As Northwestern nears the end of its $1.4 billion fund-raising campaign, administrators are beginning to initiate programs focusing on sustained annual alumni donations.
A multitude of problematic factors, including students feeling a stronger connection to their individual schools instead of to the university as a whole, have led to NU falling significantly behind comparable peer institutions in alumni giving.
Although NU ranked No. 12 overall in the 2002 U.S. News & World Report’s America’s Best College Rankings, it ranked No. 30 in annual alumni giving. Only 29 percent of alumni donate each year, a total unacceptable to administrators working to increase the percentage.
But administrators hope recent efforts to forge a greater sense of class identity on campus will reverse the trend.
A Sense of Identity
Last year, NU’s General Faculty Committee’s Educational Affairs Council met with officials from the Office of Development to brainstorm solutions to combat the alumni giving problem. The council set a goal at the meeting’s conclusion urging administrators to develop programs that would raise the annual giving rate to 40 percent by 2005 and 50 percent by the close of the 2010 academic year.
History and German Prof. Peter Hayes, chairman of the council, said the alumni office has started generating new appeals to graduating seniors and sponsoring programs featuring professors at alumni clubs across the country.
Administrators also have started initiatives focused on increasing undergraduates’ class consciousness. NU took the idea from schools with high giving rates.
Princeton University, which has the highest annual giving rate of any university at 66 percent, said the strength of their program lies in appealing to each graduating class.
“Our annual giving program has a very strong class-identity basis,” said Bruce Freeman, Princeton’s associate director of annual giving.
NU administrators recently sent seniors the first in a series of class e-mails designed to promote classwide events such as senior bar nights and freshman formals.
Administrators also supported the formation of the Northwestern Class Alliance, a new student organization acting as an umbrella for all class councils. Jeremy Wingerter, assistant director of the Campus Activities Office, said the goal of the group is to build class identity.
“We definitely have high hopes for the class alliance,” Wingerter said. “Statistics across the nation have shown that when students are involved as undergraduates, they tend to be more involved as an alumni.”
Although he supports the NU Class Alliance, Associated Student Government President Jordan Heinz said administrators should stop trying to pattern NU after other schools.
“To change NU to a class-based school would be a monumental task,” said Heinz, an Education senior. “We should capitalize on what we do have, such as strong student groups and a connection to our schools. If the university took pride in our uniqueness, they could make more headway.”
Meeting Goals, Confronting Challenges
Hayes said the increased percentages in the council’s proposal were based on rates of giving at comparable institutions.
“I don’t know if it can be accomplished but I certainly think it’s a desirable total,” Hayes said. “We should be getting alumni contributions at level equal to University of Penn or Duke. Our feeling was that our percentage was unusually low for an institution of our caliber.”
But some officials said they don’t anticipate reaching the higher percentages in the allotted time.
Tim Case, executive director of annual giving, said increasing the annual alumni giving rate by 11 percent in four years is unreasonable.
“We’ve been trying to address participation for as long as I’ve been here and it’s a tough nut to crack,” Case said.
Case said his department received additional funding this year to do more direct marketing research in determining why the low levels of giving exist, particularly among younger alumni. His office is trying to change a perception illustrated in past surveys – that alumni believe small contributions of $25 don’t make a difference.
“Lots of small gifts do add up,” he said.
But NU’s institutional structure of six individual schools instead of one combined school forces alumni officials to work even harder in soliciting donations.
“Alums feel much more connected to their undergraduate school than to the university as a whole,” Case said. “We always try to approach alumni through the deans of their former schools. It is difficult for us to go to alumni and appeal for them to give in the name of their universal Northwestern experience. Everyone has a very disparate experience on this campus.”
A Problematic Experience
Cornell University, which now has a 38 percent alumni giving rate, has steadily increased its standing throughout the past few years, rising from No. 80 to No. 16 in the rankings. But Laurie Robinson, Cornell’s director of development, said the rankings only serve a limited purpose.
“Using the percentage of alumni who give is misleading because it doesn’t show the number of alumni who are participating in events and are satisfied with the school, but just don’t have the means to give,” Robinson said.
Because the rankings are based only on alumni giving rather than on overall satisfaction, some schools have resorted to purging their alumni lists of former students who didn’t graduate or whose mailing addresses are unknown to hike their percentage in the rankings, accounting for dramatic ranking increases.
Case said NU would never think of fixing its alumni list to receive a higher percentage, calling the practice “unethical.”
“The alumni relations department feels strongly about attempting to keep in touch with alumni no matter what,” Case said. “I know it goes on at other schools, but it is not something we are thinking of doing.
“It is a challenge because there are a lot of alumni out there who don’t give, who aren’t in contact and who have shown no interest,” he added.
To ensure their percentage of giving and school ranking remains high, administrators at some Ivy League schools also spend time and money promoting alumni giving from the moment freshmen arrive, Case said.
“They have a much stronger program of educating their students about philanthropy,” he said. “Freshman orientation at NU does not include a speech from the development committee, but one of the first things Ivy students hear is the benefits of giving back as an alum.”
But if NU’s annual giving officials are successful in getting more donations even in small amounts, the increased rankings will follow.
“We have high alumni satisfaction ratings, but when it comes to giving, it doesn’t translate,” Case said. “If alumni can give us only a little something every year, it impacts our annual participation rate, which is what affects the school rankings.”
