College fundraisers’ confidence in meeting financial goals is the highest it’s been since before the pandemic began. Eighty-one percent of college advancement professionals say they are confident they will meet their fundraising goals for the 2021 fiscal year. That’s a big reversal from last April, when only 22 percent felt that way.
The results come from the latest edition of a survey by fundraising consultancy Washburn & McGoldrick. The firm has regularly polled college fundraising officials since April 2020 to gauge how they are responding to the pandemic’s shifting set of challenges. The latest survey includes responses from 461 individuals at 103 institutions, and its results have a roughly 4 percent margin of error.
As recently as October 2020, only 40 percent of college advancement professionals felt they would meet their goals that fiscal year.
“Some of the confidence is just a sense that there will be a return to campus, whereas last year at this time, we were just hoping there would be,” said Karin George, managing principal at Washburn & McGoldrick. “People are feeling like, ‘OK, I can actually go and engage with people one-on-one. I’m going to be able to achieve some of the things that were just so difficult to achieve during the pandemic.’”
As the number of people fully vaccinated against Covid-19 grows, more colleges have announced plans to fully return to on-campus classes in the fall. But when it comes to fundraisers’ plans to return to the office, leaders and lower-level fundraisers are not on the same page. Chief advancement officers believe it will be easier to meet fundraising goals working from the office, while gift officers and alumni-relations staff are less bullish on the prospect.
Among chief advancement officers, 48 percent believe it will be easier to develop a pipeline of prospective donors from the office, while only 24 percent of gift officers and alumni-relations staff share that view.
Currently, 40 percent of chief advancement officers say they are working from the office most or all of the time, compared with 16 percent of senior advancement staff and 8 percent of gift and alumni-relations officers.
Just 5 percent of chief advancement officers prefer to continue working remotely all or most of the time, compared with 44 percent of gift and alumni-relations officers, while 60 percent of chief advancement officers said they favored working in the office most or all of the time, compared with only 17 percent of gift and alumni-relations officers. The two groups are more in sync on hybrid arrangements: Thirty-five percent of chief advancement officers favor splitting their work between home and the office, and 39 percent of gift and alumni-relations officers say the same.
The results come after a turbulent year for college fundraisers. Roughly 65 percent of colleges raised less in 2020 than they did in 2019, and overall fundraising across higher-education was basically flat last year.
The survey also asked fundraisers how they were visiting with supporters. Forty percent of institutions are already meeting with donors or other constituents in person, and another 28 percent expected to begin doing so in May or June. Only 13 percent of institutions currently expect fundraising staff to attend in-person board meetings, and 50 percent expect to do so after September.
The survey also found that top fundraising priorities haven’t changed much since last year. Financial aid, unrestricted annual operating support, and endowments are the top priorities. But fundraising for diversity, equity, and inclusion measures rose in prominence, with 52 percent of chief advancement officers at 64 institutions identifying it as a top priority, up from 42 percent the year before.
When it comes to talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion within their institutions, survey responses also revealed different levels of comfort between higher-level and lower-level advancement staffers. Twenty-nine percent of chief advancement officers said they were either somewhat comfortable or need to improve their comfort level discussing issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion with colleagues, compared with 43 percent of gift officers and alumni-relations professionals who said the same.
