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?
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?
posted by Darren Duvall at 10:12 AM
11 Comments:
It doesn't seem like ACU goes after the $25 dollars a year crowd. And honestly, until now I had no idea what the alumni donation percentages were. I thought our class did pretty well at our 10 year and assumed most classes do well. Has the need been communicated? Has ACU really tried to get average Joe & Jill Alumni to contribute outside of reunion years? Maybe they have and do and I just missed it.
I also think ACU grads may, to some extent, feel like earning a degree cost enough that ACU doesn't need, or perhaps even deserve, any more of their money. Not that I feel that way really... I just haven't thought about giving to ACUmuch.
It doesn't seem like ACU goes after the $25 dollars a year crowd.
Yes, they don't publicize that. But the 16% will probably give what they're going to give anyway. Tack on another 30% that give $25 and you have...well, an extra 30% at $25 a head. That would seem to be, um, more.
Maybe that's too obvious, I dunno. I'm sure there's a science to alumni donations and ACU has that playbook. But NPR seems to be pretty gleeful for their $25-50 donations.
I also think ACU grads may, to some extent, feel like earning a degree cost enough that ACU doesn't need, or perhaps even deserve, any more of their money.
Entirely possible, and comparison of giving between schools is (I would imagine) fraught with income disparity issues. Ivy League schools would tend to get people from a different socioeconomic strata than most ACU students, and from what Mark and Becky have said elsewhere, times are tight and free cashflow in the middle and upper-middle classes that typify ACU grads is getting hard to come by. The overwhelming majority of ACU grads don't have a trust fund to tap so they can compete with other grads for who's listed first in the alumni giving report. God bless the Don Williams and Mabee families who do, but that ain't all of us.
The issue is not so much what ACU wants, it's what we decide to give them. I'd rather see more people give a little every year than fewer give a bunch, is all.
Everyone posting, with an exception or two, met their husband/wife at ACU. Feelings of nostalgia are stronger if you can share them with your spouse. Of course I have the strongest feelings for the university where I met and married my wife. ACU is important to ME, but our time at "our university" is special to US.
This is an attempt to explain why some might not attend reunion events or participate in fundraising for a particular institution. My wife and I have distributed academic allegiances and ACU will only benefit when I promote the cause.
So ACU’s task, if they choose to accept it, is to reconnect with Alumni for a worthwhile cause…calls and postcards don’t do much for me. This blog has helped me reconnect with my ACU experience more effectively than ACU has in the last 15 years.
Of course everyone else has so perfectly described the busy life style of young families in our demographic. It is unlikely that I will return to the ACU campus until one or more of my three children decide to attend “daddy's” school. That is possibly only 10 years from now. Thanks for the opportunity to respond.
God bless!
'90
By the way that anonymous up there was me. Sometimes blogger forgets who I am! My husband graduated from Angelo State and has ties to that school, but he wants our kids to have the ACU experience.
As distance learning becomes a greater reality, one wonders whether money poured into bricks and mortar is proper stewardship. And yet, ACU is doing more of that than they are creating scholarship opportunities.
Hey Darren - interesting site you have going, and I've enjoyed reading it. I have only been back to ACU once since I graduated, and that was for my sister's graduation where I spent maybe an hour on the campus.
I've never felt any connection to ACU after the day I graduated, and the only time I hear from them are on those Sunday night phone calls where they ask me at least 3 times (as mandated by the school it seems) if I can donate. I have many friends from ACU that live in this area (Nashville) and most of them would say the exact same thing. As was mentioned in another comment, the ACU alumni organization in this area is zero (a big part of their problem).
My wife and I (we did not meet at ACU) no longer attend a C of C, which is probably a major reason for my disconnect.
While I will certainly help my 2 boys make informed decisions concerning their choice for college, I would never say to them that if they do not attend ACU they will have to pay for another choice on their own - that just seems defeating to the purpose of higher education to me.
It seems my views run against the norm here, but that's how it looks from my side of the fence...
Thanks!
Todd,
Great to hear from you...although from a recording/producing standpoint we've been "hearing" from you for years, this kind of communication is welcome as well.
You're on the blogroll as an ACU-X.
Sounds like ACU's development efforts are neither innovative nor effective at reaching most people. Now we just need to figure out what might make you part with $25 a year, or a little more depending on how generous you might feel at a given moment.
It also sounds like there might be more to Bill Hobbs' assertion that ACU needs to be sure that they present themselves as a Abilene CHRISTIAN University and not Abilene CHURCH OF CHRIST University, if that attitude is off-putting to people who worship at nondenominational churches.
PS: Marci says 'Hi!'
Darren
Anonymous (not SG:)),
Distance Learning is a great innovation but it is not applicable to all disciplines. Both my wife (Advertising/Graphic Design) and I (Biology) had lab-intensive class schedules that don't lend themselves to distance learning. It's not like you have the glassware and chemicals at home to do the lab section of organic chemistry, after all (and after the redecoration of the ceiling tiles I did my sophomore year with the Williams' reaction experiment, most people wouldn't want to try that in the living room anyway).
Distance learning is not free, though -- there's still servers, IT support and faculty time, and while I agree that ACU should support as much of that as possible where it is applicable, the faculty involved still need day jobs, need to do their own research and publishing,etc. It's not a universal answer, and ignoring bricks in favor of clicks has been the demise of more than one company in the past 5 years.
I do agree that focusing efforts on scholarships would be something that I would support over more structures, and that ACU should find a way to be up-front about offering that opportunity.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
I'd be interested in seeing the recent numbers (past 10 classes or so) on the giving percentages of classes in their 15th anniversary. Is ours so atypically low? Or have the numbers been steadily declining over the years? (C'mon Darren, Scott, and Mark...you guys are men of science and/or numbers...do some of that statistical analysis stuff...I'm just a word guy.)
As an employee of the Alumni Relations office, I would LOVE to know what sorts of things we can do to enhance our presence in those "far away places" like Nashville. We have had a couple of networking events in the Nashville area over the past 2 1/2 years...but that obviously doesn't attract everyone.
There -- how's that for another topic for your blog! BT!
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