By John Taylor, Partner How To Track Alumni Engagement? In a previous article, I argued that relying exclusively on alumni participation to gauge alumni affinity to an organization was no longer a viable metric.  Simple math, as discussed in that article, is causing participation rates to decline no matter how actively we pursue alumni donations.  […]

By David Shufflebarger, Senior Partner ‘If you don’t like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less’  – Eric Shinseki, military leader The pace of change seems to be increasing dramatically, possibly because of remarkable advances in technology. How to keep up and adapt are challenges we all face, and this is especially so […]

By Nancy Peterman, Partner In the world of development much has been written about how many attempts one must make to land a meeting with a donor before throwing in the towel.  Some organizations have specified protocol such as the following: If there is no answer leave voice mail on the first attempt; Call three […]

By John Taylor, Partner This article will focus on alumni participation as there are national collectors of this information that enter into college rankings.  But the information shared here can just as easily apply to parents, grandparents, friends, members, etc. Alumni participation was originally seen (some 40 years ago by US News and World Reports) as a […]

By Heather Thornton, Project Coordinator The other day, I received a holiday email from my alma mater which promoted me to put “make year-end gift to Sewanee” on my to-do list.  Being in the fundraising field and working with higher education institutions on a daily basis, it also got me thinking about my relationship with […]

By John H. Taylor, Partner Perhaps because whenever I deliver a session on IRS rules and regulations I include commentary on the state of the charitable deduction, I have been asked many times since November 8th, “What do you think now?” Well, it is a good question to ask, but I am probably not the […]

by Sandra K. Kidd, Partner U.S. Trust and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy have released their biennial study of high net worth individuals, and it backs up what Giving USA and other national surveys are showing: Yes, people are giving in large numbers, and they intend to keep doing so. This year’s […]

By: David Shufflebarger MINDING MILLENIALS I have the impression that a lot of folks over 35 are dismissive of millennials, putting them out of their mind because of some preconceived notions such as ‘entitled, unreliable, or glued to their screens.’ Thus I was struck by this confluence of headlines over a couple of weeks in […]