Professor Pandemonium and Staying Awake in Lectures

services@supportingadvancement.com — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 01:17:22 GMT

I sit in a writing lecture now, wondering why I bothered to come. I look around at the other students. Most are staring at our professor with half-alive expressions or slumping in their seats. I know these looks. They say, “Please engage me and challenge me. Teach me something I didn’t learn in high school. I am paying to be here, please make it worth my money.”

When I graduated high school last year I found myself at then end of one era in my life and the beginning of another. I was ready to move onto something new; something dynamic and exciting and more focused on my interests.

Today the professor tells us that when she sees our blank faces, she takes that as a cue to repeat herself so we can understand the material. She repeats herself a lot. It isn’t because we don’t understand the concepts. We are asleep with our eyes open.

I miss class once in awhile and ask the friends who I sit with, “What did I miss?” They reply, “Oh, nothing. The highlight of class was when she had to replace the batteries in her microphone. She said that class would have to be cancelled and all of these people were whispering, ‘Yes!’—including me, of course—and then we heard a loud, “NO!” from the back of the class, not even sarcastic. We all turned around to see the psycho.”

Why are we so broken? Once, we had a taste of an engaging lecturer. What she had to say was relevant and carefully thought out. She had been filling in while our regular professor was away.

I look down towards the front row where the de-throned interim professor is sitting with the rest of the teaching assistants and tutorial leaders. She leans back in her chair with her arms crossed. Her head tilts downward in a sigh of some sort. I wonder what she is thinking— how is she making this lecture on speech writing valuable in her mind?

I know how to write. I know that in speeches I have to use devices that appeal to my audience’s ear and that I must know my audience in the first place. This is what I learned in high school. I am in University now because I was able to
understand and apply this knowledge then. I don’t want to learn it again.

The interim professor knew her audience, and knew how to keep us engaged and challenge our high school-taught notions about every facet of writing. The first day she lectured, she told us that she had researched our generation—her audience.

What did she think about us? She said our generation was viewed a lazy, apathetic, and complacent. That we would only work as hard as what was required to continue on—not to make something of ourselves. I nodded along with the guy next to me— that seemed like my generation—that’s what everyone else was pinning us as. She looked up from her notes, her hands on either side of the podium and gazed at three hundred students.

“That’s not what I think.”

The Integrated Advancement Office

services@supportingadvancement.com — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 01:14:45 GMT

On the relationships between constituents, staff and fundraising and the importance of relationships. People to people are more important then ever.

To some extent, educational institutions can afford to have some degree of patience. This is an advantage to encourage and build the communication between various parties in meaningful ways. When we make people feel they matter at all levels, they will bring others to us.

This ties in to a broad definition of philanthropy. What is real, what is genuine and what is authentic, in a way that helps promote the happiness and well-being of fellow human beings.

We develop these relationships through the 6 “I”’s’ of Integration. Identity, Inform, Interest, Involve and Invest. Each step leads to the next one, and you can’t easily jump a step. These apply both to internal as well as external processes.

Relationships are with prospects, but are also with other advancement staff working together for a common cause. Compare old style advancement organizations with independent units to today’s operations which by necessity tend to be more integrated.

How to people feel about the institution as they take their lifelong relationships as graduates and move into their primary giving years? What other organizations out there have the same constituency of bonded alumni that educational institutions do?

With the combination of alumni, and an overall integrated advancement operation, we have a very good competitive advantage.

Some challenges. Some areas might not always agree with integrating fundraising into their operations.

We think about our internal operations and how we’re organized all the time, but how often do our external constituents think about this? 1-2 minutes a month at the most. We sometimes get lost in our own internal perspectives and viewpoints. Think about the analogy of a transit system. We don’t really care who runs the busses, we just want to get to work.

The idea of integration may be feared because of career implications through organizational change resulting from integration. Lack of communication of purpose can make marching to a common goal more difficult.

Integration starts up front with the applicant for the jog. When interviewing and alumni relations person for example, ask questions about fundraising, experience with systems to assess the degree of flexibility regarding integration right at the onset of the hiring process. This is also good relationship building for internal people. Hire staff with shared attitudes and values.

Comfort with people. Staff need to be seen as part of the institutional structure and environment and committed to the ideas of education and the mission of the institution, no matter what they are asked to do outside the possible bounds of their job description.

All people in an integrated operation need to understand, meet and adhere to their quantitative goals both as individuals and as an integrated team.

People with a variety of skills will be a better fit in an integrated model. For example, consider the integration of a piece in a magazine. An article on student awards, showing the value of the education, the investment in the award by a donor, and the value of a graduate bridging between all the different components of the past present and future of the organization. The articulation of the piece will require expertise from all areas in the advancement operations, from fundraising, stewardship, systems, alumni relations, communications, marketing and other organizational units.

Integration works, and in truly integrated operations, it can be very powerful.

To Subscribe or Unsubscribe

services@supportingadvancement.com — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 01:11:58 GMT

Remember the motto that Lotus used to have? “It’s as easy as 1 2 3.”

When the Lotus spreadsheet was released it was a very powerful tool compared to other spreadsheets. Because of the differential functionality, it seemed a little more complicated than other products, so Lotus branded it a little differently by showing how easy it was to enter the data and then create charts and graphs to quickly analyze your business.

Many of our most important marketing opportunities are through e-newsletters, and recently, when updating my subscription preferences to a number of newsletters, I quickly realized that many of us have forgotten to make it easy for our users to manage our email preferences.

I subscribe to e-newsletters and a number of listservs. It helps me to keep focused on certain aspects of change within my area of expertise and serves relevant content to me in a way that is timely, convenient and easy to manage. (So I thought.)

So, you have a new email address and need to re-subscribe. It is simply amazing how this is typically neither obvious nor straight forward. There are a variety of approaches and we really need to simplify to enhance the user experience.

There should be a clear link to a “change my communication preferences” page. This page should allow a subscriber to change email address and all other facets of their subscription(s), login, and other “membership attributes.” Many e-newsletters still have only a cancel subscription link, which is automatic, and so you need to unsubscribe, and then re-subscribe. This is an unnecessary step that not only causes the user grief, but is not good for harvesting and updating any acquired information.
The manage preferences page should have links to all of the various subscription options. You shouldn’t have to do this multiple times.
All listservs should have a clearly designed and laid out page for subscribing, unsubscribing, how to access the archives, purpose, administrator contact and other information appropriate to participating in a listserv. At a minimum, the link to the change preferences page, and some of the instructions for subscribe and unsubscribe should be in the footers of all messages posted to the listserv.
In all cases any subscription changes should be verified by the sending of a verification link with clear instructions to the subscriber as to how to reply, and an appropriate link to verify online.

With the amount of spam (one study estimates that low value email represents about 12% of corporate payroll) we really need to make it as “Easy as 1, 2, 3.”

In a busy and impatient world, it’s hard to get subscribers. Why make it hard to keep them?

Engaging Alumni and Friends

services@supportingadvancement.com — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 01:11:10 GMT

Engaging Alumni and Friends

Engagement is the topical cycle of development, which is commonly accepted as the standard model for development and advancement. What are some of the broader strategies you can utilize to help you increase your ability to engage alumni and friends?

You need to learn about the broader institution.
You need to learn how to seek out and find prospects in some unlikely places. Your research need to be a proactive process, so check the system, review your high profile individuals, read the paper and review prominent web sites.
Always engage for the longer term. This is a function of listening, knowing your donors and relating this personal knowledge to engagement. Don’t be afraid to “hand your donor off” to someone who knows them better and is better able to manage and grow the relationship.
Campaigns are not perfect, so think of them as learning opportunities. This sometimes means you may need to switch gears mid-stream, but an important part of your success will always relate to your ability to step back and get an external perception of yourself and your operations. Do you wear the same hat and say the same message, or do you wear different hats and change the message fairly often?
Make sure your expectations of donors are clear at the onset.

Some Tips and Tricks for Better Engagement

Not enough planning.
Lack of clarity when asking what a gift is for.
Unrealistic view of the expected timeline. Relationships are long-term.
Unrealistic expectations of donor motivation or capacity. Do your homework.
Not listening – leads to poor donor strategy.
Gifts centric over donor centric. If donor needs are not met, check will not be for as much or not at all.
The tall towers of corporate land are made up of people too. Don’t forget this when working with organizations.
Ignoring your donor base. Remember to look at what your current donors are giving to and why they are giving to it.
What about your lapsed donors? Why have they lapsed and what can you do to resolve and re-engage.

Engagement and Askaphobia

The relationship is strong
The interest is strong
The moment is upon us
The heart races faster
Eyes look for an exit
Pray for a fire alarm
Our breathing becomes erratic
Guilt overwhelms us

If you are not nervous about making an ask, you may be in the wrong job. People who are passionate about asking, do get nervous when doing it.

There is no set formula for asking, other than to know your donor, not to be vague, and to be clear and precise when you do the ask.

Don’t get wrapped up too much in your own expectations in the meeting, and try to keep the donor’s expectations first and foremost in your mind and in the conversation.

Engagement and Planned Giving

Addressing the end of life issues are emotional discussions that take time. Donors need to tell their story, and the story may be longer because you have to understand it in the context of their lives.

A planned giving meeting should be scheduled for a longer time period. However, when booking the meeting, articulate a clear exit strategy in advance of the meeting so you don’t end up trying to devise one at the meeting if it runs too far over.

We may often have little information about some planned giving donors. Questions help to broaden our understanding of what brought them to our doors, and what they might be in terms of a prospect. Ask for hard information from them to help with identification, i.e. a postal code so they can be further qualified.

The rewards of a successful planned giving program can be very great, but all of the upfront work is very critical.

Gift planning also needs to consider the complete plan. The institution, the family, the past, future, the lifestyle and the budget implications for the individual. The communication key is to make the planned gift a win-win for everyone involved. In many cases you simply won’t get a gift without overall family considerations, and these negotiations always take extra time.

There are also cautionary aspects to be considered in planned gifts. Watch for red flags, such as odd gifts in kind, and situations where the donor may want the organization to be a trustee.

Will The Circle Be Unbroken

services@supportingadvancement.com — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 01:09:17 GMT

A few years ago some colleagues and I attended an event where Reverend Jesse Jackson was speaking. He uses alliteration a lot, and the one expression he repeated throughout was “we work every day.” Well, as you can imagine, we glommed onto that one pretty quickly and it soon became a standard office phrase whenever we were working late.

So where is this going?

We do work every day but sometimes we really need to step back and figure out what we are working for, and what are some of the ways we can improve our organizations. Simply put, to create a better customer experience.

I recently got back from helping my daughter register for college, and you know, there are some commonalities in our institutions, that we may need to fight a little harder to change.

Clearly marked parking lots, without having to consult a parking lawyer.
Clearly marked directions and maps to get to registration.
A customer service approach that is geared to helpful, especially if it is clear a student with a parent, just a student, or a prospective student.
Printed materials with consistent and clear fonts. Parents may be a little older, and some of the small print is hard to read. Readable documents make it easier for us to get organized.
Academic jargon, scheduling and similar terminology is confusing for outsiders. We need to change the way we talk about ourselves, and the words we use.
A service model that includes as much pre-registration materials, class schedules, class availability. It’s difficult for a young enthusiastic person to show up at registration and find out that some of the classes they wanted to take are already cancelled, and that their whole schedule now needs to change.

In fact, the web has to enable much more of our enterprise. As a parent it’s disheartening to have to spend thousands of dollars on textbooks that change slightly from year to year. I understand the need to have current knowledge, but in some cases, this seems like an attempt for professors to increase book sales.

A web based subscription model to class materials makes a lot more sense, and would also be a better way to build future bonds to our intellectual capital.

You may think that this is all sounding like a great big whine, but the fact of the current age demographics suggest that fewer young people will be available in the future to populate our schools. As they become a smaller percentage of the population, we will be competing for students both internationally and nationally.

Think of some of the great web enabled service models such as Ebay, Amazon, automobile rental companies, and others that have radicalized complete industries. (University of Phoenix?)

We need to think more strategically and make a much better effort to provide services that are an ideal combination of “Web and Big Box”.

Unfortunately, my daughter did shed a few tears during the day. Through cancellations, confusion, and the same things that I experienced myself so many years ago. The irony was that some things had changed but a lot had not. We are creatures of habit, creatures of experience, and creatures of our culture. These are all difficult to change.

Web Experience First – Was not bad.

First Onsite Experience – Could have been better.

“Will the circle be unbroken ….”

Decentralized/Centralized Questions and Considerations

services@supportingadvancement.com — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 01:09:17 GMT

Even small institutions face some of the challenges of central vs. decentralization in terms of their advancement operations. What are some of the questions and possible challenges that we need to consider when designing our organizations to be effective? (Note: these are not in a priority order.)

How do the various mission statements of the central and decentralized units mesh or are different?

How do best practices get articulated down to all levels of the organization so that advancement is “institutionalized” throughout the organization? This is difficult to do even in just a central department, particularly with staff turnover.

How is coordination achieved between the various units, especially for mission critical items such as prospect management and clearance. The concepts of “yards and fences” may be critical when designing many of these processes, but they can’t be too restrictive as to preclude good contact and communication between the units.

There may be challenges where larger and smaller units have wildly varying levels of resources and/or expertise. Conceptually, this equates to the idea of fixed and variable costs. Each school may have expertise, but when there may be only one staff person, they end up being out of necessity, a “Jack/Jill of all trades”, which may lower effectiveness in a particular area such as a concentration and focus on major gift fundraising.

What is the balance between prescriptive activities at the center and capacity of a non-central unit to perform tasks for the center? The center many not understand the pain, even though they need to share it for the “greater good.” They key to much of this is to try and automate wherever possible.

Development of both common and separate branding is challenging, particularly during a campaign, where there is one overarching marketing message, and yet individual schools may have their own distinct and compelling brand identity already. Organizational standards manuals and style guides help to resolve this somewhat.

Sharing of costs. Salaries, travel and other costs can utilize an allocation methodology based on activity and where accountability and responsibility should lie or where there is a clear causal relationship between pieces such as an annual fund mailing. If good systems are not in place for both accounting and allocating all of these, the administrative overhead can create a lot of inefficiency.

Accountability for all tasks given multiple masters. Very often a decentralized office is accountable for major gifts and contacts as an example, but we sometimes fail to include measures of accountability into for other elements such as addressable rates or engagement metrics into job descriptions and performance contracts.

Professional development, training and orientation and articulation of policies and procedures surrounding these. Formula approach and allocation this way is an easy way to solve but may not address overall needs.

Data entry and maintenance. Many organizations prefer a centralize approach for this based on the need for strong controls, yet a hybrid model may actually work better. Many decentralized units are often “closer” to their constituents. Good reports on data integrity and edit controls in the system software are critical to making this work.

Dovetailing into “central” projects. For example, purchasing an alumni community with all of the requisite functionality may not always dovetail with a unit’s web site easily. There can be large difficulties in sharing technologies and costs. A centralized portal strategy may be a good alternative.

Strong policies and procedures for elements that may come into play in units such as shadow databases and other “rogue” activities may appear to be draconian in what are typically perceived as more “free enterprise”

“My grads.” “My prospects.” With the complexity of degrees now often crossing multiple boundaries, the controls for solicitations, opt outs and other standard activities are more complex. System support to manage these matrices, and to manage them in a multi-dimensional format are essential.

The “independents.” Foundations, institutions and other related organizations may have separate boards, financial statements and more. More than just being autonomous, many of these organizations may actually have conflicting motivations and needs. This is where leadership, and particularly strong leadership needs to be at the forefront of communication and policy decisions to help resolve any conflicts that arise. Reciprocal boar memberships, common mission statement elements, clear policies and procedures and special articles in the by-laws can go a long way to helping resolve.

There are probably lots of other areas, and the proposed reconciliation of all of them could take many books. Nobody has an endless amount of resources and time to spend re-coordinating our efforts in a world that is becoming more competitive and less continuous.

Many of the complexities inherent in our organizations are also what make us unique. It’s important that we don’t let these interfere with our efficiency and impede our progress.

- Know Your Organization

- Embrace the Mission

- Be an Effective Communicator

Some Random Thoughts from Vint Cert

services@supportingadvancement.com — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 01:09:17 GMT

We recently had the privilege of hearing Vint Cerf, one of the “founding fathers” of what we know as the “Internet”. So here’s some stream of consciousness thoughts from someone who’s been in “the business” since before many of us were born.

The title of the talk was “Uncovering the Science in Computer Science” where Vint was speaking to the need to re-formulate the way we think about computer science, and where and what this “science” needs to evolve to in the future if we are to be more successful.

One of the beauties of the original design on the Internet is that TCPIP packets don’t really care what kind of data is in them. It can be text, programs, video, sound and anything else that can be transferred digitally. The idea of transferring all information digitally, will have profound effects not only on society, but in all of the infrastructure that supports the brokering of this information.

He spoke about the “scalability” of the Internet, in that in 1997 there were approximately 22.5 million hosts, and with all of the additional devices now there are probably in excess of 1 billion devices attached. With the growth in cell phone technology and everything else over IP, the bandwidth required in the future will be supporting 3.6+ billion telephones, 2.5+ billion mobiles and 1+ billion computers. This is an enormous amount of devices to manage.

World market penetration also needs to be thought of in terms of change. There is currently and will be even a greater shift in demographics because of language. Asia 380.4, North America 227.5, and Europe 294.1 million users means that language will become of primary importance, not only in the presentation of information, but that there will be a cultural shift in programming languages.

Is computer science an oxymoron? If we use the scientific method, what can we predict and what can we discover, and is this the way in which computer science needs to be approached in the future?

Hardware improvements have been much more pronounced and have happened faster than software improvements. So in many cases, the solving of a problem relies much more on “brute force” than on the scientific method. While hardware performance has improved by orders of magnitude, software programming efficiency has only increased by a factor of 10 or more. Software is obviously more variable, more complex and much more complicated.

Some theories and predictors in computer science: 90% of the program will be completed in 90% of the allocated or estimated time. The remaining 10% will be completed in 90% of the time. Science has a difficult time predicting software completion. What things does the software do that it’s not supposed to? We often can’t find this out until it is deployed, and then have to use brute force to make it right.

Other challenges not currently addressed in computer science have to do with legal and regulatory environments. The industry is still changing quickly, and laws have simply not kept pace with the societal impacts of software and computers.

Science also addresses how things are used, and with the Internet, there are no real usage statistics other than generalized traffic. It is impossible to keep track of what people are clicking on in a systematic fashion, since web sites track independently. A user may click on a video, a link, fill in a form, send an email and perform other tasks on a multitude of sites, and at the same time incorporate various elements of on-line and offline activities. We have a long way to go before we can obtain detailed global inferences about how users use.

We are increasingly moving towards user self service. Much of this is based on commercial and business models rather than on what is learned in computer science. For example, one change in advertising behavior is that an advertisement is more effective if a user chooses to view it rather than if it is pushed towards the user involuntarily.

Computer science will need to help improve and further evaluate how indexing and search engines work, since most of our access to information is initiated by search engines. Some of the “newer” areas are semantic indexing, modal indexing. Time and location indexing is also becoming very important, and there are currently not many good ways of doing much of this. Type jaguar into one of the search engines. They still can’t very well decide on whether you mean the car or the animal, or a combination of both. Try to see how a web page looked 6 months ago. Time and location of the page have probably changed a lot, and yet there are no succinct and constructed archives of the time and place of the site.

Information decay. It is more like tooth decay, and how will we do preventative maintenance to make sure information is accessible in the future? The PowerPoint of 3000 may not read the files of PowerPoint 2000. (Interesting question and answer that came up on this. “If we all use open source software, will we not be able to deal with this? Answer: While it’s true that the software development environment may be open source, the developer of the viewer of the PowerPoint 2000 files, may keep that aspect proprietary in order to capitalize on their efforts.”

Remember Sputnik, the first satellite launched by the Russians. This created a furor in the United States, and was really the initiator of NASA and a number of programs for funding many branches of science. Vint suggests that one of the ways to invigorate computer science would be to use global warming as the new Sputnik, in terms of creating programs and resources to solve the most important issue of the modern age.

Solving this problem will require new algorithms, new expertise, new ways of working together, new ways of cooperating politically, financially, common language and much more.

And finally, back to the roots: The Interplanetary Internet. A new project to create the first Internet in our solar system.

One of the challenges of the Mars landers, is that the telemetry was expected to happen in almost real time, but the distances involved, make this difficult. For example, imagine a network, where one point is broadcasting to another point, but the second point doesn’t send a response back for 20 minutes to let the first point know when the signal has stopped or started. On Earth, the distances are much less, so a lot of the data streams can be easily buffered.

So, working with NASA, the Mars orbiters were used to be a relay point for the Landers broadcast to the orbiting satellites, and then the satellites send the signal back to earth. The Landers are newer, and have a much higher bandwidth. The orbiters were reprogrammed from earth in order to do this.

The end result is that any device that is now sent out becomes a new node in the Interplanetary Internet.

Always fascinating to hear someone speak who continues to be a visionary, and who continues to work on some of the most leading edge projects in our small corner of the galaxy.

Your Electronic Ideas and Tools for Implementing Them

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 01:04:26 GMT

We need to apply our ideas where they will do the most good. Be very clear on ideas that you thought might not have been great, but that could eventually lead to a practical implementation of something. Your idea may have been a little too far ahead of its time and maybe the tool just didn’t exist. The “Internet Bubble” of a few years ago is a prime example. Much money lost, but survivors capitalized R&D, and for all the failures, we ended up with ideas that worked, and technology tools to support them.

What tools are available, and how do we maintain what we currently have?

Select your tool set based on where you need to go vs. where you’re currently at. i.e. We all know HTML, but content management as a tool makes more sense for implementing and training staff than investing a lot of money in a new HTML editing tool.

Who makes decisions on your programs and services? For electronic services, these decisions are not always as obvious. These tend to be determined by outside advice and trends. Internal staff may not have the knowledge. The idea of electronic communications as a “program area” with a separate manager and job descriptions is uncommon. This is changing, and some organizations have now implemented “electronic divisions” at the most global level of the organization and are applying significant resources. We’re starting to see the development of job descriptions based online activities such as online revenue generation.

Electronic engagement needs to be a critical part of our programs. Electronic components however, are not as distinct as something as a print piece, and need to be much more fluid in their application and how they are presented. For example, an electronic magazine, where the front page pictures randomly changes, are more specifically served to the user based on their affinity and interests.

Knowledge, experience and expertise come from both internal and external.

Who staffs the electronic enterprise?1
What is the overall budget?
How do we integrate “outside” knowledge?
What is our confidence level in making electronic decisions?
What common sense and ROI to you apply?
How do you continually become aware of new tools and techniques?
How do you build creativity into the process?
What problems or needs do you need to fulfill, and how are these evaluated?
What are some simple steps to success?

Rely on the expertise of your profession. No matter what the tools, the expertise as to what constitutes good engagement techniques and how to build relationships is a constant in all of our professions.

Familiarize yourself with the options. You don’t need to be a technical expert to understand the tools and techniques. A little professional development goes a long way to helping your understanding.

Relate the tools in your toolbox to your mission and goals. Just like everything else you do and employ, when we become disconnected from our purpose, our task becomes much more difficult.

Generating Loyalty on Your Site

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 01:04:26 GMT

Success in the electronic world is becoming more dependent on the idea that interactions on a web site are a two way street. Expectations for robust interactivity are increasing.

Online behavior, especially a constituent’s willingness to invest in an organization can be positively correlated with some aspects of online behavior such as visiting and logging into a web site. Here are some ideas to help motivate visitors:

Giving up Control of your Site. Let your visitors decide what content they want on THEIR site. Talk to your audience, feature what they want as subjects and then track the traffic on these features. A feature list that comes up as you login that can ask you for, or to rate your preferences can help to activate, and subsequently cultivate these processes so visitors get used to asking. Content is then served based on login and preferences.

Make Options for Giving Clear. Visitors should be able to control their giving. We all know that unrestricted money, while being the most useful is also the most difficult to raise. Give choices for designations. Designations can also be served to a form based on past giving history or interests. You search engine results for giving inquiries can also be tailored to specific funds or projects. Check MIT’s giving site for the idea of wish lists and how these can be customized for visitors.

Design Communications Specifically for your Web Site. Investigating online magazines and other content for the site. A PDF of a magazine or other publication may not work as well as a “magazine” specifically designed for the web, that in addition to content has various ways of interacting with an individual. MSNBC’s site recommends articles that you might be interested in reading based on ones that you’ve previously viewed.

Connect Blogs or other Interactive Features to Extend your Static Content. Referenced in a magazine to a blog based on the subject of an article. Tie a blog on a travel program to specific trips so visitors can self report their travel experiences and post photographs. Reinforce interactive features through content reinforced by your e-newsletter.

Live Class Notes on the Site. Don’t make people wait for a print piece. In addition to submitting a class note, make them available immediately. Balance between freedom of speech and some kind of an audit and approval process is necessary, but self reporting of information by users, especially when they want to make it visible is extremely desirable. Search and serve the notes for users that login based on affinity and content. Not on the print pieces that class notes were submitted online, and have a link on the print piece that reinforces the idea to submit these on the web site.

Think Beyond Class Notes. Blogs for alumni to keep in touch with other alumni. Link to alumni groups – i.e. A window into past graduates and other content areas related to graduation years or other affinity areas.

Write for the Web. Not always an obvious skill. In fact, write for the web first, and then develop the same writing for print. Small point form copy blocks. Take a course and learn how to do this well.

Encourage Interactivity. Check the Carleton University Café for a good example and combination of encouraging interactivity, and good marketing.

Offer a Variety of Newsletters. Focus on a variety of topics targeted towards individual activities and affinity. Tie variable content into the newsletters, and develop RSS feeds to tie to users who wish to receive their news in different ways. Have archives of all e-newsletters on the site.

Connect to Alumni Websites. Allow your constituents to add links to alumni web sites to your pages. Same audit and review process needs to apply as with other self entry and reporting.

Respond Quickly to Bad News. Up front in-depth explanation of any serious issues helps improve your credibility in the face of adversity and people are now used to going to the web as the first source of information when they’ve heard something they want to find out more about.

Embrace and Deploy Active Communication. Instant messaging, individual photo galleries, web pages, blogs and other features that are targeted down from overall site, to groups, to individuals, and a matrix combination of all or any of the above. RSS feeds in and out of all pages help to leverage content.

Keep an Eye on Popular Web Sites that Create Capability Expectations. Too often we just look and review higher ed web sites to evaluate our own. We really need to look at leaders in the field and use this knowledge to try and create similar features for our own users. These are the benchmarks we need to try and emulate.

Ideas summarized from a session given by Bob Johnston.
For more ideas: http://bobjohnsonconsulting.com/blog1/

Do More With Less on the Web Every Day

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 01:04:26 GMT

Look for things that make you productive so you can find time for other tasks. It sounds simple. For example, standardize your events invitations so that they work simultaneously in print and media. Encourage all of your institutional staff to send information updates to you via a web form rather than a paper one. If people phone in database changes, help train and direct them to the web form.

Efficiency is also about removing items from your site that may be extraneous or not particularly useful. Rearrange content according to statistics move lower traffic items from the main pages. This reduces maintenance.

Simple things – re-arrange the items on a form. Many web forms use a drop down box for country to drive the format of a postal code. Yet, with most forms users need to select the country and then tab back to edit the postal code. Some fields in an address form may no longer be of much use. How often do we really use a fax number any more?

Registrations and business processes that involve the collection and deployment of data should be driven by the database directly. You should no longer have to update an HTML list of lost alumni to display on your site. If a user logs in, form fields where you have information int eh database should be pre-populated for your users.

Viral marketing goes a long way to promote your messages. Send this page to a friend, forward to a friend, friends asking friends. Saves you having to ask.

Use content management software. In this day and age it is irresponsible to manage a site without it. Use templates, style sheets and component based architecture for maximum efficiency.

Stand time management techniques - record where you’re investing your time in and look for “holes in the bucket.” Task inventories help us understand where we can improve.

Measure your activities. How much time to you take to authenticate and manage users and passwords? Is there any manual intervention required? Can some of this be automated? Address common customer services issues though carefully designed FAQ pages. Make administrative chores easier such as the availability of a form on your site for submission of an alumni branch report.

Running total of frequently asked questions and build a database to provide answers to users and visitors. Use this to re-jig the site to put information up front that may be buried and hard to find.

Re-synching your database. What portions of this can be automated? Create data integrity reports, automated response emails and postcard marketing that allow direct updating of the database by users and visitors. With the right controls and audit trail, this works.

Multi-purpose your information. Example - use reunion photographs to create a specifically targeted flash piece to send out as part of your reunion invitations or follow up questionnaire. Builds loyalty through association and maximizes use of your photographs.

Distribute work. Volunteers may be able to update a chapter web site if you delegate authority.

Learn how to work with influence. Politics play a role in all of this and you need to know how to manage and sell up if you need to get more resources. Understand who butters your bread and build the appropriate alliances. (There are many books on the subject.)

Reinforce good decisions. You don’t necessarily do an ROI, but talk up successful projects such as increases in online registrations with decision makers.

Budget. Your electronic program areas should have separate and distinct line items rather than being just part of some nebulous or undefined pool. You online presence is no longer “experimental”. Evaluate program budget areas and remove amounts to cover online services since these typically cut across all budget areas.

Most important - think creatively and you’ll easily come up with many more.

Archive

Professor Pandemonium and Staying Awake in Lectures

The Integrated Advancement Office

To Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Engaging Alumni and Friends

Will The Circle Be Unbroken

Decentralized/Centralized Questions and Considerations

Some Random Thoughts from Vint Cert

Your Electronic Ideas and Tools for Implementing Them

Generating Loyalty on Your Site

Do More With Less on the Web Every Day