Featuring a one-on-one conversation between Marc Weinstein and Derek Cassoff of McGill University
The first CCAE Exposé features a one-on-one conversation between Marc Weinstein, Vice-Principal, University Advancement, McGill University and Derek Cassoff, Managing Director, Communications, McGill University on the challenges, changes and solutions the McGill advancement team found as they navigate through the pandemic and into the future.
First and foremost, the Great Return is about people, not places. It is not an event, it is a process.
At no time in living memory has there been a crisis so sudden in its impact and so unpredictable in its effects and in its duration. COVID has changed educational institutions in Canada for ever, and only now are all those involved coming to grips with what that will mean going forward.
The Great Return of Fall 2021 has put all the detailed planning to the test and yet much of the discussion has focused on returning students and, of course, new management models (read: office space!). But advancement teams are, above all, in the relationship business and the Great Return presents a unique opportunity to sharpen the focus on that primary mission: alumni, donors and staff. The task now is to ensure that advancement teams are re-built in such a way that donors and alumni feel more valued than ever, especially as personal contact has been limited in recent times.
Keeping a ’people first’ approach is indispensable. One myth that been soundly demolished in the COVID era is that staff working from home are somehow not pulling their weight. To the contrary, many team members are suffering burn-out from 9-5 Zoom calls followed by several more hours of actual work. The Holy Grail of work/life balance has gone out of the home office window.
Per Brian Fetherstonhaugh, McGill alumnus and former Global CEO, the question is not going to be whether to adopt a hybrid model, but which model to adopt? Universities tend to be hierarchical places where office size matters but, per Fetherstonhaugh, the office needs to be reinvented as a beacon of high-quality activity, not a hub for the humdrum.
The support of and from Human Resources is more important now than ever – not every staff member has the chance to work comfortably from home, either physically or emotionally. These are not theoretical issues – ongoing support for staff wellbeing will be one of the keys to the long-term success of any future model. For all managers empathy is an indispensable skill, not an optional extra. Anything less than a fully human approach is likely to pose a real challenge for recruitment and retention. People are not numbers.
Inevitably, there will be times when things go wrong and even well-resourced companies like Apple have faced a backlash for mandating its employees to attend the office on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays! Rigid flexibility is a contradiction in terms. Allison M. Villancourt, writing in The Chronicle for Higher Education, has a more detailed take on this issue specific to post-secondary institutions, recommending above all that institutions base their decisions on their individual mandates and cultures – and then remain flexible.
And so – the million dollar question – where does all this leave advancement office space after the Great Return? Can advancement teams risk looking like the only part of the institution that doesn’t get it, especially given their outward-facing donor and alumni engagement mission? Maybe advancement office spaces will not need to be as large, but how will they be different? Can flexible office space really work? If everyone is wearing noise-canceling headphones is the office space truly open? Does any of this enhance teamwork and productivity? What about confidential discussions with donors, alumni and staff? As obvious as the answers to these questions may seem, the open office model has been tried for decades – with mixed results. Even Silicon Valley is re-thinking the entire concept.
Individual institutions will discover the blueprints that work for them, but there is a need to keep planning models flexible and responsive to avoid getting entrenched again in outdated practices.
And, most importantly, through the Great Return, how does advancement leadership maintain its focus on all of its people – donors, alumni and staff – while re-imagining for the future?
Featuring an engaging interview between Brad Moore, Suzanne Ostrow, and Natalie Cook-Zywicki of the University of British Columbia
The second CCAE Exposé features an engaging interview between Brad Moore, Director of Development, Annual Giving, Suzanne Ostrow, Executive Director, Donor Engagement, and Natalie Cook-Zywicki, Associate Vice-President, Alumni; Executive Director, alumni UBC, of the University of British Columbia on the challenges, changes and solutions that has spurred annual giving success over the past year & into the future at UBC.
Annual giving is perhaps the most misunderstood of the marketing tools in a university’s arsenal, mistakenly equated with the annoying call at dinner time congratulating you on winning a cruise in a competition you never entered. In other words, a bolt from the blue.
Yet the key difference is that alumni-targeted annual giving swims in the water of a pre-existing, ongoing and possibly lifelong relationship – one that began with student recruitment activities and goes right through to the city, the campus and the academic experience. So, far from being the beginning of a relationship, annual giving is a new link in a relationship that has already had thousands of touchpoints over a long period – and will hopefully have many more.
But this relationship only works if both parties are invested in it. There’s no such thing as a one-way partnership, so listening to donors is a major function of the annual giving unit. This is why annual giving has long been the most responsive and nimble part of the fundraising portfolio. Whether an initiative is working or not is often immediately apparent and can be quickly addressed. The timeline of annual giving is now or, preferably, yesterday. And while alumni remain the main focus of the unit’s activities, these can also extend to parents, friends and external and internal communities. Some, like Carleton University, have successfully branched out into crowdfunding with their Future Funders website where a single project to support Women In Engineering has already raised $105,000 vs. a target of $5,000!
Annual giving operations have to be adaptable to new technologies and new ways of giving – donors demand the kind of seamless transaction that they get from a major brand retailer. The proliferation of new platforms in social media has breathed new life into annual ‘Giving Days’, making the experience much richer for donors and the Giving Day itself a perennial event, rather than a one-off. Canadian schools have taken this opportunity to build continuity by branding their giving days, such as ‘McGill24’ which raised almost $4 million in March of 2021.
2020 was a ‘black swan’ year that no-one saw coming, but many Canadian institutions in 2021 are already reporting that donations are returning to 2019 levels and even beyond. Paradoxically, COVID has actually provided a new touchpoint for donors to give to student support, with an increased emphasis on students’ mental health and wellbeing. UBC’s CCAE Prix d’Excellence award-winning annual giving initiative emphasizes the unique challenges facing students at this ‘turning point in history’. Interestingly, the pandemic has provided, for the first time in the modern era, a truly global issue that concerns students everywhere.
The tectonic plates are shifting in other ways too. Canadian universities like McMaster are reporting greater interest in supporting research in science and health, particularly in the areas of sustainability and mental health. Initiatives like these present opportunities to reach beyond the traditional alumni base, as these projects are not necessarily predicated on a pre-existing relationship. And research into major areas like heart disease, cancer and diabetes need little introduction. To make the donors’ task easier The University of Toronto has a searchable list of research projects seeking support.
Turning to the expansion of the annual giving operation itself, some US institutions like Ohio State University are moving to a more ‘customer-focused’ approach by establishing the Ohio State Engagement Center that supports donors, alumni and other community members on an inbound basis, much like a concierge service. Complementing annual giving’s outbound activities, this hybrid approach could be a game-changer for the donor experience, particularly at the lower giving levels.
More than ever, the ground is shifting beneath our feet. Annual giving operations across Canada are adapting at warp speed, exploring new ways to build the donor relationship from year to year, even as technology is continuously morphing. But the key thing to remember is that we are not dealing here with an isolated act. Far from being a one-off experience, annual giving forms a crucial and continuing part of a perennial relationship between Canadian institutions and their donors.
Featuring an engaging & open interview between Karen Bertrand of Queen’s University and Julie Davis of Trent University.
The third CCAE Exposé features an engaging interview between Karen Bertrand, Vice-Principal, Advancement at Queen’s University and Julie Davis, Vice-President, External Relations and Advancement at Trent University on the challenges, and community driven involvement in changing the name of a campus building.
The power of names is not trivial. Naming goes back to the very beginnings of the human era when some names were so sacred they could not even be uttered. Names can elevate and redeem, desecrate and dehumanize; they can liberate or imprison.
It is not therefore surprising that in our concentrated academic cultures naming issues have taken on a special significance, not only within campuses but beyond. Names have become a lightning rod for the culture wars that wage all around us. Oxford University has resisted taking down a statue of white imperialist Cecil Rhodes (he of the Rhodes Scholars) by adding a plaque describing him as “a committed colonialist”. One person’s ‘teachable moment’ is another’s grievous insult.
Universities, colleges, and independent schools are at the centre of this debate because naming forms an embedded part of their culture: faculties, schools, buildings, playing fields, sports teams – even scholarships and academic chairs. Any of these can carry monikers which may or may not stand the test of time. What makes educational institutions unique is that they are pincered between the instinct to maintain a long-term institutional perspective on the one hand, and the representations of an increasingly aware community of students and external stakeholders on the other. One thing that is fairly certain is that the institution will be considered by a large part of the community to have ‘got it wrong’, whatever the outcome.
There are many positive aspects to the re-naming process. Numerous Canadian educational institutions have engaged in extensive community consultations about certain names on their campuses or within their structures. One of the most high-profile recent examples is Ryerson University which has committed to changing the name of the university in time for the academic year 2022-23, and is using the re-naming process to engage the Ryerson community even more deeply.
In response to input from their communities, Queen’s University removed Sir John A. Macdonald’s name and the University of New Brunswick removed George Ludlow’s name – both from their law school buildings. At McGill the Redmen sports teams became the Redbirds, and St. Lawrence College in Kingston has renamed its Eagle’s Nest Indigenous Centre as the Waasaabiidaasamose Indigenous Centre. In the secondary sector, the Calgary Catholic School District changed the name of the Bishop Grandin High School to Our Lady of the Rockies High School, due to Bishop Grandin’s role as an architect of the residential school system. Part of the impetus for many of these changes is that they were strongly supported by Indigenous students and their communities, and so send a powerful signal of welcome and inclusion.
The implications of these changes for the advancement sector are multi-layered. Alumni will certainly have differing opinions, as they would for almost any issue, because they care about the institution. Donors, many of whom are alumni, have expressed their own individual opinions on naming issues, but neither alumni nor donors are monolithic – they hold views across the spectrum. Advancement offices themselves have stayed for the most part scrupulously independent, recognizing wisely that an already complex process would not benefit from having development issues thrown into the mix.
Despite all the controversies surrounding naming issues, they do present a landmark opportunity for community engagement at all levels. This engagement will never produce unanimity, but it will generate vigorous debate and thoughtful deliberation, which is what universities are all about.
The key takeaway at this point seems to be that deep and authentic community engagement is essential so that people feel heard, whether or not they agree with the final outcome. Either way, we will doubtless be returning to the issues of naming, de-naming and re-naming in the not-too-distant future.
