The transactional reality of the modern alum/alma mater relationship
I LOVE my local baristas. Every morning they greet me with a smile and make me feel good about myself. This tends to happen at the exact same moment I’m tapping my phone on their payment screen and that is just fine by me. They provide me with an essential service. Because of them, I’ll be equipped to take on the workday and all of the parental responsibilities that follow. When I leave the cafe with my abundance of iced caffeine, that’s the end of our connection for the day. The thought of receiving emails or calls later in the afternoon asking me to come back to buy more coffee would be preposterous! Our business has concluded. I needed a service to successfully take on the world, they provided it and I paid them for that service. This is widely accepted as the appropriate relationship with your coffee provider, regardless of how lovely the baristas are, but what happens when alumni develop this same opinion for alma mater?
“I paid my tuition and I’m still paying loans. THAT’S my donation!” Oh, how I heard those words from a great many friends during my time in advancement. Most of GenX, Millennials, and GenZ have the unfortunate distinction of being the student debt generation. We were told we HAD to go to college, no matter the cost. So we did and many of us are still paying for it. That’s not to say our guidance counselors or college “pulled one over on us.” We knew the cost going in, we just assumed it was a necessary evil to becoming employed so we could buy a house, a car, and have a kid or two…or three (oops). While some our lucky to have a particular school’s campus or department speak to their heart, for many it was a fiscally driven decision of where can I get in and what can I afford? In summary, this was the beginning of a business relationship. I need coffee, who offers the best beans within my budget?
That’s the reality. A reality we sometimes underestimate when crafting alumni engagement strategies. We want to believe every alumnus is THANKFUL for the 2,4,6 years they spent on campus. They learned so much, had so many wonderful experiences, and got crazy with people who are now friends for life!… Or maybe they worked three campus jobs, which meant studying late at night/early in the morning in a desperate attempt to both afford school AND keep their head above water in a soul-crushing engineering curriculum?
That’s a pretty bleak example of an on-campus experience, but while I don’t have a chart for you, I would be willing to bet there are FAR more experiences like that now, than there were during the years the silent generation and boomers were on campus. Those were the days of higher acceptance rates, low tuition, minimal (if any) debt, and animal house. Donors born before 1965 represent nearly 70% of the total giving in America. (BlackBaud) The boomer generation alone (57–75 years old) makes up 55% of high worth donors. This is where the money is and it flows more freely to alma mater for several reasons, some of which have already been mentioned. But why the money comes in isn’t as important as the fact that it won’t be there much longer.
(The figures concerning average student debt at graduation are based on an analysis by Mark Kantrowitz of data from the 1992–1993, 1995–1996, 1999–2000, 2003–2004, 2007–2008, 2011–2012 and 2015–2016 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), with geometric interpolation and projection in between NPSAS years)
I hosted a webinar this week with Stanford Alumni Association’s CMO, Page Murray, in which we discussed providing a “buffet” of engagement options for alumni. Campus experiences are so personalized now that you have to offer a variety of opportunities for how your alumni can reconnect with the institution. Gone are the days where the university held the keys to the alumni rolodex and you needed to literally pay your dues to gain access. The game has changed. Schools officially need alumni more than alumni need the school. When we combine that with the modern transactional relationships that exist between alum and alma mater, it’s not coffee that’s brewing-it’s a perfect storm that threatens to wipe schools from existence.
Okay…that last statement was strong, but not totally off base. Since 2016, 77 American colleges/universities have closed or merged. (HigherEdDive) You’ll hear about how much money higher ed is bringing in, but Harvard’s $40B endowment is not the norm anymore than a boomer’s college experience in 1968 is the same as that of a first-gen student in 2022. The terms of service have changed, BUT that doesn’t mean you can’t be of service to your alumni and plow a road to a place where engagement thrives and philanthropic relationships flourish.
As part of the “buffet” concept I discussed with Page Murray, there was a focus on affinity. The idea being that the institution still has the ability to engage alumni through hyper-focused experiences they enjoyed on campus-most of which define their time on campus and connect directly to the heartstrings. Alumni aren’t excited by a university wide directory, or even their school/college/major, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who won’t fight to the death for their marching band. Yes, your alumni paid for their degree (unless they received a full scholarship) and YES, I know the cost of tuition does not always equal the true cost to the institution of putting a student through four years of schooling…but is that our best argument? That even though you paid us $60k/year, it ACTUALLY costs more than that soooo, be appreciative!
Instead, cut through the reality of the transactional relationship by digging deep into the experiences that transformed the person. That could be an academic opportunity, but it’s more likely to be the people around them in which they shared a meaningful extracurricular experience. As Page put it in our discussion “you need both breadth AND depth when it comes to alumni engagement.” The postcard to update the directory is neither. The blanket emails segmented only by college and class are neither. Evoke feelings of membership in your alumni by reconnecting them to the campus communities that truly impacted their sense of self.
The truth is, my preferred coffee spot is not the only coffee shop in town. It’s not even the only coffee shop in walking distance. In fact, there is LITERALLY a coffee shop two storefronts down from my coffee shop. But I stay loyal. I’m loyal not because it’s the best coffee (I don’t have the palate to know what’s good and what’s not) but because the environment they create has become personal. They don’t care if I work there on my computer for six hours. They hook me up with a free drink every so often. They ask my opinion on initiatives/products/events. They could let it be solely transactional and hope that I stay loyal because they make good coffee.
But it’s never just about the beans… If it was, no one would go to Starbucks.
Keith Hannon is an sr. account manager for @BrightCrowd where he works with 200+ schools to build communities the connect alumni and students back to the school.
Keith@BrightCrowd.com
