In 2015, when University of Connecticut trustees voted to sever financial ties with the institution's alumni association, asking the foundation to take over alumni work, UConn president Susan Herbst hailed the decision as a bold move toward "enhancing outreach and engagement with our alumni."
The 127-year-old alumni association was not in financial trouble. It boasted more than 10,000 dues-paying members. Still, the association was not growing or effectively articulating the university's message, Herbst said. It also wasn't generating enough income for the institution, given the annual allocation the university invested in it, administrators said.
Seeking to assuage concerns about the changes, Herbst said that UConn's new consolidated model was similar to those increasingly adopted by many colleges and universities. Within a year, the alumni association dissolved, ending its 127-year existence.
UConn has not been alone over the past few years in reshuffling advancement, ostensibly to cut overlapping costs, unify institutional messaging, and improve alumni engagement. From Indiana's Purdue University to Oregon's Portland State University, foundations that have historically received gifts and managed investments have been absorbing their institution's development shop.
However, the mergers of long-standing, independent alumni groups, such as those serving UConn as well as the University of Wisconsin, with their foundation have raised concerns among alumni relations pros who fear that their work is misunderstood and undervalued. Some industry leaders question whether the major "fixes" will offer significant long-term savings—and whether they will inflict long-term damage.
"My fear is that in a desire to respond to financial realities, a number of institutions are engaging in strategies that are short-term in nature. There's no thinking about the long-term health of the enterprise," says Howard Wolf, vice president for alumni affairs at Stanford University, who cautions against viewing alumni groups as short-term financial resources.
"We are the ultimate long-term players," Wolf says of the nearly 220,000 Stanford alumni spread across 154 countries. "Faculty come and go. Staffs come and go. Students come and go. Alumni are the only long-term stakeholders in the life of the university."
Will more institutions follow in UConn's steps? Realignment trends are "all over the place," says Joshua Keniston, advancement strategy consultant with the Huron Group. In a 2012 CURRENTS article, Keniston and his co-writer described how foundations, which have more autonomy than the public institutions they serve, were increasingly expanding their roles to make fundraising more nimble and productive in the face of state budget cuts.
Institutions were also focused on squeezing out savings, but more are now pressing the pause button. There's no single approach to realignment. "Now we're seeing a more complex environment," Keniston says, with decisions rooted in the distinct histories of each institution and their leadership's approach to the matter.
Collaboration and cooperation
When Gordon Gee arrived for his second stint as president of The Ohio State University in 2007, he had a reputation as a change agent. Shortly after his return, Gee challenged the community to envision the institution in 50 years and to suggest ideas to achieve that vision.
For alumni relations staff, the directive kicked off a time of interest—and concern. Over a two-year period, alumni, development, and university leaders vigorously debated realignment, with alumni association leaders hopeful for the best but fearing the worst. Their concerns: What would be the association's role in any combined operation? What would happen to its staff? Or to its board, its endowment, and the dues membership model that sustained the independent association? Would the then-128-year-old organization have to surrender its autonomy?
"At times [the conversation] was very tense," says Andy Gurd, interim president/CEO and chief operating officer of the alumni association. "It wasn't easy. There was a lot of listening, dialogue, and compromise."
The goal was to figure out how alumni relations, development, and communications could best work together to engage alumni, although finding efficiencies and cutting costs were byproducts of the deliberations.
By 2012, the university embraced an ambitious restructuring that is still in progress: Alumni association staff now work for the university's new advancement department. The alumni association, founded in 1879, remains a legal entity to which all alumni are members; the dues structure is gone.
Alumni professionals continue to build relationships with graduates through everything from events to travel programs. But now the alumni relations unit has annual giving duties.
Gurd sees annual giving as another opportunity for alumni engagement. "A donation is one form of engagement, just as giving of your time or talent. It's all of equal importance. We're able to round out all the forms of engagement," says Gurd, also an Ohio State associate vice president for advancement. Since the change, which cut confusion alumni had over dues versus yearly gifts, Ohio State is raising more money from more donors, he says.
Alumni engagement has also been enhanced by the opening of alumni career management and volunteer relations offices. Ohio State's board of trustees now has an advancement committee that includes two members of the alumni association. Likewise, the university president appoints two members of his choosing to the alumni association board. The university designated some $3 million a year to alumni activities, about the amount the alumni association collected annually in dues.
"Rather than talk about ‘us' and ‘them,' we began to talk about ‘we,'" Gurd says, as he ticks off a list of new partnerships with the university's advancement office. These include a new regional advancement plan developed to better engage the 39 percent of U.S. alumni who live outside of Ohio. Eight new alumni staffers working in collaboration with six new development officers were hired for the effort.
"The work of alumni relations is in closer strategic collaboration and cooperation with the university than ever before," Gurd says. "We are working toward common goals."
Be nimble
The UConn move, in 2015, was more dramatic.
The alumni association's growth was stagnant. Although UConn won three national athletic championships in 2014, alumni were not increasing their giving or involvement. Faced with budget cuts, the institution needed more money from alumni. The university used pure business measures to assess the alumni association's value to the institution.
In a March 2015 letter, Herbst called on the UConn Foundation to take over alumni work, citing the university chief financial officer's declaration that institutional support of the alumni association—$488,000 in fiscal year 2014, according to the Hartford Courant—was not cost-effective.
The foundation took on all alumni responsibilities, from correspondence with graduates to staff payroll and benefits, and in July 2015, alumni association members voted to legally dissolve the association.
Montique Kelly, then-executive director of the UConn Alumni Association, sees value in establishing a one-stop advancement shop. Before they consolidated, the two nonprofits had separate buildings, databases, payrolls, accounting systems, and marketing operations.
"We never saw the need to speak to each other," she says. "Alumni never saw the value. Today, we are all speaking the same language."
Joshua Newton, the foundation president, says the merger improves efficiency: "Integrating alumni relations into the foundation will result in streamlining operations, making it the best return on investment for the University of Connecticut."
Touting the end of alumni dues, he adds, "This change will lead to a more diverse and engaged alumni community, one that is free of barriers and open to all."
The alumni association was not founded to raise money and was never asked to take on such a responsibility. Its role was to sustain alumni engagement and help alumni—offering networking opportunities, for example.
"A lot of people did not see this as a great thing," says Kelly, the foundation's recently appointed associate vice president for alumni relations. "It was not that the university wanted to get rid of the alumni association. It wanted to have a better organization that could engage alumni. We were not nimble."
Equal partners
Despite the dramatic changes at Ohio State, UConn, and other institutions, many alumni association leaders argue against such tactics. Raising big bucks and enriching alumni engagement should not come at either's expense, they say.
"There is no magic in one structure over the other," says Wolf, who is also president of the Stanford Alumni Association. His California university considered consolidating advancement in the 1990s. It ultimately kept the association while making it a division of the university with the same standing as development. The vice president for alumni affairs reports to the university president, ensuring the alumni voice is always at the table.
Indiana University's alumni association and foundation leaders also examined whether consolidating advancement work would improve efficiency, says J Thomas Forbes, CEO of the Indiana University Alumni Association.
Alumni were concerned that fundraising would drive engagement, found a working group studying the issue. The foundation was concerned that alumni engagement work would distract from fundraising.
"Alumni work tends to be more diversified," Forbes says. During any given year, the alumni association works on recruiting students, forging alumni connections, organizing class reunions, expanding its network of volunteers, and building loyalty to the institution. The alumni association is also a key player in the university's recently launched $2.5 billion capital campaign, and its 640,000 alumni in 154 nations are being counted on to do their part. The association is working to raise awareness of the campaign; for example, it's planning an IU Day program in which alumni and friends will be asked to support the university in a variety of ways, including making gifts.
"Culturally and historically, that's why we created two entities in the 1930s—one focused on fundraising, one focused on engagement," Forbes says. "What we reaffirmed is that Indiana has a culture of philanthropy that involves giving and volunteering, and we excel in both."
The association and foundation already share key staff, systems, and services, so a merger would not have saved money. In fact, it would cost several hundred thousand dollars in initial costs to merge and about one-third of a million each year in ongoing costs. That was a lot of money to spend "just to say we are unified," Forbes says. The funds would be better used, he adds, working together on specific projects that were mutually beneficial.
Douglas Dibbert, president of the General Alumni Association of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, also questions the merits of mergers.
He believes alumni groups are vulnerable to takeover for one of three reasons: The institution has an authoritarian "command and control" president; the senior development officer feels the alumni association should be focused on private fundraising; or the alumni association has weak professional and volunteer leadership.
When alumni associations seem headed in these directions, leaders must act to avoid downsizing, dormancy, or dissolution, Dibbert says.
They should seek and retain significant volunteer leadership and professional staff who "consistently view themselves as equal partners with administrators, faculty, students, and staff to constantly preserve and advance the institution," Dibbert says, noting that administrators are merely "stewards" of the degrees earned by former students.
Alumni aren't just "cheerleaders and check writers," as university administrators commonly define graduates' support of their alma mater, Dibbert says. "They should be more."
Merging Lessons
The University of New Hampshire's alumni association thought it had resolved its concerns when the university's new president proposed consolidating advancement in 2009. Eliminating alumni association dues and allowing the university to create a coordinated approach to alumni engagement, fundraising, and communication was an attractive proposition.
The plan did not go smoothly.
"What we didn't think of is, what's the role of the alumni association board? We spent a lot of years without an identity because it was never made explicit," says Robert McGrath, president of the alumni association and an Everett B. Sackett Associate Professor in UNH's department of health management and policy.
The alumni relations department received directives from two bosses—the alumni association board of directors and the advancement VP—who had competing priorities. Advancement, for example, prioritized fundraising and events; for a brief period alumni relations oversaw annual giving. Meanwhile, the alumni board wanted to do more with students and develop more alumni chapters, often creating work for the then-10-member alumni staff.
"The board had an agenda that was not necessarily aligned with the agenda of the alumni relations team," says Susan Entz, UNH's associate vice president of alumni relations. "With limited resources there was confusion. Do we adhere to what the institution wants us to do or do we adhere to what the board wants us to do?"
Over the past year, the 136-year-old alumni association has done a top-to-bottom restructuring to figure out: "Who are we? What do we want to be? How do we add value? How can we truly represent the voice of alumni and complement the university's alumni engagement work?"
That exercise meant making a simple request of the university: "Engage the alumni association board in the strategic planning process," McGrath says, "so we can understand what you're doing and see how we can add value."
The 34-member board and university have a new partnership agreement. The board streamlined its committee structure, eliminating those that did not fit institutional priorities, such as the alumni and student engagement committee. The board is integrating its work with alumni relations, while leaving some wiggle room for its own priorities, which, McGrath says, the university has committed to supporting. The new focus includes recruiting volunteers, gearing up for the university's 150th anniversary, partnering with athletics, and producing fewer but higher quality alumni engagement events.
Although alumni relations no longer oversees annual giving, generating graduates' financial support for the institution remains a priority. "We're focused on engagement but also participation," Entz says. In return for the programs and services that benefit alumni, the team encourages graduates to strengthen the university by "donating their time and talent and by investing in the future of UNH students through annual gifts. Participation is a key metric, and it's certainly front and center in everything that we do."
Now that the board and university are working in tandem, that confusion about alumni relations priorities is gone, Entz says. "It's a very different structure, and it's very exciting."
—Toni Coleman