Think back. Come back. Give back. Much of what we do in advancement engagement, or alumni relations (depending on your philosophy), is offering graduates participation opportunities based on nostalgia and looking backward. We’ve done this for eons.

Homecoming is the prime example of this, and we’re currently in season.

Typically culminating in a football game, Homecoming is an annual tradition at many schools designed to tug at nostalgic heartstrings. Here’s the problem with Homecoming: it’s no longer a growth strategy; it’s a maintenance program. Many, if not most, colleges and universities do it because they always have, not necessarily because it represents a growth strategy. Said differently, they can’t stop doing Homecoming even if they wanted to.

So, given that Homecoming isn’t going anywhere, how can we turn it into an effective tactic for growing alumni and donor engagement?

Homecoming needs to become about the future.

College itself is about the future. We’re educating the young people who will take the reins in every facet of life and become leaders in society. The research that’s currently underway will someday change lives, but not yet. Students are incubating the earliest ideas for their future businesses.

Those enrolled in or working for colleges and universities are thinking about today and tomorrow, not the past. In fact, most education organizations are actively pushing back against an entrenched “we’ve always done it this way” mentality, with clear motivations to change and meet the current macroeconomic and cultural moment.

But to make Homecoming about the future, it needs to become about volunteerism at scale. It’s no longer a sit-back-and-revel in nostalgia program for alumni. Instead, it’s about putting alumni to work, engaging students and faculty, and helping to light the runway for what comes next.

Results from the National Alumni Survey clearly show that recent graduates want a more authentic, relevant connection with their alma mater. And they want to help students as volunteers.

Instead of Homecoming, we need a Futures Week.

Ok, let’s keep the Homecoming football game and tailgate party so we can keep those alumni and donors who do engage because of nostalgia, but the idea is to make the annual celebration about the future by involving alumni volunteers across the campus: in the classroom, in the weight room, and in the dark room.

Advancement leaders must evolve their thinking around signature programs, instead of assuming every question has an event as the answer. If we’re taking the National Alumni Survey results seriously, we need to start with the question, “How can we provide meaningful opportunities for alumni to help students at scale?” If the answer is an event, then fine. An event featuring an alumni panel can be a great way to help students by sharing stories, advice, and reflections.

Coming ‘home’ should be about helping students, not partying, and not a one-way speech where the university talks at its alumni.

I wrote last week about what it would take to build and sustain something like a Futures Week -> Homecoming Game sequence. Senior leadership must work together to ensure faculty and staff think about how to involve alumni as volunteers. The Alumni Office then plays a central role in identifying alumni, coordinating involvement, and ensuring a great experience.

Creating a Futures Week, or something like it, is key to updating strategies and tactics that help education organizations stimulate more generosity and investment. Students get to witness this extraordinary moment, with alumni coming back in droves to help them. I’m often asked to help assess how to build a culture of philanthropy. It starts with graduates giving their time in a highly visible way, and teaches an important lesson about what it means to be an alum: someone who is generous with their time and goes out of their way to pay it forward (not back).

About Speaking Engagement

This week we wrapped up Mallory Erickson’s Faculty-In-Residence experience here on SE with a live Symposium. If you haven’t listened yet, you can check it out on the SE LinkedIn page or the Keynote podcast feed. I’m grateful to Mallory for coming along for the ride and giving this a shot.

We’re also about to kick off the next FIR with Jay Le Roux Dillon. Dr. Dillon is the Chief Alumni Officer at Cal Berkeley and also an expert in Alumni Identity. Jay has a ton of great insights into our field and I’m so excited to have him join us for this extended contributor partnership. If you haven’t read up on Jay’s research, definitely have a look.

We have his live Symposium on the calendar already for Tuesday, November 10th at 12:30 pm EST. Please block your calendars and plan to join us.

About the Next Keynote

On next week’s Keynote pod, my special guest is Sarah Winkler. Sarah is SVP at INVNT Higher Ed. She’s an expert experience designer and has helped some of the best schools on the planet develop campaign kick-offs, road shows, and other high-stakes events.

Although I admit to being a bit of a closet AI-doomer myself, one area where I think it’s going to do amazing things is helping create personalized, immersive experiences. We talk about that and more. Join us!

Homecoming is the prime example of this, and we’re currently in season.

Typically culminating in a football game, Homecoming is an annual tradition at many schools designed to tug at nostalgic heartstrings. Here’s the problem with Homecoming: it’s no longer a growth strategy; it’s a maintenance program. Many, if not most, colleges and universities do it because they always have, not necessarily because it represents a growth strategy. Said differently, they can’t stop doing Homecoming even if they wanted to.

Speaking Engagement is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

So, given that Homecoming isn’t going anywhere, how can we turn it into an effective tactic for growing alumni and donor engagement?

Homecoming needs to become about the future.

College itself is about the future. We’re educating the young people who will take the reins in every facet of life and become leaders in society. The research that’s currently underway will someday change lives, but not yet. Students are incubating the earliest ideas for their future businesses.

Those enrolled in or working for colleges and universities are thinking about today and tomorrow, not the past. In fact, most education organizations are actively pushing back against an entrenched “we’ve always done it this way” mentality, with clear motivations to change and meet the current macroeconomic and cultural moment.

But to make Homecoming about the future, it needs to become about volunteerism at scale. It’s no longer a sit-back-and-revel in nostalgia program for alumni. Instead, it’s about putting alumni to work, engaging students and faculty, and helping to light the runway for what comes next.

Results from the National Alumni Survey clearly show that recent graduates want a more authentic, relevant connection with their alma mater. And they want to help students as volunteers.

Instead of Homecoming, we need a Futures Week.

Ok, let’s keep the Homecoming football game and tailgate party so we can keep those alumni and donors who do engage because of nostalgia, but the idea is to make the annual celebration about the future by involving alumni volunteers across the campus: in the classroom, in the weight room, and in the dark room.

Advancement leaders must evolve their thinking around signature programs, instead of assuming every question has an event as the answer. If we’re taking the National Alumni Survey results seriously, we need to start with the question, “How can we provide meaningful opportunities for alumni to help students at scale?” If the answer is an event, then fine. An event featuring an alumni panel can be a great way to help students by sharing stories, advice, and reflections.

Coming ‘home’ should be about helping students, not partying, and not a one-way speech where the university talks at its alumni.

I wrote last week about what it would take to build and sustain something like a Futures Week -> Homecoming Game sequence. Senior leadership must work together to ensure faculty and staff think about how to involve alumni as volunteers. The Alumni Office then plays a central role in identifying alumni, coordinating involvement, and ensuring a great experience.

Creating a Futures Week, or something like it, is key to updating strategies and tactics that help education organizations stimulate more generosity and investment. Students get to witness this extraordinary moment, with alumni coming back in droves to help them. I’m often asked to help assess how to build a culture of philanthropy. It starts with graduates giving their time in a highly visible way, and teaches an important lesson about what it means to be an alum: someone who is generous with their time and goes out of their way to pay it forward (not back).

About Speaking Engagement

This week we wrapped up Mallory Erickson’s Faculty-In-Residence experience here on SE with a live Symposium. If you haven’t listened yet, you can check it out on the SE LinkedIn page or the Keynote podcast feed. I’m grateful to Mallory for coming along for the ride and giving this a shot.

We’re also about to kick off the next FIR with Jay Le Roux Dillon. Dr. Dillon is the Chief Alumni Officer at Cal Berkeley and also an expert in Alumni Identity. Jay has a ton of great insights into our field and I’m so excited to have him join us for this extended contributor partnership. If you haven’t read up on Jay’s research, definitely have a look.

We have his live Symposium on the calendar already for Tuesday, November 10th at 12:30 pm EST. Please block your calendars and plan to join us.

About the Next Keynote

On next week’s Keynote pod, my special guest is Sarah Winkler. Sarah is SVP at INVNT Higher Ed. She’s an expert experience designer and has helped some of the best schools on the planet develop campaign kick-offs, road shows, and other high-stakes events.

Although I admit to being a bit of a closet AI-doomer myself, one area where I think it’s going to do amazing things is helping create personalized, immersive experiences. We talk about that and more. Join us!

Speaking Engagement is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

That said, we’re all fundraisers. I believe that wholeheartedly, and even though I sometimes refer to the “development side” and the “engagement side” of advancement as a sort of short hand, it’s just one big team and should be a holistic effort to stimulate generosity and investment.

In the Symposium which we streamed live on LinkedIn, we get deep into Mallory’s research. Scott Francis from Auburn University and Andrea Devine from UVA led the discussion, and I helped make sure we were on-time.

Thanks for listening and let me know what you think!

Also, mark your calendars for the next Faculty-in-Residence Live Symposium with Dr. Jay Le Roux Dillon on Tuesday, November 10 at 12:30 pm ET.

That said, we’re all fundraisers. I believe that wholeheartedly, and even though I sometimes refer to the “development side” and the “engagement side” of advancement as a sort of short hand, it’s just one big team and should be a holistic effort to stimulate generosity and investment.

In the Symposium which we streamed live on LinkedIn, we get deep into Mallory’s research. Scott Francis from Auburn University and Andrea Devine from UVA led the discussion, and I helped make sure we were on-time.

Thanks for listening and let me know what you think!

Also, mark your calendars for the next Faculty-in-Residence Live Symposium with Dr. Jay Le Roux Dillon on Tuesday, November 10 at 12:30 pm ET.

Think about the last conversation you were dreading. The one where the stakes felt high, where you cared about the outcome and about the person on the other side of it, and where you genuinely weren’t sure how it was going to go.

Most of us do one of two things with a conversation like that.

We rehearse it, meaning that we run it in our heads on the drive…

Read more

He’s a data person, and he splits donors into three groups: the positive ones already giving, the neutral ones who quietly ignore us, and the negative ones we’ve somehow lost. Most shops obsess over the first group. Cameron argues the neutral and lapsed are the most undervalued people on the list, and the reason they’re stuck there is almost always the same, we led with an ask before we’d earned it. Not every message has to be a solicitation. Sometimes, he says, the first email should just tell a story, or carry a little whimsy, a coloring sheet even, and build from there.

Instead of telling donors their story, at USC, they ask for it. Cameron uses himself as the example: fresh out of school he’d have given to his political science department, but a decade later he’s a foodie with 88 houseplants, and the meaningful ask now is food science or plant biology. “We flipped it to where we’re not telling them the story, we’re asking them to tell us their story.” Get that right and people raise their hand, sometimes for gifts far bigger than anyone expected.

Big Themes This Week

• Being someone’s alum doesn’t mean you’ve earned the right to ask. Trust comes first, and the ask comes after.

• The neutral and lapsed donors are the most undervalued on your list, usually because we solicited before we earned it.

• Flip the storytelling. On the cultivation side, stop telling donors their story and start asking them to tell you theirs.

Team Discussion Questions

• Where are we asking before we’ve earned the right to ask?

• How are we treating our neutral and lapsed donors, and what would it take to re-earn their trust?

• Do we know what our donors care about now, or only what they cared about as students?

Faculty-in-Residence

Topic: Faculty-in-Residence Symposium with Mallory Erickson

Date: Wednesday, September 23 from 11:30 am - 12:30 pm ET

Speakers: Mallory Erickson, Kristin Hanson, Andrea Devine, Scott Francis

We’ll conclude our first Faculty-in-Residence experience with Mallory Erickson by hosting a round table discussion on the themes from What The Fundraising. The Symposium will be hosted by Contributing Editor, Kristin Hanson, and led by SE Members, Andrea Devine from the University of Virginia and Scott Francis from Auburn University.

Register for the Live Stream

He’s a data person, and he splits donors into three groups: the positive ones already giving, the neutral ones who quietly ignore us, and the negative ones we’ve somehow lost. Most shops obsess over the first group. Cameron argues the neutral and lapsed are the most undervalued people on the list, and the reason they’re stuck there is almost always the same, we led with an ask before we’d earned it. Not every message has to be a solicitation. Sometimes, he says, the first email should just tell a story, or carry a little whimsy, a coloring sheet even, and build from there.

Instead of telling donors their story, at USC, they ask for it. Cameron uses himself as the example: fresh out of school he’d have given to his political science department, but a decade later he’s a foodie with 88 houseplants, and the meaningful ask now is food science or plant biology. “We flipped it to where we’re not telling them the story, we’re asking them to tell us their story.” Get that right and people raise their hand, sometimes for gifts far bigger than anyone expected.

Big Themes This Week

• Being someone’s alum doesn’t mean you’ve earned the right to ask. Trust comes first, and the ask comes after.

• The neutral and lapsed donors are the most undervalued on your list, usually because we solicited before we earned it.

• Flip the storytelling. On the cultivation side, stop telling donors their story and start asking them to tell you theirs.

Team Discussion Questions

• Where are we asking before we’ve earned the right to ask?

• How are we treating our neutral and lapsed donors, and what would it take to re-earn their trust?

• Do we know what our donors care about now, or only what they cared about as students?

Faculty-in-Residence

Topic: Faculty-in-Residence Symposium with Mallory Erickson

Date: Wednesday, September 23 from 11:30 am - 12:30 pm ET

Speakers: Mallory Erickson, Kristin Hanson, Andrea Devine, Scott Francis

We’ll conclude our first Faculty-in-Residence experience with Mallory Erickson by hosting a round table discussion on the themes from What The Fundraising. The Symposium will be hosted by Contributing Editor, Kristin Hanson, and led by SE Members, Andrea Devine from the University of Virginia and Scott Francis from Auburn University.

Register for the Live Stream

Watch the full length version (58 mins) on YouTube.

When King’s team needed instructors, they didn’t hire consultants. They went to their VP for advancement, Nate Stewart, and asked which alumni were doing this work for real. The list included the head of AI solutions for the federal government at Microsoft and a founder building on agentic AI. They said yes immediately, and one of them hadn’t set foot on campus in over a decade. It’s a way to engage exactly the alumni who are hardest to reach, the busy, accomplished ones a reunion invite never lands with.

What I appreciated is how King thinks about the college’s job. He’s blunt that higher ed has been “reactive as opposed to proactive and slow to embrace change,” and he treats Roanoke’s small size as the advantage rather than the handicap.

Most college students today are adults, not eighteen-year-olds, and 43 million Americans have some college and no credential. King wants Roanoke to be their partner for lifelong learning, not just for four years. And the vehicle for that turns out to double as one of the sharpest alumni engagement plays I’ve seen in a while: ask your most accomplished graduates not for money, but to come back and teach.

Big Themes This Week

• The most reachable version of an alum may be a teacher, not a donor. Roanoke’s WorkAI Lab is taught entirely by alumni, including some who hadn’t been back in a decade.

• Small can be an advantage. Roanoke went from a late-night idea to a launched program in weeks, and from a community need to a new degree in under a year.

• The student of the future is often an adult. With 43 million Americans holding some college and no credential, lifelong learning is the opportunity, not the alternative.

Team Discussion Questions

• Which of our accomplished alumni would say yes if we asked them to teach or mentor rather than give?

• Where is our size or structure slowing us down, and where could it actually let us move faster?

• Are we built to serve alumni as lifelong learners, or only as graduates and donors?

Last week, Allison Kerivan, Executive Director of Advancement Relations at Bentley University, gave our Agora presentation on their Alumni Conference, now in its third year. If you haven’t yet (and you’re a member), definitely have a listen because it was an excellent example of how to present a case study.

Allison’s talk perfectly delivered the Agora’s …

Read more

Allison’s talk perfectly delivered the Agora’s …

Read more

It’s a privilege to announce that Tristan Alltimes is joining our team of contributing editors this fall. Tristan is a globally recognized leader in alumni engagement and fundraising in education. I’m really excited to have his voice and perspective as part of our ongoing conversation and to widen the aperture of our conversation here on SE from being primarily U.S. based to one that welcomes and stimulates discussion about stakeholder engagement in Europe and Asia-Pacific in addition to North America and elsewhere around the globe.

You’ll be able to catch Tristan’s writing and voice on the Breakout podcasts as we forge ahead this semester.

Welcome, Tristan!

If you’ve never met Tristan, here’s a bio he shared with me:

Tristan Alltimes is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Alltimes Advancement Consulting (AAC), which works with universities, business schools, colleges, and independent, state and international schools worldwide to help unlock the full strategic value of their alumni communities through purposeful, mutually beneficial engagement.

His 30-year career began in retail and has spanned technology, motorsport, tourism and the arts. The past two decades have been spent delivering and leading advancement programmes, most notably as lead for alumni and supporter engagement at Durham University (UK), Melbourne Business School (Australia) and Newcastle University Business School (UK), engaging a collective community of over 260,000 alumni and supporters across more than 185 countries.

Tristan is an established advancement practitioner and thought-leader, speaking and contributing to multiple industry conferences, workshops and publications over the course of his career. He has also held senior volunteer roles with CASE, including Alumni Relations Commissioner, Europe Annual Conference Track Chair, Faculty member for the Alumni Relations Institute, and Circle of Excellence Awards Judge.

Tristan currently writes Alltimes Intelligence, the monthly AAC newsletter for alumni engagement professionals, advancement leaders, and the institutional leaders who believe alumni communities are one of education’s most valuable assets, with a growing focus on how AI is reshaping the profession. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.

Faculty-in-Residence

For six weeks beginning August 17 - September 25, Speaking Engagement welcomes Mallory Erickson — executive coach, creator and host of the What the Fundraising podcast, and author of the book by the same name — as our inaugural resident.

We’ll have a final live Symposium event for members on September 23.

Learn More (Members)

The conversation turns that finding into a question for advancement: since institutions can't recreate a varsity team, how do they cultivate the smaller, more specific connections, a club, a major, a shared campus experience, that carry the same weight years later? They pair it with a European piece, "Seven Ways to Modernize Your Alumni Relations Toolkit," whose core message is to stop waiting for alumni to show up in your channels and instead meet them in theirs, with personal outreach and alumni telling their own stories. The panel lands on a practical truth: this kind of affinity-based, high-touch engagement is often low-budget but never free, because it requires leadership to trade away the big broadcasts everyone is used to.

With the fall semester underway, many institutions are starting the academic year with new leadership. Whether it is new university presidents, deans, or other institutional leaders, these transitions present both a challenge and an opportunity for advancement teams.

The traditional approach to introducing a new university leader often includes a multi-city roadshow featuring large-scale events with high production value. At my previous institutions, we looked back at the attendance data for signature regional, campaign, and presidential events and found that while well attended, they did not result in the fundraising and engagement ROI we were tasked with achieving.

I am not suggesting that we sacrifice engagement with our constituent community. More so, I want to challenge the traditional idea of a roadshow as the primary way to introduce new institutional leaders.

Here are a few practical ideas and examples that could be incorporated into a leadership introduction plan that still allows a new leader to build confidence among stakeholders, maximizes staff time, effort, and budget, and drives early fundraising success.

Community and Donor Engagement Events

Target key markets, not every market

Focus on a smaller number of key markets with bespoke events that will draw the most engaged volunteers, donors, and constituents. Reviewing event attendance and other engagement and donor reports can provide more insight than heatmaps of alumni or constituent populations.

Create intimate gatherings

Plan small, regional dinners, breakfasts, or lunches for current and engaged prospective donors hosted by board members or other volunteer leaders.

These intimate gatherings allow participants to better connect with the leader, develop personal relationships, showcase the leader’s vision, and encourages those volunteer hosts to become champions for the new leader.

Having volunteers take the lead in organizing and covering the cost of these events alleviates staffing and budgetary constraints too.

Take advantage of existing events

Build on existing events such as homecoming, family weekend, game days, alumni and advisory board meetings, and other opportunities when alumni, donors, and families are already on campus.

Binghamton University will host the inauguration of President Anne D’Alleva during an investiture ceremony over homecoming weekend, which also coincides with the University’s 80th anniversary later this month.

A Multimedia Approach

Developing a multimedia approach to introducing a new leader can be cost-effective and wide-reaching. By enlisting the support of the university communications team and president’s office, advancement can share the responsibility and budget while finding creative ways to introduce a new leader to a community that meets them where they are.

Create a digital presence

Create content and utilize social media channels that best match the leaders’ personality, humanizing the role, showing authenticity, and allowing them to directly address the community in a lower-key style. While TikTok might not be every leader’s style, finding the platform that showcases their voice can boost recognition and online engagement.

Clemson University’s 16th President, Benjamin C. Ayers (@clemsonprez), already has more than 9,000 followers in his first month on the job. As a side note, Clemson’s university social media presence is a masterclass in content and engagement.

Dartmouth College won a 2026 CASE Circle of Excellence award for President Sian Leah Beilock monthly LinkedIn newsletter that has more than 8,800 monthly subscribers.

Develop ongoing productions like podcasts, vlogs or online video series that move from introduction to long-term engagement. Features such as “a day in the life” or highlights of a leader participating in campus milestones like move-in day, convocation, or graduation show interactions with the community and inspire nostalgia better than a talking head video.

Montclair State University posted a fun YouTube short showing President Jonathan Koppell helping a first-year student move into her dorm and chatting about her ambitions for the year.

The University of Oklahoma President Joseph Harroz, Jr. hosts a regular podcast, Conversations with the President, featuring students, faculty, and staff at the university that showcase the institution.

Ball State University’s, Our Call to Beneficence, hosted by President Geoffrey S. Mearns, is a monthly show featuring conversations with alumni and friends who exemplify “doing good” in their profession or community.

Continue traditional media

Maintain traditional media as a way to formally introduce the leader and provide ongoing updates. Magazines (online and print) and email newsletters continue to be trusted sources of information for alumni and friends across generations.

Opening multimedia channels early in a leader’s tenure can build an attentive audience, so that if more urgent communications become necessary in a crisis, that audience is already engaged and primed to listen.

Blending these ideas into a strategy allows a new leader to build trust and personal relationships with current and prospective donors early in their tenure while broadcasting their voice and vision across multiple channels to the broader community. Done well, this can be extremely effective and cost-efficient.

For advancement teams who find themselves in the midst of an institutional leadership transition, I encourage you to challenge the idea of an expensive and time-consuming roadshow program.

Courtney Stombock’s career has spanned 25 years and two continents, working in many facets of advancement at public and private institutions in the US, UK, and France. In her most recent role at The American University of Paris, Courtney and her team were rethinking what it means to engage and secure philanthropic investment from culturally diverse and diasporic alumni, families, and friends.

She is now launching her consulting practice at Stombock Advisory Group, LLC and is enthusiastic about sharing her experience in campaign management, philanthropic advising, cross-border giving, data governance, alumni and family engagement, volunteer management, event development, Artificial Intelligence, and team leadership.

Courtney lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband Brad and two teenagers. She is an ardent rugby mom, a FIFA World Cup 2026 volunteer, and a world traveler, with more than 16 countries checked off her bucket list so far.

Faculty-in-Residence

Topic: Faculty-in-Residence Symposium with Mallory Erickson

Date: Wednesday, September 23 from 11:30 am - 12:30 pm ET

Speakers: Mallory Erickson, Ryan Catherwood, Andrea Devine, Scott Francis

We’ll conclude our first Faculty-in-Residence experience with Mallory Erickson by hosting a round table discussion on the themes from What The Fundraising. The Symposium will be hosted by Publisher, Ryan Catherwood, and led by SE Members, Andrea Devine from the University of Virginia and Scott Francis from Auburn University.

More details and register

The traditional approach to introducing a new university leader often includes a multi-city roadshow featuring large-scale events with high production value. At my previous institutions, we looked back at the attendance data for signature regional, campaign, and presidential events and found that while well attended, they did not result in the fundraising and engagement ROI we were tasked with achieving.

I am not suggesting that we sacrifice engagement with our constituent community. More so, I want to challenge the traditional idea of a roadshow as the primary way to introduce new institutional leaders.

Here are a few practical ideas and examples that could be incorporated into a leadership introduction plan that still allows a new leader to build confidence among stakeholders, maximizes staff time, effort, and budget, and drives early fundraising success.

Community and Donor Engagement Events

Target key markets, not every market

Focus on a smaller number of key markets with bespoke events that will draw the most engaged volunteers, donors, and constituents. Reviewing event attendance and other engagement and donor reports can provide more insight than heatmaps of alumni or constituent populations.

Create intimate gatherings

Plan small, regional dinners, breakfasts, or lunches for current and engaged prospective donors hosted by board members or other volunteer leaders.

These intimate gatherings allow participants to better connect with the leader, develop personal relationships, showcase the leader’s vision, and encourages those volunteer hosts to become champions for the new leader.

Having volunteers take the lead in organizing and covering the cost of these events alleviates staffing and budgetary constraints too.

Take advantage of existing events

Build on existing events such as homecoming, family weekend, game days, alumni and advisory board meetings, and other opportunities when alumni, donors, and families are already on campus.

Binghamton University will host the inauguration of President Anne D’Alleva during an investiture ceremony over homecoming weekend, which also coincides with the University’s 80th anniversary later this month.

A Multimedia Approach

Developing a multimedia approach to introducing a new leader can be cost-effective and wide-reaching. By enlisting the support of the university communications team and president’s office, advancement can share the responsibility and budget while finding creative ways to introduce a new leader to a community that meets them where they are.

Create a digital presence

Create content and utilize social media channels that best match the leaders’ personality, humanizing the role, showing authenticity, and allowing them to directly address the community in a lower-key style. While TikTok might not be every leader’s style, finding the platform that showcases their voice can boost recognition and online engagement.

Clemson University’s 16th President, Benjamin C. Ayers (@clemsonprez), already has more than 9,000 followers in his first month on the job. As a side note, Clemson’s university social media presence is a masterclass in content and engagement.

Dartmouth College won a 2026 CASE Circle of Excellence award for President Sian Leah Beilock monthly LinkedIn newsletter that has more than 8,800 monthly subscribers.

Develop ongoing productions like podcasts, vlogs or online video series that move from introduction to long-term engagement. Features such as “a day in the life” or highlights of a leader participating in campus milestones like move-in day, convocation, or graduation show interactions with the community and inspire nostalgia better than a talking head video.

Montclair State University posted a fun YouTube short showing President Jonathan Koppell helping a first-year student move into her dorm and chatting about her ambitions for the year.

The University of Oklahoma President Joseph Harroz, Jr. hosts a regular podcast, Conversations with the President, featuring students, faculty, and staff at the university that showcase the institution.

Ball State University’s, Our Call to Beneficence, hosted by President Geoffrey S. Mearns, is a monthly show featuring conversations with alumni and friends who exemplify “doing good” in their profession or community.

Continue traditional media

Maintain traditional media as a way to formally introduce the leader and provide ongoing updates. Magazines (online and print) and email newsletters continue to be trusted sources of information for alumni and friends across generations.

Opening multimedia channels early in a leader’s tenure can build an attentive audience, so that if more urgent communications become necessary in a crisis, that audience is already engaged and primed to listen.

Blending these ideas into a strategy allows a new leader to build trust and personal relationships with current and prospective donors early in their tenure while broadcasting their voice and vision across multiple channels to the broader community. Done well, this can be extremely effective and cost-efficient.

For advancement teams who find themselves in the midst of an institutional leadership transition, I encourage you to challenge the idea of an expensive and time-consuming roadshow program.

Watch the full length version (58 mins) on YouTube.

When King’s team needed instructors, they didn’t hire consultants. They went to their VP for advancement, Nate Stewart, and asked which alumni were doing this work for real. The list included the head of AI solutions for the federal government at Microsoft and a founder building on agentic AI. They said yes immediately, and one of them hadn’t set foot on campus in over a decade. It’s a way to engage exactly the alumni who are hardest to reach, the busy, accomplished ones a reunion invite never lands with.

What I appreciated is how King thinks about the college’s job. He’s blunt that higher ed has been “reactive as opposed to proactive and slow to embrace change,” and he treats Roanoke’s small size as the advantage rather than the handicap.

Most college students today are adults, not eighteen-year-olds, and 43 million Americans have some college and no credential. King wants Roanoke to be their partner for lifelong learning, not just for four years. And the vehicle for that turns out to double as one of the sharpest alumni engagement plays I’ve seen in a while: ask your most accomplished graduates not for money, but to come back and teach.

Big Themes This Week

• The most reachable version of an alum may be a teacher, not a donor. Roanoke’s WorkAI Lab is taught entirely by alumni, including some who hadn’t been back in a decade.

• Small can be an advantage. Roanoke went from a late-night idea to a launched program in weeks, and from a community need to a new degree in under a year.

• The student of the future is often an adult. With 43 million Americans holding some college and no credential, lifelong learning is the opportunity, not the alternative.

Team Discussion Questions

• Which of our accomplished alumni would say yes if we asked them to teach or mentor rather than give?

• Where is our size or structure slowing us down, and where could it actually let us move faster?

• Are we built to serve alumni as lifelong learners, or only as graduates and donors?

Day makes the case that email is the closest thing to a one-to-one conversation advancement has, and that relevance, not fancier segmentation, is what earns a place in someone’s inbox. Tie what you send to what people are actually living through, lead with value instead of news about yourself, and keep AI in the back office rather than in the relationship.

Watch the full-length version on YouTube (47 mins)

My favorite part is her answer to anyone who says change is too risky: the magic word is always pilot. Test it with 500 people, prove it beats what you’ve always done, then scale. It’s a disarming way to move a nervous institution, and a good reminder that the point of being in the inbox is to be useful, not just present.

Big Themes This Week

• Email is the most personal, most owned channel we have, and treating it like a billboard is why it fails.

• Relevance beats segmentation. Tie content to what people are actually living through, and lead with value, not news about yourself.

• The magic word is always pilot. Test a change with a small group, prove it works, then scale.

Team Discussion Questions

• Is our email talking about us, or being useful to the people receiving it?

• Where could we replace attribute-based segmentation with content that’s actually relevant to someone’s life right now?

• What’s one change we could pilot with 500 people before rolling it out to everyone?

Kristin Simonetti Hanson is an award-winning editorial content strategist, writer, and editor based in Baltimore, Md.

For nearly 20 years, she’s served higher ed and nonprofit organizations with her distinctive, creative voice and sharp, strategic insight, turning complex priorities into clear, compelling narratives. In 2021—after working in-house for Johns Hopkins University, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars, and Elon University—she went out on her own, founding Kristin Hanson Writes, LLC.

Kristin’s work spans advancement communications, campaign storytelling, and alumni engagement. She’s also regularly contributed to Johns Hopkins Magazine, Johns Hopkins Medicine Magazine, The Stevens Indicator, Weill Cornell Impact, Currents, and Trusteeship, among other publications. And in 2025, Kristin added a new type of writing to her repertoire, publishing her first children’s book, Mortimer the Terrier’s Second Chance.

Over the last five years of consulting, I’ve discovered that discovery interviews are almost like therapy sessions. Usually, these discussions start innocuously enough. They start with pleasantries, then shift to an assessment of what’s going right and where the gaps are. I find the gaps most often fall into four main pain-point areas: compensation, naming/identity, communications, and metrics.

Engagement pros can get pretty upset about a lack of resourcing in these areas and transparency around these things, and it makes sense.

The compensation dynamic is disruptive as VPs work to integrate teams and bring engagement and development together around shared goals, such as pipeline building. Transparency around titles and levels, along with clear pay bands and growth opportunities that align career stages with development, are an important North Star to work toward.

But VPs can take other steps to reduce friction and improve internal culture so it’s more collaborative and everyone feels like part of a team. Salaries are tougher to change. But these changes aren’t just good for morale; they’re imperative in our attention economy.

The “this team and that team” — as part of the unit’s name — perpetuates the construct.

Around the world, these teams are called Development and Alumni Relations (DAR) or Alumni Engagement & Philanthropy (AEP). Literally, the name suggests two teams or functions, really, pressed together, perpetually trying to figure out how and when to collaborate, rather than one team doing something holistic. In a different way than compensation, having two different functions called out in the unit name creates the same dynamic.

These names reflect the past and are often shaped by political dynamics at a given moment, but they do more harm than good, in my opinion, and perpetuate siloing. Vice Presidents and other non-profit education leaders who have the opportunity to unite around a single organizational brand can send the message that everyone’s role matters, and that one team must work seamlessly in external relations or university advancement. We’re all doing the same thing — stimulating generosity and investment.

Communications as a service creates the us-versus-them dynamic

Imagine trying to create a stronger, more collaborative internal environment that’s fair and inclusive while also being more strategic. What is something a VP could do to ensure the exact opposite is happening?

Think of a communications-as-a-service model within a DAR unit. Imagine engagement teams competing with development leaders over which projects are priorities, with their colleagues in an understaffed group of marketing and communications pros. Now imagine that the VP has made it known, by admission or omission, that development-related requests should be prioritized. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot and stoking a culture of resentment. Not only do the engagement teams feel their work is valued less than development, but the mar/comms people in the middle feel like order takers. Not what they trained for. At the same time, development really does need communications as a serve, mostly in the form of formatting and design.

Fixing this dynamic means leading with storytelling rather than treating it as an auxiliary function that’s a nice-to-have service staffed at the bare minimum. Communications should be an area of excellence in advancement and highly strategic in ways that teams responding to requests simply cannot be.

The system gets bogged down, and inequities blossom in the service model. As a VP, I’d give my development teams access to an external agency partner and freelancers, and a budget for custom donor materials. Communications strategists must be at the table for engagement strategies from the beginning and have the bandwidth to work at a higher level than day-to-day production. A ten-hour-per-week freelancer can update your Planned Giving pages or take a templated design and personalize it with copy for a donor visit.

Advancement communicators bridge engagement and generosity through messaging all throughout the year. Ensuring this work drives advancement engagement, not just supports it, is crucial to a healthier organization and more traction with donors because it creates more stories to share.

Access to metrics and reporting creates a disparity and perpetuates the this-vs.-them dynamic.

Is there a single better way to make one team feel like the main character and the other like the understudy by giving one access to the metrics they need to do the job at a high level, and giving the other nothing or the resources for incomplete insights?

This is the prevailing dynamic at most colleges and universities. There are many reasons for the lack of metrics and reporting on alumni engagement, but ultimately, it comes down to resources. Advancement leaders need to secure funding to ensure engagement teams have the same data dignity.

Strengthen the entire advancement enterprise by focusing on integration.

Merging Development and Alumni Relations teams to create “DAR” is a form of perpetual “building the plane while flying it” syndrome and an ongoing acknowledgment of a them-versus-us mentality — differing objectives. Advancement leaders can support both culture and output by strategically resourcing communications for donor engagement, rather than reacting to program teams’ demands.

Comprehensive metrics and communication structures ensure your engagement teams can deliver and showcase return on investment. Engagement leaders and their VPs all want to retain their top talent, counter imbalances driven by inertia, and build teams for today’s environment.

Whether it’s what people are paid, what they’re called, how they’re resourced, and what they can measure, there are ways in which these systems cast one group as the main character and the other as an understudy. The most important dynamic is thinking of function, not two. It’s not that one objective is alumni relations and the other objective is development. Everyone is doing advancement.

About Speaking Engagement

I’ve been wanting to write about SE and our AI usage. It’s probably the subject of a whole newsletter and maybe even a static page. Of course, SE wouldn’t be possible without AI. Well, that’s not true. It would be slower and more expensive.

Although I do use Grammarly and have for years, all of my newsletters are written by me and I’ll often overrule the comma police. I do use AI consultation before I publish on how I might strengthen the piece. Great feedback most of the time. I’ve asked all the Contributing Editors and Guest Writers to write without AI augmenting your words. I’m looking for a 100% Human Written notation in Pangram before I publish each article moving forward, and I’m fine with something that’s not as polished as if an AI wrote it. That hasn’t always been the case since the launch of SE, with each writer using their own discretion.

As you probably noticed, I also use AI to create graphics and summarize audio. When the text isn’t the main thing, like in an an opinion piece or a video podcast, I use AI to summarize and more quickly move through the content package creation process.

It’s the only way I can produce SE and still do my consulting work. But to be sure, I realize how important it is to have humans making the meaning and telling stories here on SE.

About the Next Keynote

You might have noticed that I updated my LinkedIn profile this week! I’m excited to work with the leadership team at Roanoke College over the coming months to help launch a portion of their advancement engagement strategies and be a thought partner with the team.

It just so happens, that the timing is perfect to share my interview with Ryan King, Chief of Staff and Innovation Officer at Roanoke College. We talk primarily about the schools new WorkAI program, but the conversation expands out towards the strategic direction of the college. Roanoke College is a private liberal arts school with a Lutheran, faith-based background that’s working to make big changes and meet the moment.

Engagement pros can get pretty upset about a lack of resourcing in these areas and transparency around these things, and it makes sense.

The compensation dynamic is disruptive as VPs work to integrate teams and bring engagement and development together around shared goals, such as pipeline building. Transparency around titles and levels, along with clear pay bands and growth opportunities that align career stages with development, are an important North Star to work toward.

But VPs can take other steps to reduce friction and improve internal culture so it’s more collaborative and everyone feels like part of a team. Salaries are tougher to change. But these changes aren’t just good for morale; they’re imperative in our attention economy.

The “this team and that team” — as part of the unit’s name — perpetuates the construct.

Around the world, these teams are called Development and Alumni Relations (DAR) or Alumni Engagement & Philanthropy (AEP). Literally, the name suggests two teams or functions, really, pressed together, perpetually trying to figure out how and when to collaborate, rather than one team doing something holistic. In a different way than compensation, having two different functions called out in the unit name creates the same dynamic.

These names reflect the past and are often shaped by political dynamics at a given moment, but they do more harm than good, in my opinion, and perpetuate siloing. Vice Presidents and other non-profit education leaders who have the opportunity to unite around a single organizational brand can send the message that everyone’s role matters, and that one team must work seamlessly in external relations or university advancement. We’re all doing the same thing — stimulating generosity and investment.

Communications as a service creates the us-versus-them dynamic

Imagine trying to create a stronger, more collaborative internal environment that’s fair and inclusive while also being more strategic. What is something a VP could do to ensure the exact opposite is happening?

Think of a communications-as-a-service model within a DAR unit. Imagine engagement teams competing with development leaders over which projects are priorities, with their colleagues in an understaffed group of marketing and communications pros. Now imagine that the VP has made it known, by admission or omission, that development-related requests should be prioritized. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot and stoking a culture of resentment. Not only do the engagement teams feel their work is valued less than development, but the mar/comms people in the middle feel like order takers. Not what they trained for. At the same time, development really does need communications as a serve, mostly in the form of formatting and design.

Fixing this dynamic means leading with storytelling rather than treating it as an auxiliary function that’s a nice-to-have service staffed at the bare minimum. Communications should be an area of excellence in advancement and highly strategic in ways that teams responding to requests simply cannot be.

The system gets bogged down, and inequities blossom in the service model. As a VP, I’d give my development teams access to an external agency partner and freelancers, and a budget for custom donor materials. Communications strategists must be at the table for engagement strategies from the beginning and have the bandwidth to work at a higher level than day-to-day production. A ten-hour-per-week freelancer can update your Planned Giving pages or take a templated design and personalize it with copy for a donor visit.

Advancement communicators bridge engagement and generosity through messaging all throughout the year. Ensuring this work drives advancement engagement, not just supports it, is crucial to a healthier organization and more traction with donors because it creates more stories to share.

Access to metrics and reporting creates a disparity and perpetuates the this-vs.-them dynamic.

Is there a single better way to make one team feel like the main character and the other like the understudy by giving one access to the metrics they need to do the job at a high level, and giving the other nothing or the resources for incomplete insights?

This is the prevailing dynamic at most colleges and universities. There are many reasons for the lack of metrics and reporting on alumni engagement, but ultimately, it comes down to resources. Advancement leaders need to secure funding to ensure engagement teams have the same data dignity.

Strengthen the entire advancement enterprise by focusing on integration.

Merging Development and Alumni Relations teams to create “DAR” is a form of perpetual “building the plane while flying it” syndrome and an ongoing acknowledgment of a them-versus-us mentality — differing objectives. Advancement leaders can support both culture and output by strategically resourcing communications for donor engagement, rather than reacting to program teams’ demands.

Comprehensive metrics and communication structures ensure your engagement teams can deliver and showcase return on investment. Engagement leaders and their VPs all want to retain their top talent, counter imbalances driven by inertia, and build teams for today’s environment.

Whether it’s what people are paid, what they’re called, how they’re resourced, and what they can measure, there are ways in which these systems cast one group as the main character and the other as an understudy. The most important dynamic is thinking of function, not two. It’s not that one objective is alumni relations and the other objective is development. Everyone is doing advancement.

About Speaking Engagement

I’ve been wanting to write about SE and our AI usage. It’s probably the subject of a whole newsletter and maybe even a static page. Of course, SE wouldn’t be possible without AI. Well, that’s not true. It would be slower and more expensive.

Although I do use Grammarly and have for years, all of my newsletters are written by me and I’ll often overrule the comma police. I do use AI consultation before I publish on how I might strengthen the piece. Great feedback most of the time. I’ve asked all the Contributing Editors and Guest Writers to write without AI augmenting your words. I’m looking for a 100% Human Written notation in Pangram before I publish each article moving forward, and I’m fine with something that’s not as polished as if an AI wrote it. That hasn’t always been the case since the launch of SE, with each writer using their own discretion.

As you probably noticed, I also use AI to create graphics and summarize audio. When the text isn’t the main thing, like in an an opinion piece or a video podcast, I use AI to summarize and more quickly move through the content package creation process.

It’s the only way I can produce SE and still do my consulting work. But to be sure, I realize how important it is to have humans making the meaning and telling stories here on SE.

About the Next Keynote

You might have noticed that I updated my LinkedIn profile this week! I’m excited to work with the leadership team at Roanoke College over the coming months to help launch a portion of their advancement engagement strategies and be a thought partner with the team.

It just so happens, that the timing is perfect to share my interview with Ryan King, Chief of Staff and Innovation Officer at Roanoke College. We talk primarily about the schools new WorkAI program, but the conversation expands out towards the strategic direction of the college. Roanoke College is a private liberal arts school with a Lutheran, faith-based background that’s working to make big changes and meet the moment.

I don’t want us to fail to act to prevent a major crisis that is heading our way. Advancement shops are full of smart and creative people – we can get ahead of this one, if we act now.

The crisis? Women in advancement are often held to different standards than men, standards that can feel impossible (especially in leadership roles) and we’re not going to have many women leaders left if we don’t get proactive right now.

Is this crisis new? No. But are we starting to see some scary statistics because of it? Yes. It’s time to act.

Women Are Leaving the Workforce In Record Numbers

This startling statistic caught my eye recently, and is what’s causing me to feel like we need to act now or we’ll miss our opportunity to make our workplaces work better for women. According to the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) jobs analysis, women accounted for 100% of the net decline in the labor force in July 2026. You read that right: 100%. The study states that women have left the workplace at roughly double the rate of men since January 2026, with 845,000 women leaving the workforce to 406,000 men.

What does this mean for higher education advancement, where in 2025 women made up 69% of the workforce?

According to CEO of Hocking Leadership Shanna Hocking’s 2025 report, the BOLD Blueprint for Women in Advancement, “women chief advancement executives in higher ed and academic medicine report insufficient onboarding, systems not set up for their success, and lack of institutional support” as key factors in why women are exiting the workforce at an alarming rate.

While Mo Cotton Kelly, Chief People Officer and Senior Vice President for Alumni Engagement at the UCONN Foundation, notes that she hasn’t seen more women leaving the UCONN Foundation than men (they have a very high retention rate, actually – more on that in a moment), she’s not surprised about the NWLC report.

“We’re still running a double standard, one that sets women up for failure,” she says. “I’ve seen women who have led their shops thoughtfully, with care, with kindness, with empowerment, be belittled and raked over the coals, even when their numbers are better than their male counterparts.”

The double standard looks like this. Remember that famous quote about 1930s and 1940s movie star Ginger Rogers – that she did everything her dancing partner Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels? It’s that. We expect everyone we hire, regardless of gender, to excel in their roles. But women face often silent challenges that many men do not. There’s an expectation of perfection, and if a woman shows any emotion at all, she might be labeled as weak. Whereas if a male leader cries, he might be praised as evolved. Women are expected to lead like men because that’s the dominant cultural norm in our workplaces, which were created by and for men way back in the day and haven’t changed much. But we aren’t men, and ignoring our own instincts and constantly having to be thinking how to make sure that we’re acting with “executive presence” (often code for: act like a man) is exhausting.

Like Mo says, she’s seen women run Advancement shops with empathy and care to be ridiculed for that, even if it was working.

And don’t forget the caretaker tax. As much as we don’t want to admit it, women and men who are caretakers are perceived differently, or, it’s much more likely that a woman is expected to do all the things while still also holding down a full time job. Schedule swimming lessons and babysitters and doctor’s appointments and conversations with estate planners, and in addition knowing where the scissors and goggles and charging cords are at any given point in the day.

You don’t have to take my word for it. There’s a lot of research about all this. A lot of evidence that women face a very different standard than men in the workplace. And, you can just ask a woman leader you know how she feels about it. I’m betting she’ll agree that the double standard is real…and is really exhausting.

How can we prevent this crisis?

Advancement: we need to be done ignoring that there’s a double standard for women in our workplaces.

We don’t have to watch our workforce slowly leave, and/or watch women who are excellent and experienced and love the work leave because the workplace is making them miserable.

There are absolutely immediate steps we can – and should – take to get ahead of this crisis. The best thing we can do, in my opinion? Invest in our people. Treat them like they are the most important asset in our workplace. And yes, I say people. We should invest in everyone, however they identify. And, we may need to invest more in women, who are less likely to receive leadership skills training and be assessed for leadership readiness. When’s the last time you did an audit of who is being invested in in your workplace?

“Why would you not practice the same care with your staff as you do with your alumni and donors?” agrees Mo. “You can do both. I get results and I care about my people. They know I care about them. If you’re not investing in your people, this is why people are leaving.”

The UCONN Foundation has invested heavily in its team members, running mid-level manager training programs, hiring executive coaches, creating internal training and development programs, even adding in more all-staff celebrations. They deploy frequent climate surveys to see how employees are doing and take steps to improve as they learn about challenges. They slow down and say no in order to take the time that is needed to fix problems.

All that to say: creating a healthy workplace that people, especially women, want to stay at is completely possible.

What you can do right now to help women succeed in Advancement.

I ask you to do two things upon reading this article. First, I want you to acknowledge the problem. I want you to say, out loud, that there is often a double standard for women in our workplaces.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that for women of color, there’s a double double standard. Watch this TED Talk by Jodi-Ann Burey about the myth of bringing your whole self to work if you don’t think that’s true. If we don’t name it, if we don’t say it out loud, if we pretend that there’s no problem, we can’t work on making it better.

And the second thing I’d like you to do is find one way to invest in your people today, if you hold a leadership position. Investing in your people can be as simple as teaching yourself to slow down during 1:1s, ask real questions about how they’re doing, and listen deeply. It can look like hiring someone to do a workplace health analysis, or going back to the last four years of your annual Gallup survey and seeing what the trends in employee engagement are looking like for you – then talking to your team about the challenges they’re facing.

If you’re not a people leader (and even if you are), a great action step is to read a book by someone from a different perspective than yours (if you need suggestions, I have a list for you) and then discuss it with a trusted friend or mentor. No time for a book? There are so many podcasts and TED talks out there it’ll make your head spin. The point is, it’s time to get curious and learn about how people are feeling about the workplace, then learn how you might be able to make it a place where people, especially women, want to stay.

Invest in your people, especially women, and you can’t lose.

Ellen Whitlock Baker is a coach, facilitator, and speaker who helps leaders create healthier, more sustainable workplaces. A former higher education advancement leader and accredited executive coach, she helps people rethink the habits that contribute to burnout and create better ways to lead and work. She is a Forbes Council contributor and hosts the Hard at Work podcast.

Faculty-in-Residence

Topic: Faculty-in-Residence Symposium with Mallory Erickson

Date: Wednesday, September 23 from 11:30 am - 12:30 pm ET

Speakers: Mallory Erickson, Kristin Hanson, Andrea Devine, Scott Francis

We’ll conclude our first Faculty-in-Residence experience with Mallory Erickson by hosting a round table discussion on the themes from What The Fundraising. The Symposium will be hosted by Contributing Editor, Kristin Hanson, and led by SE Members, Andrea Devine from the University of Virginia and Scott Francis from Auburn University.

More details and register

Faculty-in-Residence

Topic: Faculty-in-Residence Symposium with Mallory Erickson

Date: Wednesday, September 23 from 11:30 am - 12:30 pm ET

Speakers: Mallory Erickson, Kristin Hanson, Andrea Devine, Scott Francis

We’ll conclude our first Faculty-in-Residence experience with Mallory Erickson by hosting a round table discussion on the themes from What The Fundraising. The Symposium will be hosted by Contributing Editor, Kristin Hanson, and led by SE Members, Andrea Devine from the University of Virginia and Scott Francis from Auburn University.

More details and register

October Agora

Topic: The Class That Never Ends: Lifelong Learning as a Sustainable Engagement Model

Date: Thursday, October 8 from 1 - 2 pm ET

Speakers: Kathryn Bennett, director of LIFE@Elon (Elon University), and Sarah Rhodes, director of LIFE@Lynchburg (University of Lynchburg)

Kathryn and Sarah will share what it takes to launch and sustain lifelong learning programs, from recruiting volunteer leaders and building curriculum to securing philanthropic support and forging local partnerships. Attendees will leave with a vision for turning long-term engagement into a durable revenue stream without waiting for a full reinvention of the college degree itself.

More info and register

We aren’t always the best, in higher ed advancement, at recognizing crises until it’s too late. We talk a lot about them, like the enrollment cliff or the public’s declining trust in higher education; we have panels and conference sessions to discuss potential problems, but the actual action often waits until the problem is real – our enrollment numbers…

Read more