Assignment 5

HEA 530 Interview With the Director Interviewer’s Notes on Tom Tom Fitzgerald has been the director of the Office of Alumni Affairs for 10 years after serving as associate director for 5 years. He attended Binchley on a full baseball scholarship, graduating from Binchley with an undergraduate degree in marine ecology. He played professional baseball for two years until an injury forced his retirement. He obtained his master’s degree in higher education administration and worked in the alumni offices of several colleges in different capacities for 10 years before returning to Binchley (this would make him about 49 years old). Below is a transcript of an interview after an initial meeting. The director provided the interviewer with some data to review. Interviewer: Thanks for blocking out some time for me today and for the data you provided in our last meeting. I wanted to follow up with you about some of the data. It would help us understand where the program is now and what kinds of recommendations we might make to help you achieve your goal of improving the overall pledge fulfillment rate by 6%. Tom: Part of the reason we requested an outside evaluation is because we need an objective analysis of where we are with our fundraising and some suggestions for turning things around. We are increasingly concerned about the decline in contributions. Now we have to not only stop that decline, but we need to increase contributions. The college depends on those contributions to fund special programs, especially related to our marine ecology and Native American studies degrees. Interviewer: When I reviewed the data, I noticed that the biggest decline in contributions was from the alumni donors aged 55 and over. What do you think that’s all about? Tom: We’ve been using volunteers and student interns to make direct calls to previous donors in that age group who stopped contributing to try to figure that out. We haven’t finished gathering that information, but our early impression is that some people in that age group have, of course, inevitably passed away. Many of them have retired and are living on fixed incomes that don’t stretch as far as they might because of the increased cost of living. Some of them are struggling with illnesses. And some of them are helping their children and grandchildren who may need help with funding their education. Interviewer: It looks like from other figures that I have here that up to this point, a high percentage of your budget to promote donations was for this age group. Is this correct? Tom: That’s correct. And, up until the last few years, we’ve gotten a high return on that investment. We planned activities for them, especially around major sports events here at the college that we invited them to attend as well as reunion weekends. Even though we’re a small college, we’ve always had good teams, especially in football and baseball. We stayed in touch with them with a variety of high-end printed mailing, like newsletters and our alumni magazine. We built strong relationships with them and it paid off. Until recently… Interviewer: What has been the level of attendance at these activities you’ve planned for them in the past few years? Tom: There has been a gradual but steady decline, especially the reunion weekends for that age group.

Interviewer: What do you think was their primary motivation for making donations with the consistency that they did for as long as they did? Tom: I think they enjoyed their time here as students and felt a loyalty to the college and its sports teams. They enjoyed coming back for the big games and the dinner parties we planned that let them relive the good times of their undergraduate life to some extent. Interviewer: I notice that particular group of donors from that age group had diverse majors. It doesn’t look like any particular majors are dominant. Tom: They were a diverse group. Interviewer: Are there any other groups of donors that you’ve considered cultivating to make up for the loss of revenue from this group? Tom: Jesse, our associate director, and I have started to brainstorm about that. I’m not sure we have all the data we need to answer that question, but we’re working on it. She’s been working on a pilot program for our Native American studies alumni. Talk to her about that. Interviewer: I’ll do that. Our talk today has been very helpful. Thank you for the time and your insights.