Broken Telephone

services@supportingadvancement.com — Tue, 01 May 2007 01:26:05 GMT

School is over for the year, and summer classes begin in May. Exams are coming to a conclusion and essays and portfolios are being marked and returned to students.

Actually, “returned” isn’t the right word for how I received my photography portfolio. In reality, I embarked on a quest that was plagued with many dead ends and confused people.

The first e-mail came from my TA who said that the portfolios had been marked and were:

1. in white envelopes

2. in alphabetical order

3. in boxes

Hmmm. The campus is pretty big. Where could these “boxes” be? Well, there were three floors in the Centre for Fine Arts. It had to be on one of those floors.

On the day I was supposed to drive to campus, I received an e-mail from my professor saying that the portfolios were in the first floor photography room and we would need to call ahead to make sure someone was there. I couldn’t find a number.

When I got to campus I went to the Fine Arts building and knocked on the door where my portfolios should have been sitting behind. No Answer. I knocked again and waited and realized that even if I did have a phone number, nobody would be there to pick it up.

I walked across campus to check my final Psychology mark, got a coffee and walked back to the Fine Arts building. I was starting to feel flustered. I knocked on the door loudly. No answer. I knocked loudly once again, an exasperated, reverberating knock. As I was about to leave in defeat, the door opened. A girl stood in the doorway and I smiled, explaining that I needed to pick up a portfolio. She looked perplexed.

“There aren’t any portfolios here. They should be upstairs.” She pointed to the piece of paper on the door that said portfolios could be found upstairs.

I pointed to the bottom of the sheet. “It says portfolios for sections three, four, and five are upstairs. I’m section one. My professor told me that it was here.”

“Ok.” She let me in. I began to walk down a hallway and was met with an older man who reeked of darkroom chemicals. He looked at me like I was crazy as the girl explained to him why I was there.

“There aren’t any portfolios here,” he said, “They’ll be upstairs if anywhere.”

I left the photography lab as the two looked after me like I was out of my mind for thinking that the portfolios could ever be there and headed up stairs. Navigating down the hallways of visual arts offices brought me to my TA’s door. The lights were off and the office was empty, but outside the door were the boxes and the white envelopes and the portfolios in alphabetical order.

I grabbed mine and walked out of the Centre for Fine Arts, wondering how picking up a portfolio had become so complicated. Was I wrong in thinking that my professor told us to go to the photography lab?

No. I read the e-mail again when I got home and found out that I had followed the directions my professor e-mailed the entire class. As I eyed the white envelope on my desk I thought, ‘How much more simple it would be if we all had Facebook!’ I imagined being able to communicate with my professor and TA in an instantaneous format.

Message boards and wall postings are available in a context (you can see postings before and after you own). E-mails fail to accomplish this— giving a student like me only a pinhole view of the entire picture.

Somehow the lines of communication need to be tightened between professors and their teaching assistants and students. A closely linked network must be formed rather than a scant series of dead-end lines. There are many students who are tired of being on the receiving end of a message that was lost in translation and not corrected in time.

Office Trials and Tribulations

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 01:23:05 GMT

I’d like to speak a little bit on the experience of installing and using Office 2007.

If you haven't already installed, or tried to deploy to your users, you really want to be careful. While the upgrade process itself is fairly transparent, as with most installations of Office, your users will experience a substantial degree of frustration as they attempt to use the new products.

All those old familiar menu commands that you access with the keyboard, all those keystrokes you've memorized for the last 10 years are all slightly changed. Not have to make them impossible to figure out but just enough to make you have to think about the time.

While the ribbon bar provides a more compelling visual experience than the previous menu systems, many familiar items are initially hard to locate and while you struggle to find them your productivity is seriously impeded. I'm currently working on an RFP, a very document and spreadsheet intensive activity and as an early adopter and learning the hard way on this one.

It's important with this roll out, to really have good training and help desk support to move users through the process.

There seems to be less to functionality and more just a re-skinning of the product. It's interesting that some of the features such as Smart Art and others are still different between the different applications. For example, Smart Art in PowerPoint is different than Smart Art in Word. I don't quite understand this from both an integration standpoint and a profitability standpoint. Even with all the money Microsoft makes, and the fact that office is its cash cow, you'd think they'd want to utilize the same code even more than they already do.

It's astounding that after all this time, common tasks like working with headers and footers in Word and Excel still require different approaches. Visio 2007 and Outlook 2007 don't have the same ribbon toolbar. In fact, Visio 2007 doesn't have the ribbon toolbar. Not quite as consistent as you'd like to see.

There are some great new features: Excel can now handle many more rows than it did previously. There's also a button you can click on that eliminates duplicate rows.

I bring up the term creeping featurism's. I first learned this in a programming class years ago and it referred to the idea that software development is really part art and science, and never totally a set of well defined user requirements. Remember “Clippy”, Smart tags and other featurisms. Programs now have so many features that sometimes when I get a new version, I think I've found a new feature but it's only because I'm exploring, and quite possibly think it's new because I never used it before.

I don't use most features in most programs most of the time, and when I try to do something more advanced, I keep feeling that one could spend their whole life on one software package, and still not know how to use everything. I wonder how these complications that we run into while trying to do simple tasks add to our constant information overload.

While I'm not suggesting that we move back to the days of DOS, because I do enjoy the richer user experience, with all of its colors, sounds, ease of accessing information and everything else that we experience on a day to day basis, I think software developers need to re-focus on simplifying rather than complicating.

This also speaks to our own roles within our own shops. Our customer service approach should be to simplify our interactions with users and find solutions that truly make them more productive. Our stock in trade is complications, the buck stops here, rules and regulations and everything else that makes it tough for our customers. How are we conveying all of this to them, and how are they perceiving us in the long run?

A Big Brother Education

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 01:22:14 GMT

I like the thought of my well-rounded liberal arts education. I take courses for my major, but am not specializing my degree to the point where there isn't room for me to take a History course, a Humanities course, or a Philosophy course if I choose to do so. There is plenty of time for specialization when pursuing a master’s degree or doctorate. During the four years that it will take me to complete an Undergraduate degree, I want to discover what I love— what I hate.

When discussing the level of specialty required in an engineering program that a friend of mine is in, the question of a well-rounded education came up.

“Most engineering students are perfectly happy being in engineering courses only. They go to one of our general education classes that deals with philosophy and don’t know how to respond. They don’t understand the purpose of asking questions. They rebel against any thought outside of traditional scientific thinking.”

Is the structure of certain degree programs implemented at some colleges and universities too rigid? Are we specializing in our educational paths a little too much?

An article that mentioned the changing focus of students recently appeared in the New York Times. It stated that in the past, students went to college or university to find out for themselves what they believed in and what they liked doing. Today the focus has become one of pursing marketable job skills and thus, shirking the concept of personal growth.

As a society, we don’t want educate people to be machines, mindlessly thinking about their jobs, we want to educate people to be people.

Bill Beattie said, “The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.”

While general education requirements often fulfill this, having to take too many general classes is not good either. Most students are smart enough that they don’t need to take Introduction to Social Science and would do much better off in a class like International Development Studies.

There is a fine balance… force is required to a certain extent.

Let’s say a general education requirement in one university is to take a Social Science or Humanities course. If this is so, then it would be best if there was a diverse selection of courses to choose from under these disciplines. It allows for the experience of studying something that isn’t a student’s major. It is necessary, because experiences— whether joyful or painful, dull or enlightening— will cause a person to grow.

My friend said, “I want to be able to squeeze a minor into my degree. I want the option of studying abroad, but if I have to spend all my time in courses for my major I can forget about growing as a person in other areas.”

The thinkers of the world are not born when they attend an institution that puts the blinders on its students, restricting the education process to one that trains us to be mindless job drones. We don’t need Big Brother, watching over our every move, dictating each step of our education; we need the chance to span out, to spin the square.

A certain degree of specialization is necessary, but sometimes our focus to get ahead, get ahead, closes the doors on opportunities to enrich all aspects of our lives and push our education to real and diverse limits.

How do we want to be challenged as students; as important people in the society of today and tomorrow? Mathematically, logically, analytically, spatially? E. All of the above and more.

Naturally Speaking

services@supportingadvancement.com — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 01:21:11 GMT

Pushing Technology - Speech Recognition

So sometimes it's just small things that make a difference when you're pushing technology.

After first trying it 11 years ago I recently picked up a copy of Dragonspeak Naturally Speaking software. The idea came from one of our development officers who is using the software to enter contact reports. I remember when I previously tried it and it was just a trade-off between typing and speaking because it took so long to make corrections that you didn’t save a lot of time.

This is also a lesson in making sure that a first software release works as well as you say it does. It really takes a long time to change a bad user experience to the point where you actually trust the company again. We believe marketing language and are very disappointed when the product doesn't work exactly as advertised.

So what's the verdict?

I've been using it for about two hours, sent a few e-mails, written a few paragraphs and it seems to work well. I haven't had to read a manual (the last thing a technically inclined person wants to do.) The software trained itself in just a few minutes and except for the occasional odd word seems to pick most words OK.

Caveat: after trying a number of microphones, the USB ones seem to work the best. I haven’t tried an analogue one through a mixer to see if this improves the amplification, but on most of the mikes I have, the signal to noise ratio was too high.

Give this software a try but make sure you get a discount just in case you can't think in the same order that you need to write. This is the toughest part of using the software. If you can, in fact if we all could think first before speaking, the world could be a better place. It’s worth a gamble.

More Professor Pandemonium

services@supportingadvancement.com — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 01:18:22 GMT

The class fell silent. There was enough curiosity in the air to drown all three hundred of us. Now, we were all wondering what she thought.

It is a pity that I can’t quote her directly. I know I was blown away by her words—blown away and encouraged. She told us that while society saw us one way she knew that we were a generation of ideas, a generation inspired to change things and a generation that could make big changes and set a course for the future.

She told us that now since she had researched her audience and knew us, she was going to give a lecture on the five paragraph essay. I looked over at the girl next to me. Our eyes connected and they said the same thing, “Are you kidding me?”

The interim professor placed a sheet on the projector and smiled up at us.

This essay is about cats. Let me read it to you.

She started at the introductory paragraph, reading the thesis. “Cats make excellent housepets; they are easy to care for, they are easy to train…” She continued to read the essay to us with an amused tone and upon reaching the second paragraph she added in her own nugget of humour, “Cats, like undergraduates, are easy to train. They do not make loud noises and do not meow very often, like undergraduates…”

We were howling with laughter. Did she know her audience? Yes, of course.

Week after week I came to lectures. For a scheduled lesson on language we watched a music video. “Watch how Eminem speaks to his audience. Listen to his words and watch his body language.” It was clear. If we wanted to write, we needed to learn the language of people. Scheduled lectures on grammar and syntax went out of the window. Sure, they are important for a coherent sentence, but our interim professor recognized that we knew about syntax. She didn’t want to waste our time.

The semester was coming to a close and we knew the old soul crushing lectures would return in January. It was a painful thought and I wrote a lamenting e-mail to the interim professor at the time, asking if I could apply for tutorial refugee status (the returning professor was my tutorial leader) and thanking her for the inspiring lectures (which included all of them).

She wrote back, and even though I knew class was going to change and most likely become very hard to stay awake for the two hour lecture, I was filled with hope.

“And you know what? - honestly, I think next term is going to be fine. There is so much meaning moving moving moving now in that room - the floating signifiers abound and will be there, too, from January to March, and we'll just keep playing them like a jazz riff.”

I think as students, we all have these types of classes in university. It’s too bad we have to endure a professor who lacks teaching skills or one who doesn’t want to teach and would rather be doing research.

There is room for improvement, there always is, but it reassures me when I know that there are some innovative adults who want to reach the younger generations; those who have taken the time to get to know us and apply their knowledge to encouraging us in our sometimes seemingly tiresome and endless pursuit of a degree. If only each and every professor were as dedicated as that.

It is great when you can thank a professor for their work and even greater when they turn around and thank you.

“Thank YOU. I knew you were out there - and that's what pushed me forward, week after week, to spin the square.”

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 ….”

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