Such an interesting question, with so many interesting aspects.
While it may be the case that you are asking questions that your average alumni counter would not ask, I think that they’re important questions, and it’s commendable that you’re asking them. Let me touch on a few related points.
1. Growth of Unique Donors over the Course of the Campaign
I would agree with John that growth in the number of unique alumni who have contributed to the campaign is a valuable—perhaps the most valuable—measure. It shows the trend for the campaign, and parallels the cumulative counting of campaign commitments. Also, it avoids the whole question of the alumni base, avoids the need to decide when you are going to include new graduates in calculating participation, etc.
Measuring participation each year separately (donor that year only vs. alumni solicited that year only) doesn’t seem so helpful to me. You might have a big push one year, and campaign participation that year would be high, but some alumni might, for example, figure that they made their campaign already an not give the next year, so a single-year-by-year figure can bounce all over the place and not really answer the most important questions, like are you pulling more alumni into the fold as the campaign continues.
Even cumulative year-by-year participation figures are subject to variations in the alumni population. You might be graduating larger classes than you have historically, and recently alumni may give at a comparatively lower rate (they do at many institutions, in my experience), and even if you don’t count them in their year of graduation you have to start including them sometime, so you may find that even if you increase the number of donors, the growth in the participation rate is reduced or even nullified, because of the rising alumni count.
So growth in the number of unique donors during the campaign tells a key story. (Counting the number or repeat donors can also be interesting!)
2. Alumni Donors and the CASE Campaign Survey
Interestingly, I would argue, the CASE Campaign Survey quite appropriately avoids the whole question of alumni participation. True, it counts the cumulative number of alumni donors over the life of campaign, which, as we’ve said, is a good measure. It also asks for the number of alumni of record, but not over the life of the campaign, just one a single date, June 30 of the reporting year. Those are apples-to-oranges figures, one date vs. the life of the campaign.
I would argue that the alumni of record figure on the Campaign Survey is most helpfully understood as contextualizing the campaign reporting, just as the operating budget for the year, asked immediately previously, and the counts of students and parents of record on the same date, asked immediately after, provide context for understanding the entire report (raising 50 million dollars is different for an institution with 1,000 students and 35,000 alumni and a corresponding budget is different that raising 50 million dollars for a school that has 15,000 students and 600,000 alumni and a corresponding budget). All of these questions appear on the Campaign Survey in the section entitled “Institutional Profile” (as opposed to the VSE, where the alumni counts are in the section about additional details on gifts by individuals, and not in the institutional profile with the questions about budget and enrollment).
3. Alumni and the VSE and U.S. News
At the same time, I have a different understanding of the counting rules for U.S. News and the VSE. While the Campaign Survey does ask for alumni of record on a specific date, that’s not what the rules for the VSE say (even if, at one time, perhaps the best that we could do was to report that way).
I would argue (and have long argued) that just as the donor count on the VSE includes everyone who has given during the entire reporting year, the count of alumni of record should include anyone who was “of record” at any time during the entire reporting year, and the count of alumni solicited (note, not “solicitable” alumni) should include anyone who was solicited during the entire reporting year.
It is true that, at some point in the past, our advancement information systems as implemented weren’t very good at figuring out who had been “of record” at any point during an entire year, so it was common practice to pick one date and just count alumni of record at that one date. But, in my view, that was never more than a kluge, and with modern data management practices there are any number of ways to report the accurate number.
Similarly, in the past, advancement information systems didn’t keep track of actual solicitations, so we used another kluge, substituting a count of “solicitable” alumni for the correct figure, alumni solicited. And, since calculating who had been “solicitable” at any point during the year was subject to the same issues as determining who had been “of record” at any point during the year, we used a similar kluge, identifying alumni who were “of record” on one date and then subtracting any alumni in that population who were marked “no contact” or “no solicit” as of that date. But, again, with modern data management practices, there should be a record of appeals/solicitations, so we should be able to use the figure that is actually requested, the number of alumni who were actually solicited.
Also in the past, it was not-uncommon practice to further warp the reporting by counting as a donor every alum who had made a gift at any point during the reporting year, even if, for example, they had died during the year, after making their gift, and weren’t included in the “of record” snapshot taken at the end of the year. So we counted them as donors, in the numerator of the participation calculation, but not in the denominator, which is really bad practice. If you’re counting the percentage of a larger group with some additional characteristic, you can’t include people who aren’t in the larger group! And I was very happy that my colleagues in Institutional Effectiveness clearly would have refused to let us get away with that—more than a decade ago!—even if we’d been so inclined.
Now, it’s true that the number of donors who make a gift during the year and who subsequently die or become lost by a late-in-the-year census date is likely to be small. It’s also true that the number of alumni who were “of record” at any point during the year necessarily includes all alumni who are “of record” on some arbitrary date, with likely some additional alumni who were “of record” at other times during the year, so using the true figure can only result in more alumni of record and a slightly lower participation figure, so there is an incentive to count all the donors during the year but only the alumni of record on one date, but, again, the differences are likely to be small. Still, I would argue, it’s valuable to understand what is actually being requested and when we are using an approximation of that figure as the best available data.
My US$0.02 worth; the usual disclaimers apply.
Good luck!
Alan
Alan S. Hejnal
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From: Advancement Services Discussion List <
FUNDSVCS@LISTSERV.FUNDSVCS.ORG> On Behalf Of John Taylor
Sent: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 4:56 PM
To:
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Subject: Re: [FUNDSVCS] Campaign alumni participation - best practices question
I really think this is not the way to go (a cumulative approach). Instead, I would report exactly what you report to CASE and US News on an annual basis and reflect that as a growth chart. The more critical (IMHO) metric to track during a campaign is the growth of unique donors.
If you MUST report a campaign alumni participation rate I would follow the same rules as US News and CASE. Use an "as of" date and have as the denominator all living and not lost alumni ON THAT DATE, and the numerator is all of those who have given. You needn't worry about those who gave and have since passed - they will not impact the percentage significantly.
John
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FUNDSVCS@LISTSERV.FUNDSVCS.ORG> On Behalf Of Marianne Pelletier
Sent: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 4:18 PM
To:
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Subject: Re: [FUNDSVCS] Campaign alumni participation - best practices question
Ingrid,
You are, indeed, asking questions that your average alumni counter would not ask. I would suggest running a separate report for each year, counting how many solicitable alumni you had (including new grads and excluding those who passed on) and how many gave. You can then take an average or aggregate the total of each side of the equation and then compute it.
I agree that you don’t want to water down your prior years’ participation rates with ungraduated alumni.
--Marianne
________________________________
On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 4:15 PM Zepp, Ingrid <
izepp@ursinus.edu<mailto:
izepp@ursinus.edu>> wrote:
Good afternoon,
I'm looking for some thoughts on best practices. We are a small college well into a multi-year comprehensive campaign. I've been asked to provide the alumni participation rate for the campaign to date. What are best practices around stating our total alumni during this period?
I know what my current number of solicitable alumni is (including those who just became alumni during the campaign). But what do I do about counting those who have passed away since the campaign began, and may have made a gift (or certainly had the opportunity to make a gift)? Should I count anyone who was a living, located alumnus at any point since the campaign began? Or am I overthinking this and should just work with my current-year alumni base? When the next class graduates later this month, my percentage would conceivably actually go DOWN if I then include them. How have others handled this issue?
Thanks, Ingrid
Ingrid Heggoy Zepp, bCRE-Pro
Director of Advancement Operations
Phone: 610-409-3280
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[Ursinus College]
Ursinus College, 601 E. Main Street, Collegeville, PA 19426-1000