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Effective 21st century fund raising will require institutional discipline, priority setting and innovative use of technology.
FUND RAISING underlying base of the endowment. This will allow for the College to take advantage of the current market and position it for higher growth in the future.” On the third floor in Gloster Hall, Phillip Howard ’87, vice president for Institutional Advancement, has challenged his Office departments – Communications, Corporate and Foundation Relations and Alumni Relations – to think differently when disseminating the College’s message. “Different is about trying to use the Internet and multi-media more effectively, particularly in reaching younger alums,” he said. The Take 5 initiative, which encourages alumni to take five minutes to make a financial donation to the College by texting in their contribution, is just one example of that kind of thinking, said Henry Goodgame ’84, director of Alumni Relations, Special Events and Annual Giving. “You have to be very creative,” he said. “Right now, we have about ten different things working, all trying to be responsive to alumni who need a menu of options to be involved,” he said. Some of those new ideas include the 1867 Alumni Campaign that encourages alumni to give $18.67 or $186.70 in honor of the College’s founding year, and the Georgia Campaign, which specifically focuses on the state with the College’s largest alumni base. Current students can take part in the Class Gift Challenge that allows them to send a text representing their admissions classification to a phone number that will become a $5 gift to Morehouse. “What I want alums to know is these are critical times and critical times call for critical actions,” Goodgame said. “Never before have we needed alums to step forward and show the world that this is an institution that is worthy of support and worthy of investment.” In Communications, the College’s brand and image, along with MOREHOUSE MAGAZINE
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news of all the activities going on at Morehouse, are receiving a much larger platform through technology. “Our Communications group is strengthening the College’s web presence and developing more agressive social media tactics in our overall communications strategy,” said Toni O’Neal Mosley, director of Public Relations. When it comes to fund raising, especially during a time when individuals and corporations are holding closer to their dollars, Howard said technology is important, but so is holding to the strategies that have continued to work for the College. “People still give to people and causes that they are passionate about,” he said. “But the change centers around the fact that there are fewer resources available, because we do have [a down economy] that affects fund raising. A lot of fund raising in this country comes from a relatively small percentage of the population that still has resources in downtimes. We must find new strategies to get those well pockets that are less affected by the change in the overall economy. That just means our value proposition has to be sharpened.” That sharpening, Howard believes, comes through technology. “Technology should be able to yield cost savings in fund raising,” he said. “The question is how do we do that smartly and how do we do that in a way where we add four or five instead of ten people because technology is doing some of the things we would have done manually or things we would have done on paper. “We have to be able to go back to reiterating our long-term story to our supporters, individuals, alumni and parents,” Howard continued. “[We must] tell the story they know about with the emphasis that President Franklin is putting on developing Renaissance leaders. It’s about doing the fundamentals and it’s about using new techniques. It’s really a combination of both.”