Deans and advancement professionals who want to maximize fundraising for their colleges and universities should focus on having a big vision, using data strategically, and being innovative in their processes, said speakers at the 2023 Conference for Advanced Development for Deans and Academic Leaders, held in Washington last month.
The event brought together advancement professionals and academic deans to focus on ways they could improve fundraising for their institutions. Having a big, clear vision is high on the priority list.
“There is a tiredness of small ideas,” said Jason Lane, dean of the College of Education, Health, and Society at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. “A lot of funders are now looking at what’s going to be the impact of our gift over time. How do we make sure it is something that’s transformative?”
Lane and others at the event recommend coming up with big, transformative goals that don’t get too in the weeds and that donors can see themselves being a part of.
“We had to be convincing, and we had to explore the vision that we were putting forward, making sure it was something realistic,” said Fardin Sanai, vice president for university advancement at the State University of New York at Albany. “A [vision] statement is a road map. It’s a road map for you. It’s a road map for your donors.”
Lane, who has rallied his donors around reducing the teacher shortage locally by producing 100 teachers each year who commit to working in a nearby school district, added that when goals are long term like his, it’s important to show donors the “impact down the road.”
In Lane’s case, he showed how each year for the next several years, the college would increase the number of teachers it graduated from its program who would go into the local school district. Seeing that progression on paper, he said, helps donors understand the long-term impact of their gifts.
Using Data to Identify Prospects
Using data and artificial intelligence more robustly can boost fundraising, said Rodney Grabowski, senior vice president for advancement and partnerships at the University of Central Florida. He’s been using data to help identify which donors are good prospects for big gifts. When he was previously at a university in New York, his department used public data to add information to its own database, which helped the the staff learn that the Securities and Exchange Commission classified 2,400 of its alumni as insiders.
“In order for you to be listed as an SEC insider, you have to either be a director of the company or you have to own at least 10 percent or more of the stock holdings of that company,” Grabowski said. “I would think that would be someone we want to go get to know.”
Once it had the data, his department realized only half of those “insider” alumni were assigned to gift officers — so they added the other half to fundraisers’ portfolios.
Grabowski says colleges can also use data to better target outreach. He recommends grouping donors into four categories — A, B, C, or D — based on their previous giving, with donors in group A having given the most and donors in group D being prospects who had not given. The A-to-D approach can help staff figure out how to better allocate their time. Grabowski said he found some were spending a significant amount of time “engaging with the masses,” when they could have used a more targeted approach to connect with higher-end donors.
Sanai stresses that when dealing with high-end donors, it’s important to make materials “very individualized.”
Grabowski says artificial intelligence, which he calls the fourth industrial revolution, can help with that. If advancement departments collect good information about donors in their database — including their passions and interests — they can use it to generate really personalized outreach and keep advancement staff up-to-date as they talk to the donors.
‘Time to Be a Little Daring’
With a clear vision in place and good data practices, college development departments need to be innovative in how they go about raising money. That might mean looking at whom fundraisers contact and how.
“Invite innovation into your organization,” said Armin Afsahi, associate vice president and dean of development at Harvard University. “Isn’t it time to be a little daring? There are so many ways we can be disruptive.”
Consider demographics, he counseled: What do your donors look like, and how does that compare with what your current student body and alumni look like?
“The world is changing rapidly,” Afsahi said. “If you want to serve the world, you have to look like the world.”
Because fundraisers look to move donors from small gifts earlier in their careers to bigger contributions as they have more to give, it’s still important to meet young alumni where they are — which may mean accepting donations through modern tech like Venmo or CashApp.
“This generation is going to challenge everything we do,” Afsahi said. “If you’re not watching what they’re doing, listening to what they’re saying, you’re going to miss the boat, and your organization will be all the worse for it.”
