Time is Now to Teach Students How to Give
"For a long time, universities relied on the inherent loyalty of alumni to cultivate donors," says Brian Kish, senior vice president of development at the University of Arizona Foundation and chair of the upcoming CASE "Cultivating Student Philanthropy" conference. "That was the case with the civics and boomers, but that's less the case with generation X and Y. It's not that people aren't as generous today, but we just can't rely on their inherent generosity to give back to their alma maters."
Student philanthropy education first became a hot trend in alumni relations nearly a decade ago, says Kish. He notes that private institutions have been more or less teaching their students how to give for decades but that, until fairly recently, public institutions had not considered the practice. Now, amid diminishing state contributions to higher education, he says public institutions have to play catch up.
"The situation is just being amplified as state budget cuts continue," Kish says. "With private funds making up a larger portion of the budget of public schools, we have to communicate to students that tuition and taxes aren't paying for all of their education. We have to say this early and often to get them to understand the idea."
Lori Hurvitz, assistant dean and director of college programming at the University of Chicago, agrees and has more than a few ideas about how institutions should be doing so. She recently completed her doctorate in higher education management, and her dissertation—which won CASE's John Grenzebach Award for Outstanding Research in Philanthropy earlier this year—examined student philanthropy education initiatives at nine institutions in the Ivy-Plus consortium.
Hurvitz, who will present her research at the upcoming CASE conference, believes that students must be taught how to be good alumni in a fashion similar to how they learn the other designed outcomes of a college education. And any institution can do this, she says, not just those Ivy-Plus institutions she studied.
"The threads of what happens on those campuses, you can pick those up and take those anywhere," Hurvitz says. "It doesn't matter that these are Ivy-Plus institutions; it matters that they have built a culture of student giving that didn't exist there before."
Hurvitz says it can be hard for advancement professionals to talk to students if they don't work or interact with them on a regular basis. Therefore, she suggests that those in advancement work with students affairs professionals in putting on the events they host for students. Then, she argues, it's incumbent upon advancement professionals to use those opportunities to communicate to students why giving is important and how it helps them and the institution.
"In the short term, it's not going to raise a lot of money, so you can't just measure success in dollars," Hurvitz says. "You have to have a broader definition of success. The more an alumnus is connected to an institution and invested in it as a student, the more likely he or she will be to give later. You just can't afford to wait and see what happens."
Tags: Winter 2012
