The Annual Giving Exchange

Last week, the Council for Aid to Education (CAE) released its annual Voluntary Support of Education (VSE) survey results.  In addition to a steep decline in overall giving to colleges and universities last year, the report also revealed that alumni participation rates had hit their lowest level (10%) in the history of the survey.

According to CAE, alumni participation has been declining slowly since 2002, when it was 13.4%.  Contributing factors might include:

• Increased student loan debt, likely reducing the sentiment that alumni “owe something back” to their alma mater.
• The proliferation of nonprofits over the past decade, creating greater competition for philanthropy.
• Large (often misunderstood) endowments, fostering skepticism about the true “need” of many colleges and universities.

Declining alumni participation represents a real problem for institutions, and extra annual fund mailings, more e-mail blasts, and additional phonathon shifts don’t address the fundamental issues.  Donors are motivated either out of loyalty to an institution or support for a cause.  For many years, annual giving managers at educational organizations have built their strategies around the former.  Going forward, we need to focus more on the latter.

Loyalty is an asset, but useless when it doesn’t exist in the first place.  However, when we talk more about the causes that our educational institutions support (research, shaping future leaders, etc.), we will have begun to address the real issues behind declining alumni participation.