Tag: Fundraising strategy

Between small recurring gifts and large one-time donations, alumni giving often makes up the largest segments of university fundraising efforts. Who’s more motivated to donate to your university than the individuals who were once students themselves?

Keeping this in mind, this guide will review the current state of alumni giving, the best practices for engaging your alums, and the most effective ways to increase your alumni giving rates. We’ll also review the tools that make it easier to reach your fundraising goals. Here’s what to expect:

• Why is Alumni Giving Important?
• Exploring Alumni Giving Rates and Trends
• How Can Prospect Research Help Find Top Alumni Donors?
• Alumni Giving Best Practices
• 6 Helpful Alumni Giving Tools

As we walk through these steps, you’ll likely find yourself exploring the quantitative and qualitative information you have on your alums. Before making any programmatic decisions, however, plan to conduct an audit of your alumni database, remove outdated and duplicate information, and enhance your data with additional wealth and philanthropic indicators. Then, you can be confident that any changes you make will be based on the most accurate, thorough data possible.

Why Is Alumni Giving Important?

Alumni giving is important for two primary reasons: it offers crucial support to the important work your university does in educating the leaders of tomorrow and it’s a key indicator of your university’s financial health. In this section, we’ll cover how alumni donations tend to be directed and used by universities, plus the major benefits of developing an alumni giving program.

How Are Alumni Donations Used?

There isn’t just one type of student that graduates from your school. Likewise, you don’t have only one type of alum. Your graduates have gone on to be biologists and writers, farmers and professional athletes. In many cases, alums will direct their donations to a specific program or department that was meaningful to them during their studies. In fact, restricted gifts make up 93% of giving to universities.

Overall, alumni giving generally funds:

• Scholarships. If an alum received a specific scholarship or support during their time at your university, they’ll often want to “pass on” this opportunity to current and future students.
• Construction costs. Usually, alumni interest in funding construction projects piques after the kickoff period of a capital campaign to fund a specific project, such as a new science center with up-to-date technology or a state-of-the-art theater. Alums are particularly apt to give to buildings for which the name (e.g. the Alumni Hall) will acknowledge their contribution.
• Research projects. Funding faculty research can be attractive to your alumni, especially when it’s framed in the context of its impact on students and the broader community.
• Operational costs. While the day-to-day operations of running a university aren’t as sexy as new experimental research, they are just as important! Because of this, operational costs generally end up being funded by unrestricted donations.

By engaging the diversity of your alumni community, you’ll be able to attract and direct resources across your funding priorities.

What Are the Benefits of a Strong Alumni Giving Program?

Even though the majority of alumni gifts contain restrictions, they are still incredibly valuable to your university. So why exactly is it important to build a strong alumni giving program? A thriving program allows you to:

Access a broad range of support that adds up to make a big impact. Relying entirely on one income source can become a big problem if you suddenly lose that stream. Alumni giving helps you avoid that risk by diversifying your fundraising efforts across a large body of donors. Moreover, small gifts can really add up. For example, in a given year, an annual fund made up of $500,000 in small donations can have the same financial effect as 

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