focused on giving and volunteering alumni satisfaction and sense of connection. We asked about what would inspire future engagement and giving, and we also asked about factors like student debt. We had a mix of schools participating and a big thanks to all of the schools who joined us in this project, a mix of public, private, some smaller and larger institutions. And we received more than 20,000 responses. Seventy percent of those who responded were undergraduate alumni and most 80 percent experienced traditional on campus or in-person classes. Eleven percent reported feeling burdened by student debt. We'll take a look at student debt a little later, which is interesting. Half, 50 percent identified as women, a majority, 80 percent identified as white. So maybe not as diverse as we might have hoped with respect to race and ethnicity, but still nearly 4,000 alumni of color participated and 44 percent identified as the first in their generation to attend college. We had good representation across donor types. Twenty seven percent of alumni reported donating to their alma mater in the past year. Twenty six percent reported donating at some point since graduation, but not in the past year. And 39 percent had never given so to their alma mater. So we had a lot of of non-donors participate, about 7,800. It was certainly good to have that that perspective or voice represented. There was also pretty good representation across class years. You see the decades here. And we had more than 2,500 undergraduates of the last decade participate. We'll look more closely at that cohort of recent grads in our analysis of survey results. And when we're referencing recent grads, it's that pretty traditional group of gold or undergraduates of the last decade. So 2013 to 2023. We saw some significant shifts when we grouped responses by undergrad undergraduate class year. I think a lot of this confirmed what we intuitively knew and the trends you've been watching. But the data is pretty powerful. So we compare demographics of undergraduates from the 1950s, characterized by predominantly white males, unburdened by student debt. By the 1990s, a shift is evident with women now in the majority, albeit still predominantly white. Fast forward to alumni who received their undergraduate degrees in 2020 or after, and we see a markedly different group with more racial and ethnic diversity. Of course, a shift in educational experience, a lot more online and hybrid learning and a steep rise in the weight or burden of student loan debt. And we'll revisit some of this in the survey takeaways. Part of our focus in much of the analysis was to look at generation, gender and race. OK, as we reflected on the data, we saw and organized the report around seven insights or takeaways, and we also framed a little bit of this in the context of the the cliff crisis on both the enrollment and the advancement fronts. We've seen that 15 percent decline in traditional college bound students. And we've also seen, as many of you are well aware, that that sobering 30 percent decline in alumni donor counts over the last decade or so. What did we learn or what was confirmed? First, alumni are philanthropic, 51 percent report volunteering and 68 percent report making charitable donations to a nonprofit last year. I would also note that many are giving regularly with nearly half. I think it was 48 percent reporting that they donate to a charitable organization once a month or more. The challenge for many institutions of the 50 or 68 percent rather who donate just twenty seven percent report giving to their alma mater last year. And this drops to 13 percent among recent graduates. Of those who do give just 20 percent rank their alma mater as a top giving priority. But again, alumni are philanthropic. More than half the 54 percent of our never givers are actively supporting other charities. So, you know, it seems institutions are missing out. Many maybe aren't presenting opportunities that resonate or kind of not matching up the right ask that aligns with with donor interests or passion projects that would be more likely to inspire action. Couple more poll questions here that I think Howard's going to help us with. Yeah. So we're going to jump into a couple of questions about the makeup of the demographics of your both your population and your donor population. So for example, I can tell you at Berkeley right now, about 40 percent of our alumni population are millennial and Gen Z. And within five years, 60 percent of our alumni population will be millennial and Gen Z. But inversely, what we have is that less than I think about a quarter of our donor population is it falls in those categories or I think it's maybe around 30 percent. And so it's such an important thing to be thinking about. This is relationship between the size of the population and the impact it's having on the donor count. So be great to kind of do your best guess, because not everyone probably knows those numbers as cleanly as those of us who kind of fixate on that are, as I am right now. And so why don't we go ahead and while we're waiting for the fill out, Sarah, let's just jump forward to the slide where we show the population and the survey. And then we look at the survey population as you are continuing to do that. We can see in those that we surveyed, right, the alumni donor population, you know, predominantly almost 60 percent are still on the silent generation boomers, Gen X at 21 percent. Right. So they make up about 70, 78 percent of the donor population are from Gen X silence and boomers. But when we go and look at overall alumni population, 41 percent of that population is millennial and Gen Y. Right. And so the inverse relationship between, again, the donor population and alumni population, I actually think what's interesting to me is that some of this is probably even skewed more greatly because the rise of giving days have actually increased the amount of student giving in a lot of institutions that giving a disproportionate representation in that that donor population. And so so we kind of even step back further and did like class years, this might look at even difference. And then, of course, from a dollars perspective, we're seeing a significant amount of dollars contributed by those silence and boomers. So how are we doing on the poll over here, Lauren? Here we go. So we had about a quarter of half of you are not sure. I would tell you this might be a thing that you want to start looking at more closely. Twenty five to 50 percent say it's about our 26 percent is about 25 to 50 percent. Some of you say it's about 25 percent. You got some that are some schools have some younger populations that more than 50 percent. So what I'm seeing when I look at my performance through this lens is that millennials are less responsive to direct mail than Gen X by roughly one quarter. And so it is, I think, a good opportunity to be kind of thoughtful about that and to kind of recognize the value of looking at things through these lenses. So then we started to look at in our kind of third observation is really starting to think about how student loan impact is having. So I will tell you that we did did put in a question about whether people had had student loan debt relief. It was such a small proportion at this point in the process that it wasn't really impactful. But you can see, right, that we're seeing 17 percent of undergrads, 15 percent of postgrads are currently carrying student loan debt. Half of the survey respondents didn't take out loans and about a third have paid their loans. And just two percent had the loan forgiveness. So so you're kind of seeing some of that. And we're also seeing that recent undergrad alumni report carrying more student loan debt than older alumni. Of course, I think that makes a lot of sense. We've seen this extraordinary rise in cost as states have divested from public higher education in particular. And alumni of color carry more debt than white alumni, 30 percent compared to 12 percent. And they feel that two times more burdened by it. And when responding to the survey, they carry more student loan debt than men, 22 percent to 12 percent, and also feel two times more burdened by it. So and the other thing that I think was interesting is, you know, this question of how does student loan debt influence charitable giving to alma mater. So while that is a factor for recent grad alum with 59 percent ranking as important and for recent grad alum, sorry, which is a contrast to the two percent of older alumni who say it's it is important to them, you know, when thinking about donating to alma mater, 34 percent of alumni of color rank that as important and versus 20 percent of white alumni and 29 percent of women indicate that influence they're giving versus 17 percent of men. Right. So there is this I think that I was surprised that it wasn't actually experienced as more burdensome on the whole. And I think for a long time, we've actually had kind of this view that student loan debt is this this distinct barrier to giving. And I don't know that that is actually bearing out entirely in this data. While there is a proportion that it does have feels impactful, there is still this this pretty substantial gap that are not expressing that. We're going to shift and touch on satisfaction and current connectedness here. This is a look at all responses. So there are you know, there's some positives here. We see that ninety one percent of alums feel satisfied with the education they received and eighty eight percent feel satisfied with their experience as a student. But then we see 51 percent feel satisfied with their experience as an alum and 53 percent feel currently connected to their alma mater. And if you look, you know, if you look at that last stat here on the slide, really, it's 20 percent that feel a strong connection, 33 percent of that group feel somewhat connected or maybe just lukewarm about their alma mater. We'll unpack that in just a minute. The numbers kind of touching on what Howard just referenced, but the numbers are even lower when we look at recent grads, women and alumni of color. So something to be mindful of. So yes, unfortunately, alumni sense of current connection and satisfaction is on the decline. We're looking at this here by grad year decade. So I guess I would draw your attention to the left side of the chart. Almost 75 percent of alumni from the 1950s expressed a strong sense of connection to their alma mater. What we see here, the top bright blue line representing connection is on the decline with younger generations. And there's an inflection point after the 1990s when alumni report feeling more disconnected than connected. The turquoise or lighter blue line rather is on the rise. And for our most recent undergraduate alumni, so those who graduated after 2020, the disconnected total reaches 53 percent. So it's a pretty striking 25 point swing that can signal trouble for a lot of institutions as we think about pipeline, as we think about the future of alumni giving. The feeling of being disconnected is where we saw one of the biggest variances in survey responses by race. 42% of alumni of color report feeling disconnected compared to 27% among white alumni. That's the 15 point variance called out here. That's a trend that requires attention, especially as the diversity of student classes continues to grow for many institutions. The exception that feels important to note, alumni of color who graduated from an HBCU reported much higher connection and notably lower sense of disconnection. It was actually 27%, so mirroring white alumni compared to 42% of alumni of color participating from non-HBCU institutions. So we wanted to note that. But overall, the survey, again, underscores that satisfaction is on the decline and sense of disconnection is on the rise. And we know that matters. Sort of stating the obvious, it's pretty tough to inspire giving when alumni don't feel satisfied and don't feel connected. On the flip side, when alumni feel strong satisfaction and connection, giving typically follows. We see a strong correlation between student satisfaction, current connection, and giving. Alumni who report being very or somewhat satisfied with their student experience are four times more likely to have donated to their alma mater in the past year. Alumni who indicate a sense of current connection are 23 times more likely to have donated when compared to those who indicate feeling disconnected. So again, we really need to be intentional about spending more time and energy on how we can genuinely engage alumni and work on building stronger connection. Howard, I think you're up next again with a couple of poll questions. A couple more poll questions. I'm on the poll questions here to start out. So the two poll questions, how important are unrestricted funds in your priorities? And more importantly is, do you have more donors to your campus unrestricted funds than you did five years ago? I think that this is one of those fundamental questions. We talk about the value of the work we do in this space and what our goals and priorities are. And there has been a kind of perspective that we should, or we have by practice, right? We have basically forced new donors to really be in this unrestricted fund space. And maybe it's starting to, maybe it's starting, it seems like it may be not as effective as it could be. So just thought it would be interesting to see like how important these are in your strategies and then also are you seeing positive trend lines in that space? So Lauren, let's see, how are we looking? All right, so about, you know, let's see, it's 42, 50, 60% of you. It's an eight or above as far as unrestricted is important, a value to your institution and your priorities. So, and then we're kind of, you got half they're not really sure, but of those who answered, right? So it's about 30% are saying you had more of those donors five years ago and you got 20% said more now. So I think that as I have had conversations across the country, that I've seen that to be kind of the case is that more people are struggling to get those donors. They may actually be growing unrestricted dollars, but they're growing unrestricted dollars at higher giving levels and not those entry levels that we did traditionally. So, and we looked in the poll here and one of our observations, or we looked at the survey data and one of our observations, and we asked a question really around what kind of inspires you, right? What, like, where do you feel connected at? And so you have two lines here, the blue line or undergrads last decade, and then you have the all alumni line. So on the far left at the highest rating, right? A specific department or major and then scholarships and they both generational kind of splits like that aligns. And then we get into these things that I think are actually very relevant to what's happened over the last decade in higher education. And you see mental health services, student emergency fund, DEI, first gen initiatives, right? More persuasive to undergrads last decade, less persuasive for all alumni. And then you get to area of greatest need. And then you see this kind of the bottom point for our undergrads last decade being area of greatest need. And then this kind of a little bit of uptick for all alumni, the 22%. And area of greatest need is another way to stay unrestricted, right? And so I think that it's important for us to kind of recognize that there's this divergence in perspective around what is a value? Where people seem to be finding most coalescence and most kind of unity though, right? Is what's happening on this left-hand side of the slide which is specific department or major as well as scholarships. Those all seem to still be really strong. And so to me, this kind of speaks to the need to continue to test more kind of issue-based and cause-based kind of initiatives. Here we have a number of kind of very institutional based kind of initiatives but in some testing that I've seen and looked at there's also this idea of how do we as an institution facilitate impact in the world versus how can you impact the institution? And that nuance is very important. We're gonna roll into another poll for you all. We like the polls today. We're all about the polls. We wanna hear what you're thinking. So to really ask you, are you incorporating cause-based solutions into your strategy? And if you've tried those, do you find them successful? You know, I think particularly it'd be interesting as we think about so many of you talking about your experiences or the prioritization of unrestricted support for your institution. And, you know, are you able to still find space here where you can also do some of this testing in this issue-based kind of cause-based kind of world? So I can't vote. So yes, I am trying these things. So I will tell you that. And we have found them to be successful. We have not figured out how to incorporate them into our greater strategy yet though. But Lauren, let me take a look at what folks are saying so far on this. So 77% are incorporating that in. That's great. And 70% are finding this successful. That's awesome. It's so interesting, right? We think back to that, how unrestricted is such a priority and like, you know, what was it? It was like 70, 80% of you are living in that kind of prioritization, but you're still finding that space for cause-based. My guess is a lot of that's digital. If I had thought to add that additional poll question, my guess, a lot of that's crowdfunding and giving days and things like that, which good for you. I think we can live in a world of both things. I think we move into another poll question that's a little more open answered. So we'll try to leave some space for you here, which is really around, you know, what barriers have you experienced in attempting this type of work? Are you experiencing barriers? Maybe you're not, maybe it's happening easily. And even in spite of the prioritization of unrestricted, you're getting real opportunities to try this. And so we'll leave this open for a second. And why don't we leave this open for a second and come back to it while we talk about the next slide. So that way people have a chance to type in some commentary. So our next observation is really around Flampy is influenced by both impact and passion. And I think what is so deeply important to me about this slide is what is this great visual down here at the bottom. And this dark blue line, impacting something I care deeply about. 77% that that was influencing them, that was motivating to them. And that jumps to 81% for the more recent grads, for the younger generations, right? So I think that that to me really speaks to this kind of conversation about how we couch our message. How do we speak to how we're communicating, right? And I think that our traditional loyalty based kind of messages, right? Give because you care about your alma mater. Probably not the tone that we need anymore. I think it has to kind of begin to shift to what is the value proposition? What are the things that you're going to be able to impact by making these gifts? We also have passion about when I'm being asked to support at 70%. Ability of my alma mater to show me how my gift was utilized. Imagine transparency being important. Who would have thought at 64%? And then also here's this student loan debt thing coming, issue coming back up again. Student loan debt coming back up again. Only 27% find that influential in their decision to make a gift. And we look at just recent grads. It is among the least important factors. 54% factors in student giving, it was only 54%, but was the least important factor across all generations. So I think that's a really valuable kind of reflection. Let's see what we've got in the barriers. And we're going to only know those answers in our heart. So if you type those in, we'll share them later. Sarah and I are getting used to these polling on this tool. So we know on the inside what you said though, and we agree it was hard, but you made your way there. But we'll make sure to get those pulled together and shared with you after the fact as well. So you can kind of reflect on those. Sarah, I think it's back to you. Yep, thanks Howard. And I would say both the goods and the nots, you know, the challenges, but also any real success with some of those purpose-driven or those cause-based campaigns would be interesting to learn more about. So hopefully we can either find that in the chat or in the Q&A. Maybe circling back a little bit to how institutions build a stronger satisfaction and connection through engagement. You know, we certainly vote for giving more consideration of time and talents, not just treasure. And it feels like that's a move that many of us are making. We see that charities that do provide meaningful volunteer opportunities often build stronger bonds with their supporters. We noted that survey responders who volunteered last year were more likely to make a charitable gift than those who did not volunteer. And 74% of alumni who gave at higher levels, so more than $10,000 last year were active volunteers. We learned that recent grads, alumni of color, and non-donors are most interested in professional development, but also mentoring opportunities. So maybe leaning into those areas, we know many of you are doing that already, but leaning into those areas, creating volunteer experiences can hopefully help alumni feel more connected, feel a stronger sense of community, and that very often leads to giving and increased giving. One other note here, many of you are familiar with the case alumni engagement metrics, those four modes, philanthropic, volunteer, experiential, and communications. If you're not, we'd encourage you to check those out to see what you're tracking, what you're counting as engagement. A broader perspective or lens on this can maybe help you better see who is raising their hands, who might be really engaged in non-giving activities. In the, I think it was last month, but in the recent Case Insights webinar with Jenny Cook-Smith, I believe it was something like 14% of engaged alumni are not giving, and that feels important to be aware of that group, learn more about that group. Continuing the research, all you, Howard. Oh, it's me, that's right. So, I have had the very great privilege to speak to more than 50 advancement leaders over the last three to four months, and really asking specifically, like how, and actually some of you, I see some of your names here on the participant list and some of them are in the space, and I'm grateful to each of you for the time and just the really insightful conversations about, and we really talk about, been talking a lot about like, how do you know if your pipeline's healthy? Like, right? Like, how do we know, like we, if alumni participation rate's not the primary measurement anymore, it's not driving the reason to have alumni donor count, well, what is our value proposition or what is? And, you know, we don't, in general, have a clear picture of that. Like, it's kind of all over the place. And there's a lot of people who are defining that in very traditional terms, right? Donor count, retention, upgrade, downgrade. And it leaves me thinking, maybe it's time for us to really kind of rethink about the value of our donor count as a measurement. And how many donors do we really need? And I think that's come out of me for these conversations. Many institutions I've spoken to are launching some form of discovery officer program to expand their reach, engage more prospects, with more personalized approaches. And I think that is a trend that will continue as we've seen the diminishment of some of our traditional tools and some of the challenges there. And for the, to clarify discovery officer, there's a number of terms that kind of play into one thing. A discovery officer really is doing, there's a discovery officer, which is really that, right? It's like doing interviews, trying to figure out if someone is a prospect or not for, should be in a gift officer portfolio. Another version of this is a digital experience officer, which is somebody who's carrying a portfolio of 1000 to 2500 prospects that they're basically using a cadence kind of program to help manage that communication flow with them. And so that's kind of what that is. So just to make sure I answer that question someone asked. And then the other thing I think is really interesting, was interesting to me as we got into this conversation, I frequently got in this conversation of moving from this idea that we're asking people to give to an institution and utilizing the institution as a conduit for their philanthropy, even at lowered levels, right? It is one thing to ask them to impact the student experience which is always gonna rate high when you ask that question on surveys, but it is another thing to ask them to impact the world through the research and the power of the institution that you're at. And what's true for all of our institutions, we all live in these multiverses where we can actually influence things or impact things in a way like many of their local community nonprofits can, right? Like on your campus, there is probably somebody who's doing work to reduce food insecurity. There's probably someone who's doing something to do outreach into communities who are impoverished and need support. I've been in institutions where there was programs that were working with making community gardens at local elementary schools, right? If we look at ourselves as a giving through versus giving to, how does that change the nature of our relationship? So I'm excited to continue those conversations. I'm continuing to do those. My hope is to put those all together in kind of a summary to be able to share both the people that participated and to provide a summary to others. And so it's a great fun. So here's another question, this is a pet question and Sarah humored me and letting me put the question in here. Maybe it's time to rename annual giving. It's not annual. It stopped being annual a long time ago. And so I threw up a bunch of like, you know, just ideas and I've toyed with over time, including leave alone and keep calling it annual giving. And you can put a comma Howard on that if you so choose. But I would just love to hear, you know, the collected wisdom of this group to say, to hear like, I don't know, what do you think? Like, what should we, should we change the name? Should it be something else? I'll tell you not to bias the audience. I'm a big fan of donor cultivation and how that name realigns the priorities of what we're trying to do as the pipeline for major gifts and gift offers throughout the campus. And, but I can be wrong. I've been wrong before. So we're gonna leave this up. Let's leave this, Lauren, let's leave this up a little extra long and we'll continue to kind of through and let people kind of play with it. And we'll move into our, what next, what's next. So, you know, so thinking about this, right? And thinking about all this data and thinking about this report and thinking about where we are when we think about this kind of mass outreach world. I was just messaging a colleague of mine from another institution and her and I are in the same place where our donor count is down for institution again in a significant way outside of the work my unit does or outside of the work her unit does. It's a trend across the country. There was an article in Vox, an online magazine, I think last week was talking about the trends across the country and giving to philanthropy and about the drops in donor counts. The reality is if we don't make some radical shifts in our strategies, probably pretty soon, what we do when it comes to this kind of mass outreach world is going to lose its influence or its ability to really meet the needs of the institution. I don't know that we can afford to be tied to the things of the past. And I think one of the questions we have to ask ourselves is are we ready for real change at your institution? Are you as a professional ready to let go of some things? I was just talking to a colleague of mine on staff and she had a bunch of great ideas about how to make our program better. And we had to stop and kind of check in on the fact that incremental shifts are not going to solve what we're dealing with. We're probably in the space of radical change. Improving how our direct mail program by percentage points, not going to reverse these trends. That's what we're, it's that kind of that space we're in. So when you're thinking about it for yourself, it's just really that moment of stopping and thinking like, what are we going to do today? What should you be doing? What change would you make if you're able to make it? So let's stop for a second before we jump into these slides and let's look at the survey. Lauren's like on it. Ooh, donor relation, maybe I did bias the audience. Donor cultivation at 40%. I'll take a biased answer. Ooh, but 22% told me to settle down. I appreciate that too. And then we'll see what the other answer, what the other ideas are for it. It could be a couple other settle down Howard's in there as well, which I also, I'm also okay with. So I do like, I do like that my favorite ones leading the way, I have that bias. So I like my ideas. Okay, let's talk about, you know, I think one of the things that came up for me when we're talking about this is, I don't know how many of you've had this conversation or heard this conversation about the problem we're having right now is we need to teach them how to give. We need to teach those millennials, we need to teach Gen Z, we need to teach the students how to give. The data is telling us 54% of them who never give to their alma mater are giving to other nonprofits. Guess what, folks? They know how to give. Maybe it's time to stop acting like we need to teach them something that the fault lies with the population and really be reflective and start listening too, right? If we as higher education are not great at listening to our constituents. So we need to listen to and reflect back what it is we understand for them. I think the other thing that came from out of this and really thinking about this is we need to think about the mutual value here, right? This isn't a one-way street where we say give and then they give and that's that, right? This needs to be more of an actual relationship. We're in a relationship business and for years we've treated it as transactional and we have to move from transactional into relational at these levels or we're going to continue to lose donor counts like we have. We need to find ways to support donor choice and self-determination at all giving levels. I mean, right now, think about it, right? In the current kind of environment, when you get to about $1,000 at most institutions, my institution actually is probably a little higher than that but most institutions are at $1,000, all of a sudden you have way more options at where you give to. All of a sudden there's more opportunities to give in a more diverse way. And this kind of forced choice environment that we've lived in, particularly in these early giving and particularly with these more recent grads has created an environment where people are turned off by us, right? Like I think of our annual fund solicitations where we send out these messages written from institutional leaders to these high trust funds and we're sending those messages to our rapidly diversifying alumni population who have lived experience that says they can't trust the administration and then we're surprised that they don't respond to that. And so I think that that's one of those things we also have to reflect on a little bit as well. So, okay. And then, and it's also time to maybe really think about how we define philanthropy, right? I think there's these two, to me there's two opposing forces. One is this one question of how many donors do we actually need? And then there's this other part where we need to expand the definition of philanthropy to be not only philanthropically on a fiduciary financial, but also to be the treasure of time and to value those things in similar ways. We know when you look at the research around more diverse communities that the valuation of time is philanthropic more so than our traditional, the way our traditional pipeline has looked. And so by extending that kind of grace to a philanthropic definition that is more inclusive to different types of behaviors, it will actually allow us to help find the right donors into deeper relationships with more giving opportunity. And I think that we have, by being so narrowly focused, we have maybe missed some of those opportunities that we could have had in the past. We need to learn about the cultural context of philanthropy based on different backgrounds. If you haven't done any reading on this, you should. Different communities have different cultural contexts. If you look at the research, next week I'm gonna be at Case Summit, I'm gonna be on the part of the research symposium and there's some research from the Lilly School of Philanthropy looking at the giving behaviors in diverse communities. In the black community, mutual aid is high priority. In the black community and in Latinx communities, you see a lot more collective behavior versus individual. We have a structure that quite frankly, was built on the expectations of people who look like me, right, cisgender straight white men. But the population isn't me and that's okay. But we have to re-engineer or rethink about our systems in a way that is inviting to people of different cultural contexts of philanthropy. It's the same thing we think about international fundraising, right? We do that with international fundraising. We think about if we're gonna go to China or we're gonna go to India or these other places. We think about the cultural context of giving. The reality is, is within our own culture in the United States, there are many different cultural contexts of philanthropy and we need to acknowledge those as well and think about our strategies in different ways to appeal to those cultural contexts instead of expecting though everyone to meet us where we are in a very kind of patriarchal Eurocentric structure. And I think that is an important kind of thing to be reflective of. And I think that this final kind of question as we look at the changes we've seen in the last year around particularly around alumni participation and so forth is it's really is time to take a moment, take a pause and ask ourself, what is our purpose? What is the value proposition of the work? If we are, if donor count is in this 20 year down year trend and, but we continue to act as if that is the primary measurement of a unit on our campus, we're setting up our group of people for failure. But two, what do we need from our, to use our resources in the best way possible, what outcomes do we need in order to make sure the institution is successful? And so I think that this is that moment. It's a moment for each of us to kind of look in the mirror to have hard conversations of our leadership and say, here's the truth. Here's the good news folks, is if you're in those conversations, you're not alone. Higher ed in general is seeing a 20 year trend. Actually it's not, it's since 2008, we've seen a massive drop off in alumni donor count. If you look at it since 2019, it's even more extraordinary. We've seen like an unbelievable drop in individual donor giving. And that is both institutional higher education and then philanthropy as a whole within the country when we look at nonprofits. This is the moment for us to figure out a new path forward. And so hopefully some of the information from today helps you, sparks that some of that conversation for you. And if anybody wants to nerd out about it, I'm always happy to talk more. Awesome. Wanted to share a couple of resources. First, we invite you to download a copy of the report. I think we posted it in the chat a few times, but there's a link also in the slide deck that Lauren will send out to everybody. So we invite you to take a look at the copy of the report. We also invite you to visit the R&L website. You can learn more about market research and other R&L services. And I think we're most excited because we are going to be able to continue this project. So Howard is teaming up with us once again, and we're gonna have another national survey in the fall. There's so much, there's so much. And we have been excited about the start of this project, but to be able to continue it, to refine it, and hopefully to get more institutions participating, we're pretty excited about that. If you're interested in participating in the national project this coming fall, I think we've got a landing page set up. Again, it's in the deck, and I think Howard maybe posted it to the chat. Perfect. So, you know, check out that landing page. There's a little bit more information. It's a survey that's fully funded by R&L. And we're just really nerdy about the research and eager to have more institutions participate. So please consider it, take a look. And also, if you want to email Howard directly or email me directly, we've also included some great email information around LinkedIn, all those things. So I think you probably know where to find us, but we'd love to hear from you. And we'd really love to have you consider participating in this next wave of research. Awesome. Thank you both. I want to give some time to answer some of those polls that we've had, the long responses, and to share some of you guys' voices. So in response to the question of what barriers have you experienced in attempting cause-issue-based solicitations, a majority of you guys said lack of focus on specific issues and execution. Some of it is data. Moving large donors to cost-based issue solicitations takes funding away from annual and unrestricted funds, and it can make it harder to make the case for unrestricted funding. Small shops, again, lack of funds, political views, and withholding funds based off of their stance in college's responses. And deans and VPs are selective in choosing funds that could be inequitable. And then if you guys want to take some time to share out any initial thoughts about what you hear, that would be great, and I can move on. Yeah, I'm not surprised. I mean, hearing something, I mean, I think I think we should address, right, kind of one of the things that's also true is this past, let's be, the past five years, each year there's been some type of experience that has mitigated the outcomes, right? I mean, this year we've had so many, like many schools who have had to kind of go full stop on solicitations because of protests on campus, things happening in the world. That has been not just this year, the year before we had like the crazy inflation, like gas prices, groceries, et cetera, which hit this part of the pipeline most uniquely. We've not had a clean year, a quote-unquote clean year, a status quo year since 2019. I think I can say that pretty comfortably. And at this point, 2019 might not have been a status quo year either, but I can't remember anymore because there's been so many things that happened since then. It's hard to remember where things happened. So, you know, I think those of you who wanna get kind of do more playing with this and testing with this, we have barriers around leadership and things like that. Your giving day is a great opportunity to kind of play with this stuff and getting into your student groups, getting your students involved because they're almost always gonna go more down the path of issue and cost-based kind of things and utilizing their voice and utilizing their outreach as a way to illustrate success. I'm not saying completely circumvent your leadership. That'd probably irresponsible of me. But what I would say is involving student groups will help you and giving them more agency in that will help you to have great examples of how this might work if it isn't just in the traditional unrestricted kind of construct. And so, yeah, I would say, Lauren, none of those things were super surprising that folks were saying nothing came up. And I was like, oh man, I didn't see that coming. But yeah, I don't see anything you wanna add to that. Yeah, I mean, you know, the lack of focus definitely resonates in sort of whiplash moments, especially as you have leadership changes or staff turnover and churn. The other thing that I think that some organizations and institutions are shifting to, which feels really helpful, is not measuring success just in annual increments. And so thinking about, it's really tough. Like you try something new and maybe it goes well, but not, you know, exactly how you want. And there's so much learning. And I think, you know, to shift maybe to focus on maybe a three-year rolling kind of view of measuring success. First, how we're defining success, but then also the getting away a little bit. I mean, we have to measure year over year stuff, but like a little bit more three-year or longer term it feels really healthy. I think for our profession, for us as individuals working in this sector, but also to get a real sense of kind of what's working and what's not. Cause it's tough, you know, to think about things just annually. And then Lauren, can we actually, there's a couple of questions in the Q and A that we can jump into. One of the questions here is about student giving and just some thoughts on student giving. I have, I probably have kind of a, I don't know. So one is the evidence or the data around, if they start giving us students, they will continue to give in the future, is a little, the link is a little light. It doesn't always play out that way. And I think that has been kind of this mythology of student giving. And I will tell, I will say like I have as a leader paid for hundreds, maybe thousands of cookies and churros and t-shirts and events on campus where we ran around and covered up things and said, what would happen if Flampy wasn't here? And I begun to feel like maybe that was all for nothing. What we have reframed student giving at Berkeley and the way that I've kind of rethought, thought about student giving is as an experiential learning process. How do we, when someone's still a student, it helps them understand the full scope or spectrum of what a giving process is and how they can see that impact. How can we build trust in that philanthropic structure? I can't, in my sitting in my role, I'm not gonna be able to influence their student experience. I'm not gonna be able to do something that is going to be so dramatically impactful that it changes their relationships in the institution on mass. But what we can do is create, particularly using crowdfunding, giving day, et cetera, is we can create these opportunities to teach, to create experiential learning, not teach, not just like lecture, right? We've been lecturing, we've been giving out all these factoids, but to create an opportunity for these students to engage in the philanthropic process. So then once they graduate and they make that $50 gift, $100 gift, they know it's gonna go where it's gonna go. And they know that there's a person in a room someplace that's there specifically to ensure that that gift goes where it's supposed to, and that it's not gonna just go into the great machine that they don't trust. And so that's what we can do with students now. It's less about, is this their starting giving trend, but more of, can we build a trusting relationship with the philanthropic process so that when they, after they graduate, they believe in it? Because right now, I think what we're seeing is erosion of trust in institutions, and we can't change society. We can't even change their experience in dealing with the academic endeavor, but we can change their experience of how they understand the philanthropic process that they're on the monitor. And so that's kind of what I looked, saw that student question. I just wanna make sure that we, I just pause for a second. I don't know, Sarah, if that lines up or you have different thoughts. No, definitely, a couple of thoughts on that. One, through our work with, we partnered up with the Shuler Education Foundation and really focused on young alumni and sort of recent grads. And I think crowdfunding certainly resonated with that cohort and because it's often about kind of direct aid, collective aid, and it certainly attracts younger donors, including students. So really like, again, those purpose-driven sort of direct aid kind of projects, and we gotta pay attention to that. The other maybe, I don't know, maybe more general comment is that philanthropy, I mean, it's not just an activity, it's a value. And it's a way to be part of something bigger. It strengthens our sense of community. It's not hard. I mean, it's fun. We literally have like a biological reaction to giving and it feels good. And if we can, I think we are in a unique position to help facilitate that. And when we, especially when we think about students and the opportunity, when we have young talented students on campus, investing in that and investing in that value of philanthropy, and again, being really authentic and genuine, it feels, I think it feels sort of like a no regret place to invest, especially, again, if we have an eye on longer term and not just kind of annual incremental goals. So, you know, when I was on, when I was at a campus, I mean, I was the advisor for our senior class campaign and student philanthropy. So, you know, again, biased in that area, but it was, it's a great place to invest some time, energy and resources. And I also think there's really, can be some interesting intergenerational things as we help facilitate interaction between some of our youngest alums and older generations. And that there can be some really powerful kind of chemistry and connection that can happen when we help facilitate that. And Sarah, there was another question here that I still haven't answered live, and I removed the question because I'm pushing too many buttons too fast. But this question about volunteers, I know we had a data point in the data that was super impactful around that. I can't remember what percentage it was, but it was like 60 some percent of those who weren't volunteering, were volunteering somewhere else, right? Those who weren't volunteering at the alma mater, I can't remember what the number was, but there was a large proportion who said that they were actually volunteering elsewhere, they're not volunteering at higher ed. And I hypothesize that's because all the volunteer opportunities we tend to offer are these extraordinarily lengthy commitments of time. And we have to start thinking in micro engagements for volunteer purposes, instead of I'm gonna sit on a class board for the next 22 years. And really rethinking that. So do you remember that stat, or do you know what I'm talking about? I do, yeah, it was north of 50%. But again, I think the top sort of volunteer engagement opportunities revolve around professional development, around mentoring. So again, like sort of challenging ourselves, what are those volunteer opportunities that we've traditionally offered? And you're right, number one, kind of this year long commitment is not appealing to most people of any generation, frankly. But to think about like short little sprints where you can really engage alums and connect them with something they already feel passionate about or excited about. And so again, the mentorship, the professional development, those seem like natural areas to maybe kind of explore a little bit more. I think that leads us up right up to time, right Lauren? I think we filled the entire time with those two. It does, thank you so much for your insight and some of the amazing information that you shared. We had some excellent questions. I hope that you guys enjoyed this conversation. I hope that you have a great afternoon. Thank you for joining everyone. Thank you so much.

National Alumni Survey

alumni engagement

philanthropy

volunteering

mentorship

professional development

fundraising strategies

student giving behavior

experiential learning