Why Declines In Giving
Are Our Fault

The Council for Aid To Education's annual Voluntary Support of Education survey found that alumni giving participation ticked down again in 2010.  Is it enough to simply say you're doing "less worse" than everyone else?

Here are 5 reasons the giving decline is not your fault:

• Many schools are graduating larger classes and have an increasing proportion of young alumni. Their denominator is simply growing too fast.
  
  
• We've gotten smarter at identifying the tallest trees in the forest. Screening and other tools have allowed us the opportunity to focus on prospects that offer the greatest immediate return - to the neglect of the broader base. Annual giving staff are increasingly told to "get out of the office" and visit rated prospects in person.
  
  
• Gifts from donor-advised funds are increasing, and don't count.
  
  
• The middle class is getting squeezed - If you believe it's true, believe it may be a problem for participation. Discretionary giving is a casualty of more-cautious people unsure about the economy.
  
  
• Prospects are increasingly difficult to reach by phone, and "no call" legislation has whipped America into an anti-telemarketing frenzy. If the phonathon has been the foundation of your annual giving program, your foundation is showing some big cracks.

And here are 7 reasons it IS your fault:

• We're not adequately teaching a giving culture. We'll spend a fortune on fundraising the minute students graduate, but spend little time teaching them good behavior while they're on campus.
  
  
• We're not communicating with young alumni (and increasingly, older alumni) in the ways that they are communicating. Your young alumni have no home phone and don't write paper checks. What are you doing about it?
  
  
• U.S. News and other rankings often inspire us to make participation a short-term priority, not a long-term behavior. Remember, the rankings aren't a measure of affinity as much as they're a measure of how well we've taught alumni to express their affinity through giving.
  
  
• People are easier to find, but we're not using the right tools to engage them. They may not be in the phone book, but they're on Facebook
  
  
• We've fallen in love with solicitation processes, to the neglect of the relationship with our alumni. Your IRS-approved tax receipt isn't showing enough love.
  
  
• We use the CAE decline as a self-fulfilling excuse to not do better. Annual giving is hard work, but don't be satisfied doing less worse than everybody else. We say that "flat is the new up."
  
  
• It may not be your fault that prospects aren't answering the phone, but it's your responsibility to figure out The Plan B. Our job isn't to decide "This can't be done."