Poll Your Alumni Association Board At Your Next Meeting

Brent Grinna
02/07/2013

After a wrapping up a great CASE D1 Conference in Boston, I spent last weekend in Providence at my second meeting as a member of the Brown Alumni Association Board of Governors. Like many members of our team, I love volunteering for my alma mater outside of work. In particular, I enjoy the opportunity to “walk the talk” by implementing many of the strategies we believe in at EverTrue.

A campus photo at Brown captured on NearCampus.

For example, I’ve spent the last 4 four months working with fellow board member Rodney Robinson ’90 as he has tested a variety of Facebook ads to drive additional fans to the Brown Alumni Association Page. It was Rodney’s insights along with lessons from other institutions that informed our recent Facebook Ads for Advancement webinar.

I had the honor of presenting to the entire board on Saturday about rapidly changing trends in mobile technology and what that might mean for Brown. Specifically, as Brown prepares for our 250^th anniversary in 2014, my hope is that we plan with a “mobile first” (or at least not “mobile last”) approach.

I enjoyed meeting Pat Watson, Brown’s new Senior VP for Advancement. Pat joins us from Cornell and I have deep respect for that program. Pat articulated some of the challenges she’s experienced with legacy database vendors that have failed to adopt cloud-based platforms with open architecture.

During my presentation, I polled the audience. Among the 30+ board members and staff in the room:

90% of Brown Alumni Association board members use iOS devices (despite Android having 70% US Market share in Q4 2012)
75% use tablet devices (relative to 30% overall in the US)
All but two people were on Facebook (one of the “nays” was a student from the Class of 2013)
Every single person in the room was on LinkedIn

The final point surprised me the most. I’ve asked that question at a variety of conferences and presentations over the last two years, and it was the first time that LinkedIn trumped Facebook. I think this is a precursor to further shifts in the social networking landscape as Facebook users “grow up”. Time will tell…

Have any of our readers done similar polls at your alumni board meetings? I’d be curious to know how your statistics compare.

Ever True!

Brent

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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.

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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.

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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.

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