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.
