COVID-19 and the lessons of meaningful engagement and presumed disinterest

Almost exactly one year ago, I packed up all necessary office technology from my office and headed home for an undefined period of fully remote work. This past Friday, I returned to clean out that office (more on that soon) and was taken back by the dystopian feel of it all. It was as if people had disappeared in a blink and everything else was completely undisturbed. My notebooks, post-its, and spreadsheets lay on my desk telling the story of what I was pursuing in March of 2020. Of course, those priorities quickly changed as we pivoted to a pandemic strategy that we hoped would allow us to continue the pursuits of organizational goals, while remaining sensitive to the stress and hardship that our students, alumni, and friends were experiencing. After a year of walking that tightrope, two lessons standout: we may be too quick to default to the belief that our constituency doesn’t want to hear from us and commitment to engagement proves its value during a crisis.

Lesson 1: The presumption of disinterest

In August, I had a meeting with an alumnus to talk about their support for one of our programs. This was the first time I had spoken with this person so I wanted to offer a bit of insight into how our department was managing the pandemic. I began to candidly explain the challenge of explaining to our alumni that, despite not competing, we would need to raise more money than a typical year. After about sixty-seconds, he stopped me and said “I really think you’re…