Insights about Higher Ed

Use Strategic Design to Re-imagine Fundraising

by Andrew Kaufteil

Philanthropic organizations are missing out on critical donor engagement opportunities because they’re stuck in conventional mindsets and behaviors.

From a young age, I was obsessed with universities. As evidence of this, I took 37 campus tours before finally enrolling at Macalester College. To me, colleges represented beacons of knowledge, institutions pushing society forward, and places where people come of age and have the freedom to dream. Lo and behold, this was my experience as an undergrad, where I assumed leadership positions, made friends with people from diverse backgrounds, took courses that provided new perspectives and skillsets, and developed enduring relationships with professors.

My passion for higher education led me to a career in alumni relations and philanthropy after law school graduation. The dozen years I spent working as a university administrator were inspiring and eye-opening, and I relished my time working with some of the smartest people in the field. But after years of serving some of the most reputable institutions in the country — from UC Berkeley to UCSF to George Washington — I kept returning to the same conclusion: it seemed that many important decisions were being made based on the following factors:

• The “HIPPO” — the highest paid person’s opinion
• Best practices — “What is Harvard doing?”
• The loudest voices in the room
• Random ideas that pop in my head, and
• Surveys

Because of this, so many philanthropic organizations miss out on critical donor engagement opportunities. In order to innovate and thrive, higher education fundraising leaders need to take a data-driven, human-centered approach to creating plans, products, systems, services, and organizations. When I joined Designit, my goal was to master this approach and take it back to universities.

In the past three years, I’ve had the opportunity to apply insights from my years working inside universities, as well as my experience as a human-centered designer, to drive innovation in higher education philanthropy. Here are three takeaways:

Administrators need more chances to take risks and share ideas freely.

University administrators tend to be resistant to experimentation and creative ideation for fear of conflict or failure. However, change is possible. One of the biggest turning points in our partnership with University of Connecticut was when the Foundation President, a great proponent for innovation, called a surprise meeting with staff and created a forum for people from across the hierarchy to offer candid feedback and ideas. This experience encouraged those who rarely voiced opinions the chance to spitfire tons of ideas and feel heard — a win-win for everyone. Exercises like this helped the Foundation generate and execute “a new innovative approach to engagement,” (in the words of Foundation Board Chairman Dan Toscano) contributing to the largest fundraising totals in its 54-year history, including a 15% year-over-year increase in contributions. The Foundation was so confident about the power of human-centered design that it created its own internal design team responsible for leading innovation.

People need to feel connected to each other — and have fun — to collaborate most effectively.

Spending time with the impressive fundraising team at University of Georgia, we learned that strategic planning sometimes takes the form of a regimented and formal process. We decided to experiment with new approaches to team-building, inspired by improv, to help workshop participants loosen up and build camaraderie. One of our favorite ideation games at Designit is something we call the Bad Idea Contest, where we ask participants to come up with the worst ideas possible to solve a given problem. After the bad ideas are shared, we ask people to flip them into good ones. The exercises quickly fostered a sense of playfulness and trust, which ultimately created a safe space for innovation. The upshot: once the team felt connected, we were able to derive dozens of new and viable engagement concepts.

To break through the noise, and compete with Netflix, Instagram, and Tinder, alumni need to feel a unique and personal connection to their alma mater.

Working closely with senior leaders across departments at Northern Arizona University (NAU) as well as interviewing and observing dozens of alumni around the country about their relationship with NAU, we identified four key themes that resonate with NAU alumni: caring, adventurous, authentic, and relevant. Universities are not competing with each other for their alumni’s attention; they are competing with products and services that alumni interact with every day. Using strategic design, the same approach that world-class companies use to innovate, NAU is using the themes gleaned through ethnographic research to drive its outreach and engagement strategy going forward.

As it is the case with most industries, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for universities. But through human-centered design, the opportunities to innovate are endless.