Effective writing is every bit as important in alumni and development communications as it is in the public affairs shop. A poorly written donor proposal, awkward or grammatically incorrect thank-you letter, and ambiguous, jargon-filled copy have no place in a professional advancement operation. Good communication is especially important for…

The logo controversy was sparked by an article on the "San Jose Mercury News"' website that was promptly picked up by other news outlets and shared across social networks. Under the headline "University of California introduces a modern logo" sat a blurry, low-quality image of the new monogram next to the 145-year-old UC seal.…

The success of an institution's fundraising program increasingly relies on the leader's ability to nurture relationships with major donors and alumni and articulate, as well as execute, a vision for the institution donors can support. Leadership stability becomes critically important because longer spells of service by presidents, deans, and heads…

By the time Superstorm Sandy struck New Jersey in late October 2012, Kathy Corbalis, executive director of communications and college relations at Atlantic Cape Community College, and her team were battle-tested. In the 15 months before the hurricane, the college experienced two bomb threats via Twitter, a lockdown due to gunfire, an on-campus…

Engaging with stakeholders on social media channels can burnish a brand's reputation, according to an early 2012 survey conducted by BRANDfog, a social media branding firm that caters to CEOs. The study found that 82 percent of respondents "were more likely to trust a company whose CEO and leadership team engage in social media." In addition, 94…

When a website has become a virtual storage closet rather than a place where useful, usable content is created, published, and organized, there is a problem. If audiences cannot quickly and easily find what they are looking for when they visit a website--and are not interested in what they find when they get there--they will get frustrated and…

The importance of communication during a school crisis has not changed in the 21st century. What has changed--and quite dramatically since 1999--is the way people communicate. Social media tools are now used in some form by 100 percent of all four-year universities in the United States as a way to reach students, according to a 2011 University of…

In fundraising today, a wealth of communications tools makes it increasingly easier to contact prospective donors--but is it getting harder to really connect with them? Do the new tools work as well as the old ones? In the second decade of online marketing, all the tools of the trade are subject to scrutiny. Direct mail has been a mainstay of the…

Alumni relations professionals need a method of measuring alumni engagement, including giving, that goes beyond counting event attendees and the number of Twitter followers. Social media are changing the way things have been done within the alumni relations profession, but that does not mean that people throw out everything they have done in the…

According to a 2008 "Year in Review" report by Educational Security Incidents, an online repository that collects data on higher education security issues, the total number of security incidents reported at universities and colleges worldwide rose to 173 in 2008, a 24.5 percent increase over 2007. The number of institutions…

So many communications channels, so little time and, usually, so few resources is the situation today's communicators face. Educational institutions, places steeped in history and tradition, "have been slow to react." But while the communications channels have changed, the fundamentals of communication haven't. Maintaining perspective about…

At the end of 2010, for the first time ever, smartphones outsold PCs. Mobile device adoption rates continue to rise rapidly around the world. A recent forecast by Cisco found that global mobile data traffic more than doubled last year, and by the end of 2012, the number of mobile devices in use will outnumber the world's population. In the United…

Many communications offices are so busy working on external communications that they tend to neglect their internal audiences. But the reality is that in higher education, communicating effectively with students, faculty, and staff is critical to achieving an institution's overall communications goals. Having realized that reaching internal…

Like anything else, there are good fundraising campaign Web sites and bad fundraising campaign Web sites. The author took a closer look at fundraising campaign sites to see if her intuitive judgments about these could be translated into a logical, research-supported set of best practices. She set up a study that gauged the ease of use and…

In the past few years, the online world has changed. It seems everyone is suddenly on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace, and anyone who can string words together--and a few who can't--seem to have glommed onto blogs, spouting opinions into the cyberworld with abandon. Prospective students, parents, and alumni not only read…