The second of Richardson and Basinger’s laws of fundraising was:
Law #2: Fundraising is a conversation. The organization must initiate the conversation with the funder, and then keep it going. The organization must cultivate an interest in the organization on the part of the giver. However, a conversation is a two-way street. The organization must listen to the prospective donors and be accountable to them.
This post will consider how this fits into the processes of student recruitment, retention, and alumni development.
Recruitment: Admissions recruitment is definitely a conversation. The typical student is not sold by one contact. It is not unusual for a student to make eight to ten contacts before submitting an application. Love at first sight is a fantasy. Infatuation at first sight is possible. Commitment in a relationship takes time and repeated contacts.
The conversations must be purposeful and timely. Prospective students want to know about academic programming. They want to know about student life and co-curricular programming. If the students want to reside on campus, they want to know about residential life programming and food services. If the students want to commute, they want to know how that will work. For Christian colleges, students want to know about spiritual life programming. Some students want to know about athletics; others want to know about the arts programming. Dumping all this information on students in one fell swoop would not constitute effective communications and would result in information overload. The information must be spread out and processed in an order that makes sense to the prospective students.
The communications must also be in modes and media that are acceptable to the prospective students. If they want digital communications, the institution must use digital means. If they want printed communications, the communications must be in print form.
Recruitment of prospective students (prior to submission of application by the student and the acceptance of the student by the institution) is different from recruitment of accepted students. Accepted students need much more specific information. Answers to their questions must be tailored to the students’ questions. The institution must answer the questions that the accepted students asked, not what the institution thinks they were going to ask.
One area in which accepted students become very interested is financial aid and how they are going to pay for their education. This area must be an ongoing conversation between the institution and the accepted students, and generally with the families of dependent students.
Retention: Retention is also a conversation. It is actually many conversations. Students want to fit in. It is very much like the lyrics from the theme song from the television show “Cheers,” which said, “You want to go, where everyone knows your name.”
Faculty and staff must be retention-minded. Everyone employee of the institution must make retention a prime responsibility. It is incumbent on each employee to get know as many students as possible by name. Employees must address students by their names and get to know their interests, desires and problems. Employees must be willing to help students meet their needs and solve their problems. This can only be done through conversations. Many times it will be faculty members or coaches that are the glue that keep students stuck to the institution. At other times, it may be a maintenance worker, a dining service worker or a housekeeper that touches the student when he or she is most in need and makes the difference in retaining the student or seeing the student drop out or transfer.
Alumni: To maintain alumni as part of the “we-crowd,” the institution must continually communicate with them. These communications must be two-way conversations. The institution must set up opportunities to receive input from alumni. It is not enough to just listen to alumni. The institution must also appropriately respond to that input.
Leave a Reply