When your ship is sinking, is it better to try to patch the leaks, or to build another boat?
In higher ed, whether we realize it or not, our first instinct is often to build another boat. When our existing programming stops drawing crowds, we look for new programming to bring them back. What we should do instead is ask ourselves, "Why did this stop working?" and then try to fix it.
An estimated 67 million Americans listen to podcasts each month, and 42 million of them listen to podcasts weekly.
So it's no surprise that more colleges and universities are getting into the podcasting game, whether it's to target prospective students, engage sports fans, or build brand awareness.
But starting a podcast can be daunting. It's easy to listen to podcasts, but recording, producing, and editing one is a complicated process. That's one reason it's so impressive that Skidmore College took the leap into podcasting all on its own, without any external production help. Now, their podcast, This is Skidmore, is three seasons strong.
Alumni giving rates are down nationwide, and a majority of Americans say that colleges and universities put their own interests above their students'. Things aren't looking great for fundraising and alumni relations in higher education.
We all have our own assumptions about why it's happening. It's obvious to us, common sense, even if there isn't always the research to back it up. But in the absence of data, there's little we're empowered to do about it.
Fortunately for us, there is some research as to why alumni trust in their alma maters is failing. In this post, we'll break that that research down into five action items.
Advancement and alumni relations had a formula for engaging alumni that worked for decades. But young alumni these days are breaking that mold.
Their giving rates are lower. They attend fewer events. They give for different reasons, care about different causes, face different economic challenges, and have different perceptions of higher education and its worth than their older counterparts.
Yet for all our self awareness and new strategies, we're still only scratching the surface when it comes to solving the problems underlying the young alumni engagement deficit. The problem lies in how we define "engagement" in the first place.
Mentoring programs for students and young alumni are increasingly popular in the higher education community, but they're not turning out to be all that we hope they are. Mentoring programs promise to tap into the inactive parts of our alumni networks to help students and young alumni advance their careers and engage older alumni at the same time. This promise isn't being realized.
Cracks are showing in our traditional methods for engaging alumni. Alumni giving is down, fewer and fewer think their degrees were worth the cost, and they aren't giving for the same reasons. The fundraising landscape is changing, and so are public expectations of and perspectives on higher education.
In times of change like these, it's important that we examine—and challenge—our core assumptions.
So today we consider the funnel.
