About four years ago, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a crowdfunding campaign and gave the institution $86,000. The university's reaction? Anxiety. "Everyone wanted to know where the money came from. He was a good kid doing a good thing. But from the university's perspective, it set off alarm bells," particularly with how the gift could be distributed within Berkeley's guidelines, says Richard Swart, who became the institution's crowdfunding scholar-in-residence in 2015.

Let's face it: No one who works in communications and marketing wants to design flyers or write email copy every day. These professionals crave inventive yet impactful projects that will propel the school, college, or university they serve. But too often creative people devote their workdays to cranking out uninspired deliverables for Director So-and-So's upcoming event. When a marcomm team functions as a service-level agency, its members live in reaction mode. Its agenda is set by urgent requests from other units rather than the institution's strategic goals.

When Chris Pipkins walks the exhibitor space at advancement conferences, he sees a wide array of products, many offered by new and unfamiliar companies. As the associate vice president for advancement information services at James Madison University in Virginia, Pipkins says he fields more calls and emails from potential vendors than he once did.

Alumni relations teams that executed innovative programs in 2019 faced a big question in 2020: How could they continue those projects amid the pandemic? Here’s how five teams grappled with that—and the key lessons their experiences reveal about creatively and strategically problem-solving when contexts change.

Here are two truisms: These are uncertain times. Fundraising is as important as ever.

Until this question, the interview for the college presidency had been going well.

Las encuestas en línea son una herramienta popular para medir el estado de ánimo de los exalumnos. Sin embargo, los índices de respuesta para estas encuestas han ido disminuyendo con los años, haciéndola potencialmente menos útiles.

After three years as director of communications for a startup company, in late 2014 I traded a spacious open-plan office and perks such as yoga and unlimited vacation days for a newly created position at my alma mater.

The University of Illinois Foundation's chatbot, silent reading parties for UCLA alumni, Minecraft graduations, virtual potlucks for advancement staff, and more.

Many agree that collecting, storing, and analyzing qualitative data is vital to advancement’s growth and an important balance to departments’ continually growing quantitative data capabilities. But is there a method that’s scalable? How can advancement professionals work with data that is, by its definition, difficult to measure?