Category: Advancement

2023 continued to be a year of transition out of the COVID-19 pandemic, which for more than two-and-a-half years applied its grip on every part of life for organizations and individuals and laid the foundation for a changing future. The universe of educational institutions and their advancement programs was no exception. This report continues our series of annual updates as higher education advancement organizations evolve their engagement strategies to remain vibrant and relevant at a time of significant change in society and the world. (For a quick review of the past few years, see Trends in Advancement, January 2023).

As advancement organizations transition out of the pandemic years, many have been explicit about the need to think differently. What will their constituencies want and need in the next decade? How should they strategically invest in staff, programs and infrastructure to build toward those outcomes? Along with their institutions adapting to new populations of students and emerging needs of society, engagement and fundraising organizations and activities must also identify and incorporate new ways to broaden their reach to current and future alumni in support of lifelong relevance to them.

In sum, higher education advancement organizations are currently challenged to identify new strategies, expand expertise and talent, work in different environments (e.g., hybrid) necessitating solid collaboration and communication, use the latest tools and obtain sufficient resources to sustain vital, yet dynamic, stakeholder relationships. At a time when confidence in higher education is decreasing and demands for loyalty elsewhere are increasing, this also requires working partnerships with their institutions, as well as with the volunteer leaders who represent their constituencies.

While 2024 likely represents “evolution” not “revolution” in institutional advancement, several realities are clear:

• Confidence in higher educational institutions is declining, and giving by individual alumni is down.
• The “greatest wealth transfer in US history” has arrived, and women are set to be the largest beneficiaries.
• Personalization matters more than ever – and is becoming more sophisticated.
• Constituencies reflect changing demographic, preferences and voices: for example, generations differ in many respects in terms of what they value and how they want to interact; donors want to be more active in the decisions about their giving; and a fully inclusive community is frequently a core value.
• These issues drive the need for strategic talent management and training of both staff and volunteers to ensure that advancement organizations aim at high performance and accountability, are equipped to work together as teams and have the capacity to respond to the evolving interests and styles of their audiences.
• Regional programming facilitates both reach and strategic priority setting, while deepening relationships with alumni volunteers.
• Along with that, new technologies require new skills and strategies – from optimizing data, applying appropriate segmentation and measuring impact to understanding the far-reaching consequences of artificial intelligence.

As one of our client advancement VPs said recently, “Exploring avenues to further develop [staff] skills and enhance their experiences will be pivotal in sustaining our momentum and fostering a culture of innovation.”

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This mid-year update to our whitepaper, Trends in Advancement, Fall 2022, underscores the reality that the “pandemic pivot” in institutional relationship-management has forced alumni, development and marketing offices to be more creative, collaborate more and test new ways of interacting. But while the shift from traditional, in-person activities toward digital and virtual engagement continues, alumni and donors now seek both. They expect virtual and digital for convenience and, still for some, safety, while many are also eager to be together in-person for the energy, efficiency and often more personable connections of face-to-face engagement. The key for alumni and fundraising professionals is to offer the right mix of virtual and in-person interactions, the balance that will serve the range of stakeholders and meet them “where they are.”

At the same time, and perhaps most important, is there is no turning back from the trend of recent years – to personalize, personalize, personalize. Whether it’s outreach, promotion, information-sharing, content and communications about them must compete to grab attention (e.g., video and digital interactivity) yet be transparent and demonstrate benefits and outcomes. Time is a fixed commodity, and to encourage your stakeholders to spend time with your organization rather than the next-best competitor for their attention, advancement organizations must offer a consistently positive, relatable, barrier-free and where possible, unifying experience.

Here’s our deeper dive, picking up from the advancement trends we identified earlier in this academic year…

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Shifts in consumer behaviors and expectations accelerated by COVID-19 have forced organizations to change how they connect with customers. In business, those that do not adjust will be left behind. Why? Because “platform organizations” that connect with customers online via multiple touchpoints informed by sophisticated analytics accelerated improvements in relationship management during the virtual activities forced by the pandemic. In many cases, nonprofit organizations, including those in university advancement, were not prepared to make the shift from in-person activities. Yet others did use the time to make improvements in the digital “customer experience” for students, alumni and donors – and not lose traction.

Because of these developments, traditional major donors comfortable with face-to-face solicitations in a linear series of in-person cultivation activities are increasingly responsive to “digital” and “instant” interactions – just as they are day-to-day with Amazon, Uber, banks and online retail. In fact, what’s in your “in-basket” will more likely grab your attention if it is personalized, timely and focused. What McKinsey & Company describes as a “proven formula for executing customer-experience transformations” is also applicable to nonprofit organizations, such as universities and their advancement divisions. This model comprises specific steps across three core building blocks – a clearly defined aspiration, an agile transformation approach and a thoughtful deployment of new capabilities, particularly advanced analytics.[1]

The past 20 years have seen substantial changes in how fundraising organizations use technology; those on the leading edge (and their partner alumni associations) use customer relationship management software that pulls together multiple pieces of data to create useful donor profiles. Advancement data science teams are partnering with firms like Salesforce and Fundmetric, among many others, to leverage another new partner – artificial intelligence (AI). With data-gathering and predictive analytics tools, AI – once feared as a threatening replacement for people – is potentially one of advancement professionals’ best partners.

As the following trends show, the path toward “Advancement 2040” is hyper-personalized, builds strategically and has customization with multiple touchpoints from admissions to lifelong learning in the longterm relationships of universities and their constituencies (sometimes called the “60-year degree”). These trends focus on five key areas: (1) fundraising, (2) generational shifts, (3) continuously evolving methods for engagement, (4) integration of alumni and career services and (5) sophisticated digital transformation.

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