Advice: Too Friendly?
Q: My colleague presents herself unprofessionally at our alumni board meetings. Normally her work is quite good, but at the meetings she acts too casually with board members, calling them by nicknames and telling inappropriate jokes. She is trying to be friendly, but I worry about the impression she's making on our alumni and donors. How can I suggest she tone it down without her taking offense?
A: We work hard to build our alumni boards with leadership volunteers who understand the power of giving back and who have responded well to our calls for time and support. We get to know them. We engage them. We like them. It often feels like they are our friends.
Because of this, professionals sometimes forget that the relationship piece isn't about us. It's about the institution—and we need to remind each other of that. The best way to approach, regard, and leverage board meetings is to treat them as business meetings.
You can't control whether your colleague takes offense to your reminding her of this, but as a university representative you should talk to her. Take her to coffee. Get to know her. Then help her with some gentle, kind, and collegial advice. If she is receptive, not only will your institution benefit but so will her career.
—Peter Caborn, assistant vice president of alumni relations, Wayne State University, Michigan
Perspectives: It's New Year's Eve. Are You with Family or Donors?
Answer the call: It was New Year's Eve 1981, and Robert Hartsook was the only fundraiser on duty at his university. The phone rang—on the other end was a donor who had put off his gift until the last minute. He'd intended to split a $450,000 piece of land between three charities, but Hartsook was the only one who'd answered the phone. "Bob, you just won the jackpot," Hartsook remembers the donor saying. The university later sold the land for nearly $4 million.
Lesson: "Always make yourself accessible at the end of the year," even when celebrating with the family, says Hartsook, now a consultant. "With technology, there's really no excuse."
Pitch in: At the close of 2015, Debbie Meyers, senior director of donor relations and stewardship at the University of Maryland, volunteered to help gift processors proofread receipts, make copies, and pitch in "like a little elf," a practice she carried over from her previous job at Carnegie Mellon University. Recounting staff's gratitude, she says, "You would have thought I was Santa coming down the chimney!"
Lesson: "I learned more in those few hours than I had in weeks about our donors and our operations—giving behavior, our acknowledgment system, data challenges, how we book gifts, and online giving," Meyers says.
Prep early: Marty Cathcart's team at The Lab School of Washington in D.C. sends donors email reminders in the weeks and days leading up to December 31 that include a link to the school's giving webpage. The director of institutional advancement says that last-minute donors can give online or postmark their gift by the 31st.
Lesson: Prep work before the holidays can make the season less hectic for everyone.
In the News
"I'm prepping them for the blows they're going to take when they arrive on their college campuses. So that when those ‘cowboy and Indian' parties at sororities and fraternities happen … I hope it's more of a sting rather than a punch in the gut."
—Carmen Lopez, executive director of College Horizons, a nonprofit that offers precollege summer workshops for Native American high school students to help them select suitable colleges, receive adequate financial aid, and transition to campus life. Lopez was featured in a September 2016 NPR story about the group's outreach initiatives.