How Advancement Can Save Your School

Keith Hannon
06/10/2015

This is an excerpt of an EverTrue article by Keith Hannon of Cornell Alumni Affairs & Development. Click here to read the full version (no download required).

It’s 8:30 am, and I’m kicking back in my chair sifting through the engagement numbers on last night’s Facebook post for Cornell alumni. I look at the comments and the people who liked the post, hoping to stumble upon a name synonymous with giving capacity. I’m not a monster—I don’t do it just for the money—but I know social media’s role in advancement is to help achieve fundraising goals, so money matters.

I then turn my attention to various higher-ed online publications, and I find more bad news for small liberal arts colleges. I begin to think that higher-ed advancement might be staring down a new “duty as assigned.”

I’ve Got a Fever… and It’s Spreading

A couple months back, I penned a piece about the closing of Sweet Briar College, a small women’s college in Virginia that announced it would be closing down after more than 110 years. At the time, it felt like an outlier—a combination of low enrollment and mishandled finances that created a dire situation. A passionate Sweet Briar alumnae base rallied valiantly, trying to raise money to keep the doors open, but just 60 days later, we now know they’re not alone.

More schools have trickled into the media because they’re either shutting down or on the brink of shutting down. After 70 years, Tennessee Temple University announced its closure following years of declining enrollment. The president of Oakland, CA-based Mills College announced she’s not extending her contract, which looks more like a captain NOT going down with the ship as each day reveals more issues with the school’s finances. South Carolina legislators are pushing to close South Carolina State University, the state’s only public black college, due to the school’s increasing financial issues.

The collapse of higher-ed institutions is no longer a doomsday hypothetical. It’s a reality, and advancement needs to take action.

Read the full article, “Don’t Fear the Reaper: How Advancement Can Save Your School,” for an expanded discussion of the financial crisis in higher ed, commentary from advancement professionals, and key takeaways for advancement teams.

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4. Continue to Steward Donors

Your relationship with the donors who give to your endowment doesn’t end when you secure their gifts. Because your endowment exists to make a difference in the long term, your supporters will want you to keep in touch about its progress. Ongoing stewardship means keeping donors updated about your endowment’s performance and impact. A report that strengthens your relationship with donors should cover:

The fund’s balance at the start and end of the year
Spending amounts and allocations
How the fund’s returns compare to your investment targets
A short narrative detailing the specific impacts the endowment achieved

Create a report for each endowment rather than sending an identical document to everyone. A donor who endowed a scholarship wants to hear about the students it supported, while a donor who endowed a building fund wants updates on construction projects.

5. Upgrade Your Endowment Management Tools

Your endowment management tools should make applying your spending policy across every fund easy. Investing in dedicated software is especially useful as your endowment grows. Handling unitization in spreadsheets might work for a few funds, but as you begin to manage dozens or hundreds of gifts, dedicated software can save your team time spent manually calculating gains and losses for each one.

Why Nonprofits Need Dedicated Endowment Management Software

Dedicated endowment software brings accuracy and consistency to every part of the management process, from tracking individual funds to improving security. See how these solutions compare to a spreadsheet-based approach:

nfographic table outlining the information below.

How These Methods Compare:

In managing your endowment with traditional spreadsheets, you may see:

High administrative burden: Manual entry across disconnected systems
Limited security and audit footprints: Reduced version control and audit trail visibility
Difficulty with donor transparency: Spreadsheets provide only static data that is difficult to turn into custom results.

By using dedicated software, you are likely to find the following improvements:

Lower administrative burden: Automated fund tracking and calculated allocations
Enhanced security and audit footprint: Audit-ready reconciliation with clear tracking
Greater donor transparency: Connects with reporting platforms

Dedicated endowment management software keeps your organization compliant while freeing up the time your team once spent manually managing spreadsheets.

Secure Your Endowment with Balance by EverTrue

Effective endowment management begins with excellent accounting. Balance by EverTrue handles unitization, applies spending rules, and produces audit-ready reports, so your team can spend more time on the donor relationships that built the fund in the first place.

Turn your data into a clear picture of long-term impact. Combine accurate fund accounting with donor reporting that showcases impact.
Connect with the tools you already use. Pair Balance with Impact by EverTrue and ODDER by EverTrue to create and deliver compelling digital endowment reports that you can send to donors with ease.
Know where every fund stands in real time. Check market values, gift history, and available spending for any fund. Then, share view-only versions with your team, so everyone stays informed.

With Balance, your team can stop spending all your time on manual management and instead add balance to your endowment workflow.

Additional Resources

To learn more about managing your endowment and other ways that technology can help your organization, check out these additional resources:

Webinar: Building a Seamless Relationship Between Endowment Finance and Advancement. In this webinar, we cover the keys to un-complicating your institution’s financial endowment reporting process. Explore how building a connection between your finance and advancement teams can lead to happier donors and happier staff.
The Best Alumni Management Software Solutions in 2026. Alumni management software allows your university to maintain an active community that supports your school in a number of ways. Review top software solutions.
Donor Segmentation: How Organizing Donors Boosts Retention. What is donor segmentation, and how can you use it to boost retention? Learn the need-to-know information in this guide from EverTrue’s fundraising experts.

Less stress, higher endowment funds. Discover how Balance provides the organization, security, and accuracy your endowment needs. Request a demo.

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