A growing number of U.S. institutions are recognizing the importance of reaching out to and involving alumni in meaningful ways--so much so that it's encoded as a specific campaign goal. But, like fundraising goals, alumni engagement goals are not realized easily, overnight, or just because they're committed to paper. Lasting engagement takes…

"Deaf President Now," or DPN, should be viewed as a process, not as a single event. The forces that led to the installation of the first deaf president at Gallaudet were set in motion long before 1988, and they continued to be significant through the protests of 2006. Among the many changes wrought by the 1988 DPN movement is a…

The National Park Service actively educates the public about registered historic places on college and university campuses and encourages people to visit them through its "Discover Our Shared Heritage Travel Itinerary Series." By featuring the historic buildings and grounds of colleges and universities in the itineraries, the National…

This white paper reports on findings from the fourth survey of social media in advancement, conducted in January and February, 2013 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), Huron Education, and mStoner. The survey was taken by more than 1,000 CASE members. Featured are six case studies on the effective use of social media in…

This article discusses Georgetown University's Discovery Initiative, an advancement program in which students and recent graduates meet with alumni who are not currently involved with the Washington, D.C., university. Currently, the Discovery team consists of 50 students who conduct interviews in the Washington, D.C., area during the school year…

The purpose of this article is to provide a better understanding of the history of fundraising in black college communities; to complicate understandings of white involvement in black college fundraising; to understand the role of fundraising, that is, fundraising for social change and social justice, during the period that followed the…

It is certainly no secret that people are living in a difficult economic climate. In these times of belt-tightening, both institutional and personal, budgets for arts education are being slashed and individual donations are plummeting. Music teachers in particular know well the impact of these developments on their programs, and they know that…

As a dental student 35 years ago, Leo E. Rouse and his Howard University classmates learned to fill cavities and cap teeth by crowding around one faculty member and angling for a clear view of the day's demonstration. Today students at Howard's College of Dentistry, where Dr. Rouse is now the dean, get an unobstructed view of dental procedures…

In the fall of 2001, top administrators and trustees from Howard University secluded themselves at a retreat at the posh Lansdowne Resort in the rolling Virginia countryside near Washington to discuss the future of their school. There they planted the seeds of what was to become the most successful fundraising campaign ever undertaken by a…

Everyone in the business of raising funds for graduate and professional schools knows that the effort has certain challenges. Deborah McCreery, of Widener University School of Law, identifies two main hurdles to alumni fundraising at Widener Law: (1) student loan debt; and (2) a perception problem. At Widener Law and other professional and…

Gallaudet University, originally chartered by the US Congress as the Columbia Institute for the Deaf and Dumb and Blind in 1864, recently began to solicit donations from their alumni through formal fund-raising campaigns. Using a combination of historical and qualitative analysis coupled with descriptive statistics from institutional data and the…

This publication is part of a series of tools and resources on financing and sustaining youth programming. These tools and resources are intended to help policymakers, program developers, and community leaders develop innovative strategies for implementing, financing, and sustaining effective programs and policies. This strategy brief presents a…