Does your institution publish a magazine for alumni?

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education has conducted its first national survey of alumni magazine readers. The good news: well over half of survey respondents say that the alumni magazine strengthens their connection to the school.

The bad news? Young alumni find magazines less useful, since they are more likely to go online to get news about their classmates.

Does that mean that alumni magazines can be phased out over time? Perhaps not. The associate editor of the Johns Hopkins Magazine, Dale Keiger, suggests that magazines build loyalty over time. While it may take years, he says, those young alumni turn into older alumni, who have the resources to support the school.

In the last year or two, several schools have cut at least one print edition from their annual publication cycles, in favor of special digital editions. This may help square a few budgets, but it's short sighted. Our readers -- readers of all ages -- have expressed a strong desire to receive print magazines from us. The CASE survey shows that . . . when alumni begin to sneak up on that stage in life where they're more willing and able to contribute money to our schools, they will be among our most avid readers -- provided we produce the sort of engrossing, engaging reader experience that rewards their attention to our pages.

We cannot ignore the Internet and the changes it has wrought, but chasing a younger audience by getting all digital will prove to be a pointless exercise, I believe. One thing my 35+ years in the business have taught me is that worthwhile magazines don't chase a readership. They build a readership. 

That's food for thought when you're looking at the budget.

To read more about the CASE survey, read this article.

For more information about magazines, check out Dale Keiger's blog UMagazinology, which is devoted to news about alumni publications.

Posted By: Jay Blossom
Topics: Marketing

Over the last couple of years, we've heard about some big universities like Harvard offering really significant financial aid packages to almost all students from low- and moderate-income families.

But I've generally reacted to such announcements with a stifled yawn. If you endowment is $36.9 billion, as Harvard's was on June 30 of last year, you can afford to be generous. (Harvard's investment portfolio has since lost between $8 billion and $18 billion, according to this article in the January 27, 2009, edition of Slate magazine's Big Money.) But theological schools don't have that kind of money to start with.

In Trust's Writer Workshop member Matt Forster recently tipped me off to a much less wealthy university that seems to be as generous as Harvard -- Oakland University in Michigan. According to a Detroit Free Press article (which you can read here), Oakland University will cover the difference between a student's "Expected Family Contribution" (according to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid) and the university's tuition costs.

Here's what the Free Press says:

But this year, OU has upped the amount of money it will provide for undergraduate scholarships and grants from the general fund by $1.8 million to $10.2 million -- specifically setting aside $1.4 million for 2009 freshmen whose financial need exceeds full-time tuition bills.

For those students, expected to be about one in four freshmen, OU plans to cover the difference in costs between the tuition bill and the sum of the EFC and any other free aid, such as private scholarships or state and federal grants and scholarships.

I don't know how Oakland University is affording this. And I don't know if any theological schools could afford to be so generous. But it's a good idea to recognize a trend when you see one.

Student debt has been on my mind, because Matt has written an article about theological student debt that will appear in the Spring 2009 issue of In Trust magazine. Be sure to look for it in early April.

Posted By: Jay Blossom
Topics: Finance | Marketing

The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently released a new report on "Generations Online in 2009." It's a nine-page PDF document that you can open in a new window here.

I'm particularly interested in knowing how many older people are surfing the Internet these days, so this caught my eye:

• Of all the people online these days, 24 percent are 55 or older. 
• Of all the people ages 55 to 59, 71 percent are online. And of all the people 75 and older, 27 percent are online!

The report suggests something to me: As we plan our delivery systems (for fundraising and "friend-raising," for promotional materials, for church relations), we must take into account the power of the Web, even for the senior members of our constituency.

On the other hand, almost three quarters of the over-75 crowd are not yet online. And since everyone -- everyone! -- should be thinking about planned giving and the generosity and wisdom of our elders, it would be foolish to ignore old-fashioned print media and personal contacts in our rush to the Web.

 

Posted By: Jay Blossom
Topics: Fundraising | Marketing | Technology