Ten Real Big Ones

I'm working on another post about the participation rates, but I saw this at the Optimist web site and was mightily impressed. Ten million dollars for scholarships for grad students in theology = 50 full-ride scholarships.

God bless Lacy and Dorothy Harber for their generosity.

I considered for a selfish moment grinching about how the GST gets all the nice stuff, but since we're supposed to put our relationship with God ahead of our vocation, I guess it doesn't seem unreasonable to do the same in terms of scholarships, and it's the Harber's money to do with what they will. I mean, they could have built another building instead. There's already a surefit of places to keep the infrequent rain off your head at ACU, it's paying for being there that is the big trick for most people.

I guess it's our job to crank up endowment so the non-GST students at ACU, the majority, also get assistance to be there.

What is better?

So, direct mail gets File 13'd on receipt.

Phone calls are a nuisance.

There goes the two main tools of communication from ACU to alumni.

The Howard Dean campaign made a huge splash in fundraising and networking prior to Dean's self-immolation in Iowa, but the precedent was set. The Meet-Ups arranged through the Internet were as valuable as the donations to the Dean campaign, and also valuable to the people who showed up to network.

Unfortunately, getting to 80,000 alums through the Internet is going to be much trickier shot than appealing to Dean's target list, the 35% of the American populace that register as Democrats. By comparison, ACU alums are a few needles in a large haystack. We're kind of thin on the ground in places as well, so the business networking potential is less compared to the number of self-identified Democrats.

Our lives are so busy and complex that if ACU wants to be involved in more of our lives, it's going to have to find a way to sync with what we're already doing. For most of us, that's going to be through our kids. For the rest of us, well, everybody has to eat.

What can ACU offer to get people to participate, either in "fun-raiser" events or fundraiser events?

Ask and ye shall...

Becky had suggested that people be able to sign up to have monthly contributions drafted from their checking accounts or credit cards (hey, who doesn't need a few more airline miles -- assuming the airline companies don't go belly-up), and those options are available on the ACU website for credit cards and for EFT bank drafts

Lucas, I'm working on the historical data, which is basically going to entail digging out all of our back issues of ACU Today or some helpful person from the ACU Development Office coughing up the data they already have in Excel format somewhere. Until then, the 2004-2005 and 2003-2004 Annual Fund reports are available here.

If the participation rate was 51% across the board, the data would be easier to find.

16% Part Deux

In the comments for 'Who ARE These Guys', Mark Cawyer thankfully asks to get back on topic about lack of participation. Specifically, he's talking about the 16% contribution thing. It's great to hear from Becky (and Kevin, by extension) as well as Mark, Bill and Jon, but I think that I stepped on my main point by mentioning the low turnout for the reunion dinner. That's not the point. The point is the substantial apathy that greets ACU fundraising.

Larger than the 16% participation from the Class of '90 is the overall participation of 21% of all alumni. That may sound pretty good until you compare it to what other schools can achieve. I have done some light Googling and hit upon Albion College, a small liberal arts school in Michigan about half of ACU's size. Obviously, it's easier to get higher participation with a smaller alumni base, but even some larger schools get spectacular participation. Here is a list of the 2003 highest alumni percentage participation schools in the nation, we would have to more than double overall alumni participation to get into the Top 25.

I have emailed Albion College about this, and to get them up to 51% from 35% took them six years and phenominal effort. Where it pays off is that it boosts our US News and World Report Ranking (which ACU is constantly touting) and can encourage "big fish" donors to continue to contribute. It is a source of pride to Albion College participants, and any time we can get ACU near Princeton on a list of good things, well, that seems like a good thing to me. The Albion College person also said that alumni participation takes 11 years to mature. Well, most of us are past that mark and we're nowhere near 51%.

Note that I say, "WE", because Marci and I have not taken every opportunity to contribute to ACU. I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, and my thought is that most of the people who will read this blog will be in the 16% in this or prior years.

Short of a winning lottery ticket that I found, or a patent on the gizmos I'm constantly coming up with {in theory that is, I'm hopeless at electronics) ACU is unlikely to name a building after me. But enough little fish schooling together will draw big fish, and I can't help but believe that increasing our participation rate, even at the expense of our donation size, is an achievable and worthwhile goal. Half or more of the alumni chipping in $25 or $50 a year will dramatically affect feelings about ACU -- they don't call it "buy-in" for nothing.

ACU graduates a large number of people who enter servant fields like education and ministry, and I don't think for one minute that it's realistic to expect even a hundred dollars a year from people who intentionally sacrificed earning potential for higher goals. But smaller amounts count, and getting that percentage up will improve ACU.

A separate but related question would be, "If you don't want to give to the Annual Fund, what would you rather contribute your $25 to at ACU?" Our class could endow a scholarship with 400 people giving $25, and continuing that year-over-year would put an extra kid (possibly yours) through ACU. Participation is participation, and small targeted donations might improve people's willingness to get involved. Frater Sodalis raised $107,000 for the new intramural fields in 2003, because it was in the name of a beloved Club sponsor.

Do you think that ACU should promote more selective programs for giving, especially small amounts, as a way to increase participation?

A Night At The Musical

One of the many things ACU does very well is musical theater, and we saw Seussical! Saturday night. My wife somehow managed to score us front-row seats, and I have to believe that while she and I would have loved to see Aida, the kids (especially middle daughter, who exhibits early diva traits) really got into Seussical!.

The picture above is of a scene in Act Two where The Cat In The Hat came into the audiance with a baby doll, seeking comfort from an audiance member sitting right beside my three year-old. He handed the doll to her and continued with his shtick, sitting on the lap of the woman next to Ellie and hugging her while answering a cell phone call.

The picture, from a marginal camera phone (Motorola MPx220) is the result of Ellie's innate comic timing, briefly stopping the show while she laughed out loud at The Cat. Of course, when asked about it later she said, "It made me berry angry!", I guess three year-old want attention but only on their terms.

From what I read, Lara Siebert was the actress finally chosen to play the title role in 'Aida', and while all of the cast was great, Lara's Gertude McFuzz owned the show. My daughters have tailfeathers of Gertrude's that fell off the stage as keepsakes, maybe when Lara is rich and famous we can get them autographed or something.

I would have liked to see her play Aida. It would have saved me a couple thousand dollars and a trip to New York -- anything ACU's Musical Theater department does is that good. I hope they can do Spamalot next year, but I'm not holding my breath for that one.

Who ARE those guys?

Taking a clue from Bill Hobbs (and any blogger who gets linked from Instapundit as often as Bill can give me a clue any time he wants), I'm trying to accumulate as many ACU-X bloggers as I can in the links section.

I love Chris like a brother, had Garrett and Mike Lavender in my house for a recruiting visit, labored long into the night at the Optimist with Bill and Ken (from the Flying Pi Ranch), was on SA with Brad, was in club with Val, went on a date with Stephanie (capped off with a speeding ticket, no less -- I was SMOOOV wif da' ladies at ACU, y'all), got married on the same day as Grant, knew Josh's older sister Kelly (could be a cousin, but how many Stites can there be in Cookeville?), I have pretty much every ZOE CD available on the website (still looking for bootlegs, heh!) and was on SA with Brandon Scott back in the day. And if the other folks think Corey is cool, then he's probably cooler than me.

The 'Six Degrees Of Separation' concept drops to about two degrees if you're an ACU-X, it seems.

I don't know if Mike Cope is an ACU-X, but I heard a number of sermons from him during his first few months at Highland, and he has had a great deal of influence on ACU students. My blog will only be improved by linking to his in any event, and even though my writing will no doubt suffer by the comparison I'll swallow my pride and post the link.

If you're an ACU-X and blog, I want to know about it. Drop me an email or leave a comment and you'll be on the list.

What's in a middle name?

Bill Hobbs raises the issue of ACU's continued association with the Churches of Christ during what has been a period of some upheval in the fairly decentralized CofC movement.

There are some much more educated people out there than I on this subject (and some that have actually been to Lectureship in the past 15 years), but I will hazard a guess that ACU remains fairly close to the mainstream. Were ACU dominated by one Abilene Church or another you could make the argument that ACU had become sufficiently factionalized to put off some people, but having recently attended two chapel services I'm thinking not. If Chapel is considered a practical expression of ACU's position on the divisive topics of the day, then what I observed is this:

Projected song lyrics: YES
Projected song notation: NO
Acapella singing: YES
Instruments: NO
Praise Team format for parts: YES for Friday and NO for Alumni
Praise team standing and facing audiance on Friday.
Directive Female Participation in Chapel: NO
'Praise music' vs. 'Old standbys': Pretty much all praise music Friday, mix for Alumni
Dramatic production: Not observed.

Basically, ACU Chapel varies from moderately progressive for students to minimally progressive as programmed for Alumni consumption, IMO, and within the mainstream on both counts, feel free to disagree so long as you post a comment.

In the literature that comes out of ACU, it's obvious that the institution is aware of the controversies (and occasionally contributes to them) but most commonly ACU's expressed position is to stay out of those fights and stick to the things we can all agree on. ACU has an unenviable position, IMO, but I don't see ACU as a bastion of C of C Conservatism. If there's any erosion of support on religious grounds, it would seem to me to be more likely due to a general postmodernist distrust of institutions than any specific act of omission or commission by ACU.

Discuss...

Sixteen Percent -- And No Solution?

I just got home from Abilene Christian University's 2005 Centennial Homecoming, and I have to admit, I'm disappointed. On the other hand, I expected to be disappointed, and from what my wife and I learned, ACU is apparently already well-aware of the cause of my disappointment.

Don't get me wrong, I think ACU's Homecoming was overall well thought-out. They had a lot of entertainment for our children (7, 6 and 3) on Friday night, and that was much appreciated. Our kids went home with the idea that college is a lot of fun with many inflatable slides, jumpy houses and wall climbing activities, along with face-painting and balloon hats. Although current ACU students have a somewhat cushier experience than we did from 1986-90 (the on-campus Starbucks is a major clue that things are different), I somehow doubt that such games and distractions are the sum of current or future educational offerings, but my kids' first impression of The Hill is a positive one. We bailed on the game (dark-thirty club breakfasts and kids that need naps to make it through the 8pm Homecoming Musical required that), but we did almost everything ACU had to offer at its' Centennial Homecoming.

The let-down was in the general dearth of people from our class that made the trip back for the 15-year reunion. One of thirty-plus from my Frat pledge class besides me, three (including my wife) from the 1987 Siggie pledge class. Our class dinner was comfortably handled with six ten-person tables, including about a dozen children, our helpful Alumni Association person Justin and a few empty seats. While I had hoped to see more people show up, I'm resigned to being disappointed. I'm pretty sure that without some drastic intervention our class Jumped the Shark in terms of alumni participation back in 2000 with our 10th annual reunion. The cohort I entered ACU with in 1986 was and remains an exceptional group of people; they own their own businesses and are key figures in the businesses of others, are pillars in their churches and respected professionals on the cusp of the big 4-0, about to enter the most productive 20 years of their lives, but I don't see ACU being much of a part of their lives, and certainly not a part of their financial future. The 'Sixteen Percent' in the title is the percentage of my fellow ACU Alumni of the Class of 1990 that gave ANYTHING to the ACU Annual Fund, an abysmally low number. Why? Rightly or wrongly, it's being called The Teague Effect.

The Teague Effect

Dr. Bill Teague served as ACU President from 1981-1991. During this time, tuition and fees increased dramatically, student enrollment peaked and then decreased (only recently has ACU enrolled more students than in the early 1980s) along with significant faculty turnover in key colleges of ACU, notably the College of Business Administration. While we saw the campus expand with needed additions in the Bible and Business Buildings, those of us who passed through ACU did so without much development of personal warmth toward Dr. Teague and in some cases with well-developed animosity toward an administration we rightly or wrongly blame for a near-100% increase in tuition from 1986-1990, resulting in friends and classmates having to finish their education at more cost-efficient institutions. Dr. Teague was never accorded the personal warmth that current or former students express toward Dr. John Stevens or Dr. Royce Money, his predecessor and successor, respectively. In fact, many ACU grads of my generation are downright hostile to the school for nebulous reasons they have some difficulty in expressing and ACU Alumni Relations apparently have difficulty in overcoming.

Dr. Teague is currently in poor health owing to a stroke and this is in no way meant to hurt him or his family in their time of challenge. My relations with Dr. Teague were always very cordial, I found him to have a dry and razor-sharp wit; he spoke at the Frater Sodalis 60th anniversary breakfast and had the room dissolving in gales of laughter. He is no ogre, he benefitted the school in tangible ways that still pay dividends in the form of facilities that allow growth on The Hill. Somebody had to build those buildings, and it's possible that he drew the black bean to be President during a time when contributors had an 'Edifice Complex' rather than wanting to help students through increasing endowment and scholarships -- the worldwide collapse in oil revenues certainly didn't help some sources of ACU cashflow and he would be regarded as stupid had he turned down money for buildings if that was the money that was available from 1981-1991. Dr. Teague may be many things, but I never heard anyone call him stupid.

Money Makes A Difference

The contrast between our time at ACU and my sister-in-law's experience from 1991-1996 started my thinking about how ACU had changed, and much for the better, with Dr. Money as President. Dr. Money is personally popular with the students, approachable in a way that Dr. Teague was not. He exchanged schedules with a random student one day, he had students over to his house, and they loved it. What a difference from the alumni of my years, who in essence clenched their sheepskin in their fist and stomped off to parts unknown without a backward glance. I thought, "Man, is it going to be difficult to get people from my time at ACU to have anything to do with the school," and as it turns out I was right. More than that, it had been noticed by ACU's Alumni Affairs department. There is a noticiable dip in participation in alumni activities from students who attended during Dr. Teague's tenure as President that seems to track independant of other variables such as income, family size, etc. Something about being in Abilene and at ACU from 1981-1991 makes it much less likely that a given alumnus will respond to anything from ACU that arrives in the mail.

Let's Talk

I'm writing this as an effort to start some dialogue about The Teague Effect, and what can be done about it.

If there is an animus that has made its way like a virus into our ACU Alumni DNA, is it permanent? What is it directed against -- the man? The school? The times?

Is this negative experience the same for everyone, or are there some types of graduates (COBA, social club members, etc.) that feel it more or less strongly?

Is this really just a statisitical error wrongly associated with one person, and is this better attributed to our being in the 'gap' between Gen X and the Baby Boomers? Are we just not joiners?

Please leave your comments on this page, and publicize the page to anyone you know that is either a Teague-era ACU vet, or a Stevens/Money-era grad who can give a summary of their relationship with the school as an alumni. Somebody needs to be talking about this, and at least Blogger is free.

The Humble Opinion Of The Host

I hope this won't stifle any discussion, but in the interest of full disclosure I'll tell you how I feel.

First, I arrived at ACU knowing one other person, and she didn't know anyone else, either. A little over three years later I came as close as you can to being SA President without actually being one, and to do that I had to love the school and get to know a large number of people that were on campus in the Spring of 1989. I love the school, love the guys in my club, love intensely the wife I met at ACU and my kids who will attend ACU (or pay for the college of their choice themselves), and love the career that ACU helped prepare me for as a pre-med biology major. I want the best for the school.

Second, my class finished with considerably fewer people than we started with, in part due to the tuition increases. Guys in Frats (and I assume in other clubs) had to make hard choices, including joining the military just to stay at ACU. The opinion of the administration was not perceived as empathetic, to put it mildly. It hurt me to see potential lifelong friends leave ACU for financial reasons, though I am sure those weren't the only reasons people left ACU. ACU is still an awfully expensive place to 'find yourself' if you don't have an academic course firmly in mind. Those of us who finished often feel like we did so despite the actions of the administration, not because of them.

Third, I think that the Alumni Association should do some polling specifically directed toward Teague Era graduates. Is this really a barrier to our participation in ACU Alumni activities on a larger scale or in larger numbers? Did we have a 'sub-optimal ACU experience' compared to other classes, and if so is that our perception or do others also think the school hit a dry patch for a decade or so? What gets measured gets managed, without some objective data I'm afraid that me and the Sweet Sixteen will be all that ever show up or contribute to ACU out of the Class of 1990, and that would be a rotten shame if it turns out to be preventable. It will be very much a shame if 16% of our children attend ACU, and the rest choose a popular alternative like Texas A&M and the Aggies For Christ program at College Church of Christ.

I would hope that a candid addressing of the Teague Effect by the current Administration could lead to some movement on both sides -- an acknowlegement of the problem from ACU and forgiveness from the many former students that for one reason or another mentally utter 'Feh!' when ACU is mentioned. Until almuni participation gets above 50% across the board, ACU will neither be taken seriously as a fundraising school nor raise the endowment needed to continue to attract faculty and keep tuition increases under control. Even the promise of matching funds for the Centennial year from a generous anonymous donor (thank you and God Bless you whoever you are) couldn't get more than one in six of the Class of '90 to part with even the cost of a DVD to help the school from which we graduated, and to which some of us hope to send our kids.

There is a problem. There will be a problem until we address it. Even if it's not the problem that I think it is, I want to know what the problem actually is and how to address that problem.

Can you help me out here?

Thanks,

Darren Duvall, MD
ACU Class of 1990