Have your donation appeals to millennial alumni been met with overwhelming … silence?
“It’s too soon to get worried,” says Penelope Burk, president of Cygnus Applied Research, which conducts the annual Burk Donor Survey.
It’s not that recent graduates aren’t interested in supporting their alma maters, she explains. But many millennials have barely started making money. They’re more likely to attend graduate school than members of previous generations, according to a White House Council of Economic Advisers report, which means they are delaying their careers and starting to earn salaries later in life. They also are more likely to have accumulated significant education debt, so they may have less disposable income to direct toward charitable giving.
College development and alumni-affairs offices should accept that, when it comes to millennial giving, fundraisers will have to put in the work now to get results in the future, says Ron Cohen, vice president for university relations at Susquehanna University.
But even though many millennials may not be ready to donate money for several more years, college development and alumni affairs officers can take steps now to build relationships with recent graduates.
Start before graduation. According to Ms. Burk’s latest research, there’s one significant difference between people who donate to their alma mater and those who don’t. Donors “were engaged well beyond academics in the campus life” during college. That means students who participate in student government, sports teams, Greek life, or clubs are more likely to give back in the future.
Development and alumni affairs officers should start interacting with students while they’re still enrolled to plant the seed for future giving and make philanthropy part of the campus experience, Ms. Burk says, and encouraging all students to get involved in extracurricular activities may lead to more future donors.
Ask for more than money. If a university repeatedly asks a young graduate for donations before she is able to give, it can spoil her relationship with her alma mater, Mr. Cohen says. His philosophy of working with millennials is to “capitalize on assets and resources that [they] actually have.”[[relatedcontent align="right” size="half-width”]]
That means asking young alumni to share career advice with current students, report any volunteer activities, and serve as recruiters for high-school students who may apply to the university in the future. Millennials are often flattered to receive these kinds of requests.
“There’s so much goodwill when they leave us. They almost always say, ‘Let me know how I can help,’” Mr. Cohen says of new alumni.
He wants to change the assumption many alumni have that whenever the phone rings, they’ll be asked to give money.
“We’re working to get to the place where our alumni see Susquehanna University on the caller ID and say, ‘I wonder what these guys are calling about tonight?’ ” he says. “If we ask alumni to do lots of different things -- and when we do it, we thank them and shout it out -- the more we ask, the harder it is to say no.”
Ask for donations to specific projects. Alumni are often more willing to give to the departments in which they studied and the programs from which they graduated than to the university’s general fund, Ms. Burk says. Projects that are “specific and tangible” are more likely to attract donations.
That means a millennial alumnus may be more compelled to give to the scholarship program that benefited him or to a fund that supports the extracurricular activities he enjoyed as a student.
At Pennsylvania State University, students in the graduating class of 2016 were encouraged to play an active role in selecting which project their class gift would support, says Joyce Matthews, a senior director of development. More than 200 seniors submitted proposals for projects to support. After narrowing the field to three options, they voted and chose to raise money to create an endowment for improving mental-health services on campus. The Penn State Alumni Association committed to matching up to $200,000 in contributions from seniors. News reports from the university noted that students increasingly recognize the importance of having strong mental-health resources on campus.
Identify graduates with the capacity to give. Although not the majority, some young graduates “are ready to start writing pretty significant checks by the time they walk out the door,” Mr. Cohen says. Just like with older donors, identifying millennials who can make major gifts can make the fundraising process more successful.
At Penn State, development officers keep track of which recent alumni are working in the financial sector and note their job titles, Ms. Matthews says. The university has created a special program for young alumni who work on Wall Street to introduce them to philanthropy and help them participate in donor clubs, not just alumni clubs.
Millennials with lucrative careers may be especially well positioned to give, since they often are too young to have mortgages or families to support, Ms. Matthews says.
But even people who don’t major in finance may one day find themselves able to make a big donation to their alma maters. So don’t stop soliciting from any group of millennials , Mr. Cohen says: “We’re always asking for money because we never know when you’re going to hit the lottery.”
