A New Breed

Marketing is giving shape to a new type of advancement—one that includes admissions This article examines the complex and often convoluted relationships between admissions and advancement. It describes how marketing is the place where all areas of advancement find common ground and how, for a long time, marketing had its place within the distinct silos in admissions and advancement. Now, however, institutions are developing more comprehensive structures that combine recruitment and advancement in the interest of adopting a true integrated marketing mindset.

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A Separate Piece

Creating campus communications programs that give parents their own experiences Parents have become increasingly important as a campus constituency, a change driven by both financial and generational factors. Their increased involvement--from recruitment to commencement--demands an organized communiations effort that strikes a balance between information and involvement, and many campuses have responded by adding programming and dedicated staff. This article outlines essential stratgeies for communicating with parents, including creating separate experiences for them.

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Casting Call for Consultants

When hiring a consultant, everyone’s time will be wasted if you haven’t done your homework and aren’t prepared to manage the hiring process. Advancement professionals with responsibility for preparing requests for proposals, procuring consulting services, and managing the consulting process will find this list of nine tips useful. Among them: Understand your needs in advance; Make your REP work; Ask the right questions in the interview; and Establish trust.

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Doing the Right Thing

The daily interactions involved in alumni relations often require diplomacy and accommodation, but such judgments are rooted in values and ethics. Situations that truly test our ethics are not questions of right vs. wrong, but rather of right vs. right. An ethicist and advancement professionals offer insight into how to make sure that your staff can resolve ethical dilemmas consistently, using role-playing and seminars. One sidebar lists three tests to use in weighing an ethical decision; another sidebar describes four ethical dilemma paradigms; and a third sidebar presents the CASE Statement of Ethics.

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Fair Share

Campus communicators can find themselves enmeshed in community debates about the effect of their institution on local resources and quality of life. Problems are more readily resolvable when an institution builds and maintains strong community relationships, takes local concerns seriously, communicates freely, and tends to internal as well as external constituencies.

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Fear and Loathing in Web 2.0

This feature explores the challenges and opportunities at the heart of the struggle taking place as campuses get on board (or not) with Web 2.0 technologies. What's at issue is not necessarily the technology, but the idea of giving up control of the message.

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Framing Your Mission

Although each independent school has qualities that are distinctive, the missions of many schools sometimes sound quite similar. So how do you make your institution stand out? By using marketing to establish your brand.

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Full Tilt

Private higher education has a classic “wicked problem,” in which several interrelated factors are at play and for which there is no easy solution. Affordability, access, demand, and accountability are just some of the sector's most pressing issues. This article, part of a special issue on valuing education, presents an in-depth discussion of rising costs, tuition discounting, the value of a liberal arts education, increased expectations about quality, and unconventional solutions.

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Gaining a Reputation

An image audit, also known as a reputation audit, helps communications and marketing officers understand how their campuses are perceived by key constituencies. This process can serve as the first step in developing a comprehensive communications and marketing plan. Jarrell provides advice on focusing an audit, conducting an audit with and without consultants, building on-campus support for the effort, and acting on the audit’s recommendations.

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Giving Up on Letting Go

A reexamination of the parent-student-campus connection On campus, in the press, and in society at large, parents often are blamed for not letting go of their children, for being too pushy and overinvolved. But contrary to popular belief, kids don't want their parents to let go, and the "helicopter parent" phenomenon may be related to changing notions of adulthood. College is no longer considered the threshold to adulthood, researchers say. This article traces the historical and societal changes in the way parents relate to their college-age children and their institutions, from in loco parentis to the passage of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act in the early 1970s to recent challenges to FERPA. It also examines the emotional and financial drivers behind helicopter parents.

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Help Wanted

To borrow from the film Casablanca, hiring a consultant could be the start of a beautiful partnership. Making the right consultant match can advance your program, your institution, your team's knowledge, and the careers of everyone involved. But hiring and working with a consultant can be more challenging than it used to be.

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Keeping Off Thin Ice

Because public relations officers are adept at issues management and crisis communications, more campuses are including communicators in the assessment and prevention aspects of the risk-management process. Their most significant contributions include raising hard questions; forging good relations between the campus and the media and community; and tracking litigation patterns. This article, which also discusses potential future issues that will challenge campuses, is of interest to media and community relations officers, PR managers, and chief advancement officers.

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Let's Give Them Something To Talk About

Buzz marketing--intentionally influencing and amplifying word-of-mouth--can help campuses bypass the overload of media and advertising messages assaulting the public. Two approaches to creating buzz are (1) to make your constituents so happy that they take it upon themselves to spread your message, or (2) to identify good stories and then find and cultivate good storytellers.

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Living Publicly

A new mindset and a new skill set are necessary to survive today's high-stakes and ever-watchful media climate A 24/7 news cycle, the Internet, an accountability revolution, and a smaller news hole are just a few of the factors changing campus media relations programs.

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Making a List and Checking It Twice?

The process of determining campaign priorities should be rooted in the institution's overall strategic planning. Priorities should reflect input from internal and external constituencies, including the president and board, the larger campus community, and donors. Good priorities are ambitious and bold, are grounded in the institution's mission and history, outshine the dollar goal, culminate in visible results, and transform the institution. Includes case studies from University of Toronto and Pingry School.

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Making Strides

Keeping campaign communications fresh for the long haul In the mad dash to complete the plethora of projects that lead up to the public launch of a campaign, it would be easy to start thinking of the kickoff as a goal in itself, but it’s merely a mile marker in the marathon of a fundraising campaign that may last five to 10 years. Given that only a fraction of an institution’s constituents may attend a kickoff event or receive a case statement, development communicators must devise methods for keeping campaign messages interesting and effective well beyond the starting line of the public launch. When preparing for a lengthy campaign, professionals say that having good stories to tell is essential.

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Marketing Your School's Sweet Spot

When a school hires me to develop their brand they will sometimes ask, "What makes a good client?" My answer is, "a clear-eyed, true believer." Clear-eyed because schools need to be willing to take a sober look at themselves in the context of what prospective students and families want and in terms of what other schools offer before they think about what makes them special. A true believer because, despite the sober look, they still need to fervently believe that their school offers something extraordinary. Finding that nexus of authenticity and passion is what the market "sweet spot" is all about.

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Message Mavens

Based on insight from admissions deans, this article offers a preview of tomorrow's students, alumni, and donors, based on applicants' essays, e-mails, and interviews. Some of their insights bear out Millennial trends--a generation of kids who like and admire their parents and see them as very much a part of their undergraduate lives, as well as a service-minded streak. But another picture emerges of this up-and-coming generation. It is a picture of a "message savvy" generation that would make branding gurus proud. This article gives an overview of students today and explores the traits that make the current crop of prospective students a message-savvy group who market themselves and their ideas.

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Novel Ways

Use the elements of fiction to tell a compelling campus story Branding is commercial storytelling, and campus communications and marketing pros should consider using the elements of fiction--character, plot, dialogue, scene, place, point of view, and sensory detail--when they are writing and telling their institutions’ stories. The author describes how campus writers can persuade readers of an institution’s virtues and still tell a compelling story.

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Short Handed or Long on Luck?

The extended absence of a staff member can place stress on an entire office. Psychologist and Author Barbara Reinhold recommends three steps for eliminating these pressures: 1) Prevention -- make sure employees are willing and able to perform more than one function in the organization. 2) Intervention -- to handle the increased workload, prioritize tasks throughout the office and cut back on nonessentials. 3) Communication -- keep the absent employee informed about changes occurring while she or he is on leave.

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