To bring to life the concepts and ideas discussed in the Future of Philanthropy series, we bring together experts in the field who can offer first-hand experience and important insights on these topics. This Q&A focuses on the higher education nonprofit sector —and how a rapidly changing world is placing new and different kinds of demands on the fundraising leaders and teams within those organizations.
Panelist: Sergio M. Gonzalez joined Brown University as Senior Vice President for Advancement in 2017. He oversees all advancement areas across the institution, including development, alumni relations, corporate and foundation relations, international advancement, the Brown Sports Foundation, and the Brown Annual Fund. He led the Brown Together Campaign, which exceeded its original $3B goal and ultimately raised $4.4B. Before coming to Brown, Sergio served as Senior Vice President for University Advancement and External Affairs at the University of Miami from 2001-2017. He was the architect and leader of two successful fundraising campaigns that together raised more than $3B. Prior to joining the University of Miami, Gonzalez served in multiple roles in Miami-Dade County government, including Chief of Staff for the Miami-Dade County Executive Mayor, Director of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust, and Executive Director of the South Florida 1999 Super Bowl Host Committee. Mr. Gonzalez served as Chair of the Board of Trustees for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) from 2022-2024, and he chaired an annual CASE conference for Latin American university presidents and advancement practitioners over a number of years. He speaks frequently on the advancement profession to diverse audiences in the US and abroad. He is also a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute.
Panelist: Amy Yancey, President and Chief Executive Officer, leads the UConn Foundation team, overseeing philanthropic fundraising, alumni and constituent relations, and endowment management on behalf of UConn and UConn Health—including all campuses and the Division of Athletics. Amy most recently led the public launch of the $1.5B Campaign Because of UConn, the largest and most ambitious Campaign in UConn’s history. She has a proven track record of building momentum, launching multi-billion-dollar campaigns, and driving significant philanthropic growth as a senior leader of institutional advancement. Before coming to the Foundation in January 2024, she was vice president for development at Boston College, where she led fundraising. During her tenure, she also served as Interim Senior Vice President for Advancement. Previously, she served on the senior advancement team at the University of Virginia and led fundraising teams at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, her alma mater, where she earned a BA in philosophy and an MS in plant sciences and agricultural economics.
Moderator: Tom Jennings serves as Managing Director and Senior Consultant of Aspen Leadership Group, and has over 30 years of experience in higher education advancement, management, fundraising campaigns, volunteer board management, institutionally related foundations, talent recruitment, and consulting. His fourteen years as a vice president for university advancement at a top-10 national liberal arts college and a top-20 public university provide a breadth and depth of experience that helps in advising clients and job candidates. Tom served Washington and Lee University as vice president for university advancement and led the early phases of the university’s $650M comprehensive campaign, and managed the Advancement division’s 70 staff. At Florida State University, Tom served as vice president for university advancement and president of the FSU Foundation, where he led the Advancement Division’s 190 staff members. Under his leadership, FSU completed its first $1B campaign on schedule, exceeding its goal by 15%. Tom helped close the university’s first $100M gift commitment and was instrumental in creating the FSU Real Estate Foundation in 2011, serving as its first president. Previously, Tom led the fundraising efforts for the University of Virginia College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, UVA’s largest academic unit.
Tom: Thank you both for participating in this series. You’ve both been in higher education for a long time, and these are some interesting and, in some ways, unprecedented times. I can’t think of a more important time to be having these kinds of conversations, with all the headwinds and crosswinds facing both philanthropy and higher education. When you think about all of the issues at play, what keeps you up at night?
Sergio: One of the overriding issues here, as I look at all the challenges, is which of these are permanent and which are temporary? Which ones should have us thinking about permanent solutions, versus those that could end up being just a phase? I think about this a lot, and what worries me is making those calls correctly.
For example, in the short term, many significant donors across higher education are postponing their giving, some due to economic and market uncertainty, some because non-higher-ed programs they care about are seeing funding cuts, and donors may be thinking about deploying their giving in different ways or to different types of institutions. It may take a couple of years for those issues to sort themselves out, but they feel like short-term issues.
On the other hand, the narrowing pyramid and the increase in bigger gifts have been long-term trends, and I have not seen a single data point that indicates this trend is changing. The reliance on those larger gifts, and the percentage of giving that comes from those larger gifts, continues to be greater and more significant. That in turn raises a strategic question about how to deploy resources.
Every gift is important to the institution, for many different reasons. So, we need to achieve a balancing act, allocating resources and thinking strategically about gifts at all levels. As we know, annual giving is significant and important; I always call it a jewel, because it allows the institution to do so much. You have to think about how you steward and motivate those donors, while at the same time, there’s no question that the focus on the top of the pyramid continues to be financially necessary.
Another long-term shift is how donors think about gifts as investments—that trend is also in the data, and I don’t see it changing. On the contrary, the first thing folks making gifts want to see is a return on their investment, and the second thing is a meaningful impact.
With limited resources, how much can you steward? At what level? That’s another strategic decision for all of us in higher education. There’s no question that stewardship has to be more focused on the end result, the metrics, the impact, and demonstrating that back to our donors, because it’s something that they’re looking for and require. I don’t see that changing, either.
Tom: Amy, what keeps you up at night?
Amy: That’s literally the billion-dollar question, maybe the multi-billion-dollar question. We’ve all been worrying about the narrowing pyramid for a long time, which raises the question of whether those donors start to have an outsized impact on philanthropy at higher ed institutions. We do want to be listening to them; they should be influential; they’ve gone out into the world can see what’s needed on the ground. But too much focus on the top of the pyramid can limit the donor perspectives we get and result in a narrowing of the diversity of ideas, which runs contrary to what higher education is all about.
One potential solution, which I think a lot about, is bringing in those younger donors, donors of different backgrounds, people who have traditionally not participated in philanthropy. That’s an opportunity for us, and it relates to Sergio’s point about demonstrating ROI. We know millennials, particularly younger millennials, want to see impact. They’re also joiners; they want to be part of the club. So, we have to find out a way to make that valuable for them and make smaller, newer donors feel like they’re co-invested with us.
But one of the things I worry most about is the health of American higher education in terms of its impact on our economy. I’ve spent 25 years in higher education because I believe that the work that we do doesn’t just transform the lives of students. It makes the American dream possible in ways that are harder today for people to understand. So, when I think about the impact of federal divestment in research and the pressures the government is putting on international students, I think we run the risk of breaking something that has really been the innovation engine for the United States.
We excel in the world because of the way we apply a broad liberal education to solving problems of the human condition. That’s what makes us so innovative. And by the way, we’re able to attract the top 2% of talent from other economies to the United States to take advantage of what the rest of the world has tried to duplicate in their higher education models, and have not been able to. But they will be able to catch us much more rapidly now, and I worry about the entire future of our economic advantage in the world. I’m an optimist, however, and this is a resilient country.
Tom: And if you had to put this into the temporary or permanent category, where would it go?
Amy: The piece that is possibly temporary is how we think about immigration and international students. The piece that feels more permanent is the worry that decisions we make today on defunding research and firing people will result in a long-term loss of expertise. If you break the funding piece of it and the research agenda for long enough, even if the orientation toward research funding returns and we can bring international students back, we may not be in the same competitive place we once were. That lost advantage gets locked in and moves from something temporary to something permanent.
Tom: I want to touch on the issue of public perception about higher education, because it’s one of the drivers of some of the trends Amy just mentioned. People are questioning the cost of higher education versus its value in the job market. We’re seeing a decline in trust of all institutions, including higher ed, and divides over cultural issues are negatively impacting our institutions. How does public perception impact the philanthropic mission?
Sergio: This is a great question. I think we have to take stock, first and foremost, of the values of our institutions and make sure that we understand them, as fundraisers, and that we are steadfast in supporting those values.
That being said, as fundraisers, our prime mission is to understand where our donors and alumni are in their own thinking and evolution. We have to be very sensitive and understanding if those perspectives are different from our own, and potentially very different from those of the institution. We need to be respectful while remaining steadfast to the values and strategic vision of the institution and its leadership.
I use the word balance a lot—it’s about balancing and being a facilitator to make sure that if somebody has a viewpoint that is different than the institution, as long as it’s not in violation of the values of the institution, it’s an opportunity to talk, to be creative. A lot of it is about listening, careful communication, and meeting folks where they are. We’ve always experienced this with alumni and donors who have perspectives different from our own—you want them to understand the university’s values and still want to be part of the community.
So, while it’s a challenging time, I think we as fundraisers are better equipped, probably than a lot of other folks at our institutions, to have those kinds of conversations because of the nature of the work that we do.
Now, I’m not saying it’s easy, particularly for our younger team members who have certain lived experiences—it’s hard to do what I just described. But part of our work is being able to articulate and find that midpoint, which can be difficult when an issue hits you particularly strongly. So, I recognize that it can be very difficult for our team. I try to listen to their concerns and spend time talking to them about these issues, because I know that they need that support at this time, and I encourage our managers to do the same.
Amy: Of the issues you mentioned, one that I think a lot about, especially being at a public university, is the value of a four-year higher education experience. I would equate what is happening now at the national level with what happened 15 years ago at the state level, where the country stopped seeing what we do as a public good—or maybe they see us as a public good, but they think you’ve got other financial levers to pull, rather than being publicly funded.
State-related institutions like University of Virginia and Penn State—where the public investment is very small but they still consider themselves public and mission-driven—are examples of what I think we’re going to see more of, because it’s harder and harder for us to clearly articulate the need for public funding when there are so many other pressing needs at the community, local, state, and now at the national level.
In that regard, our best advocates are actually our alumni. If you read social media, I have yet to see somebody regretting getting a four-year degree. Most people talk about college as the most wonderful four or five years of their lives. It’s hard to imagine that those people don’t want that for their children, but I do worry that this generation coming up—because of all the noise they hear—will not want it for themselves.
Tom: And in terms of those new donors coming up, what are your thoughts on how to engage them?
Amy: I think there’s been a lot of work done here on graduates who are well into their careers and post-college lives. It’s the grads who are just over ten years out that I think need more focus. I was poor and angry about my student loans for the first 10 years after my degree, and it took a little time for me to mature into a potential donor. So, I really think the opportunity is with that next decade, that second decade of graduates.
But the practical thing is, unfortunately, you do have to focus on those mid-sized and higher-end gifts and have your institution understand that you’re making the case for that. It doesn’t mean you abandon the great work of your alumni teams and other constituent teams. But we need to do it more efficiently and with greater leverage of resources.
We need to get better in the social media space, the use of technology, the influencer space, around those smaller gifts. As a practical matter, I do not have an annual giving team. We go from direct marketing to major gifts, and if we were not resource-constrained, I might make a different choice. But annual giving fundraising teams cost money. So, we’re looking at technologies that can help us in this space because we need to get back to doing that; it’s building our next pipeline. And I think the future of higher education is going to be leveraging technology and media to do that.
Tom: Are you currently using AI or any AI-based tools?
Amy: I’m excited about the possibilities, but the way I think about technology adoption has always been that I want to be a fast follower. I don’t want to be on the leading edge and make mistakes because we’re not big enough to bear those risks. We’ll want to take the very best from the next iteration of AI and learn from the successes and mistakes of others.
I think that most of the ways AI can be helpful will be on the back end, in ways that are as invisible as the air we breathe. We don’t see it, but we’ve been using machine learning for a long time—from Siri, to grammar suggestions when you’re typing in a Microsoft Word document, to the ways in which algorithms drive social media content.
The next phase is, how intentional do we want to be in bringing that into our business practice? And I’m going to go out on a limb and say that even though it’s going to be pervasive, it’s never going to replace the human element or the relationship. No matter how good those automated AI voice menus get, we’re just waiting to say, “representative.” Right? Most of what we need cannot be solved yet by these technologies.
Tom: Sergio? Are you currently using AI or any AI-based tools?
Sergio: I think AI will have a permanent impact on our profession. How deeply is the question, and how quickly? Again, the word that comes to mind is balance. Some of the capabilities we’ve seen provide opportunities for efficiency, whether it’s through stewardship, proposal development, acknowledgement letters, or things of that nature.
That being said, there’s an important balance to be found between the human touch our fundraisers have with our donors versus the efficiencies brought by AI. We have to be thoughtful and intentional about that. The example I discuss with my team is donor communications: What if the donor knew this letter or acknowledgement piece was not written by you, but by a computer? How would they feel about that? It becomes a trust issue. Because the next question in the mind of the donor is, what else are they not doing? How authentic is this relationship?
That being said, I’m not against using AI tools. We just have to be very thoughtful and balanced in how we think about applying those tools. I’m not sure that that front-line interaction with donors will change significantly, especially talking about major gifts and principal gifts, and the personal interactions with those individuals. As I look at higher ed, there are other parts of our institutions that are going to be more impacted, and faster, by AI than we are in advancement.
Tom: And how are you thinking about the hiring, retention, and training challenges of building the fundraising team of the future?
Sergio: First, we need folks who have a strong EQ; people who can talk about things that their donors want to talk about, engage in interesting conversations, and understand what’s going on at the institution, so they can discuss it with donors. The other piece that’s critically important is for those folks to be strategic. These are personal relationships that require fundraisers to be earnest, but also strategic in developing those relationships, while being sensitive to the donor’s needs. The end goal with respect to the relationship is usually finding that mutuality around what inspires the individual. We also look for collaborative individuals, especially for principal gift fundraisers who need to collaborate with people across the campus at all levels.
As for training, we have a formal orientation training when new hires come to Brown. We provide skills training that’s done by our team internally as well as external opportunities. And these programs are inclusive all the way down the org chart to associates and administrative assistants. When we hire administrative assistants, we don’t assume they will be in that role for their entire career at Brown. They can if they want to, but there is a career track open to them to become leadership gift officers, which is our title for annual-fund fundraisers. We very intentionally provide opportunity, even for those who are not fundraisers. And for our fundraisers, we have a scale of growth opportunities.
Institutionally, we have the mindset and the culture of growing folks from within, if they have the skill set and want that opportunity. We may not be able to accommodate everyone, but we’re trying to do that, and most of our fundraising managers and leaders know it. It’s a cultural thing, and we’ve had very successful fundraisers who grew that way.
The last piece I would say is that the training is really more about good management and understanding where each staff member is in their own career path. Demographics plays a big role in what those expectations are, especially understanding the different expectations of the younger folks you manage and trying to make sure you’re doing things intentionally to help them grow.
Tom: Do you have an internal talent management team?
Sergio: We do. We have a very good talent management team within advancement.
Tom: Amy, what does your talent pipeline look like?
Amy: I’m pretty bullish on spending the money on training. It’s hard not to understand the ROI. Training extends the capabilities of the team you have—and through an investment that is not incremental to your budget. Our advancement services team at UConn is one of the best that I’ve ever seen, and I’m so grateful for that, because it allows us to behave as if we’ve got a few more fundraisers than we do, until we have the budget to grow that fundraising team.
As for onboarding, one of the things I did early on here was create a buddy system. You have to “buddy up” new people with someone they can call anytime they have a question. New folks go through onboarding, and in 60 days, they’re released into the wild. They’ve learned a lot about the institution, its culture, and the way things are done. But it’s a lot to take in in a short period of time. So, you really want them to have an internal partner they can lean on.
And building on Sergio’s point about leadership. I think we have to continue investing in leadership training, such that people at every layer of the organization feel like they can lead from the seat that they’re in. Some of that is embedded culturally, but some of it is explicit leadership training. As a team member, if you see a problem or an opportunity, don’t just say something, do something. Bring us a solution. Front-line folks see things that the executive team, who are trying to empower you to do your work, cannot see. Often, we can’t tell you what the solutions are. You have to tell us what the solutions are, so that we can provide you with the resources to solve it.
Tom: I want to switch gears a bit here and quickly touch on the role of Boards, which are evermore important to the fundraising process and overall philanthropy effort. Any thoughts on the role of Boards in your work?
Sergio: There’s no question there’s been an evolution, and we need to be very adept at working with Boards in terms of knowing when to engage, how to listen, and sometimes meet them halfway on important issues where they have strong views. But if the Board trusts the professionals who are doing the work, it goes a long way toward a successful relationship. It doesn’t mean that some folks won’t still have a propensity to be very hands-on and want to micromanage, but if they have trust, it’s usually less likely that they will do that.
Another trend I see is that the days of presidents and leaders not paying as much attention to Board members are long gone. Boards are much more active today, more hands-on and engaged. Again, it’s an issue of balance. Like you, I have sat on Boards, not in higher ed necessarily, but I’ve been on Boards and seen up close that desire on the part of Board members to get more engaged, while also being reminded of where that line where oversight stops and day-to-day management takes over, and why that line is there.
Those are some of the ways that Boards have changed in the short term, and we’ll see whether they stick over the long term. They very well could, especially in light of some of the challenges higher ed institutions are facing.
Amy: I’m really passionate about this issue, and a strong believer that the best Boards are ones where the noses are in and the fingers are out. The fiduciary responsibility that Board members take is to ask, “How can I take down the barriers that are in the way of you being successful?”
To me, the best Boards have this orientation to enable, rather than to meddle, and I think that today we’re seeing a maturation so nonprofit Boards function a lot more like high-functioning corporate boards. They bring their expertise and advice. You consult with them. They make the necessary calls to support recruiting, or a gift solicitation, or sway another Board member on a sticky subject—they’re asking, “What do you need and how can I help?”
Tom: You’ve experienced both public and private university boards, and at UConn, you’ve got a Foundation Board that’s just for the Foundation, which is probably a self-perpetuating, more private Board; versus the University has a Governing Board which probably is appointed by the governor or some governing agency or combination. Talk a little bit about how that structure works…
Amy: We have some good synergies between the two. The Chair of the Board of Trustees was formerly a director on the Board of the Foundation. We’ve got some very generous Trustees who also lean into helping us on the philanthropic side, even though that hasn’t formally been part of their charge, as they’re appointed by the governor.
The Governor and the university both have their own pipelines of people to be potential Trustees, but our Board is perhaps a proving ground for people who we may hope to get into that Trustee pipeline.
And then some people in roles like mine, while they may also be vice presidents of the university, have no formal reporting line. So, for example, my Institutional Advancement committee is a really important relationship to me, because I am sitting out in the audience in our public Trustee meetings, rather than sitting behind closed doors and participating in executive sessions. So, I’m really dependent on getting information from my Institutional Advancement chair and sharing information with her—ensuring she understands the good work our team is doing, so that she can convey that to the Trustees.
The challenge there is that of indirectness. We have to take an extra step that maybe you don’t have to do if you don’t have these two separate bodies.
Tom: Before we close, I want to quickly touch on the subject of athletics, because it’s a unique challenge higher ed faces that other areas of the nonprofit sector don’t. Any thoughts on the impact of athletics on the philanthropy effort?
Amy: As you know, UConn has a very strong athletic brand, and I oversee fundraisers here, as I did in my previous role at Boston College. When the NIL ruling in California came out, it changed the way we all thought about this.
Here at UConn, we have a collective that is a very good partner. We have a for-profit that primarily works with businesses and corporations, and a not-for-profit that primarily works with individual donors. But today, it feels like someone took what was already a shaken snow globe and smashed it with a hammer.
In December, our not-for-profit collective said that they were no longer accepting new donations in anticipation of shared revenue. And we started reconciling our records and giving soft credit to the collective donors for previous gifts, so that we could acknowledge donors’ philanthropy in this space.
As for philanthropy, my alma mater at University of Tennessee, for example, has already set up a separate athletic foundation. You and I were both at UVA and know there was a separate athletic foundation. It may be that you start to see such foundations become separate entities that essentially license the identity of their universities.
That’s one possibility in the absence of really strong, cohesive leadership—whether that comes from the NCAA or college conferences. And then you interject the talent agents into that, and it really does start to become a chaotic system. So, I think it’s right to ask that, in that context, what does it mean for philanthropy? Because anything that frustrates your donors is bad for philanthropy, not just bad for athletics.
Sergio: I’ll comment on this with a caveat that at Brown, these issues are not as pertinent as they are at other institutions. When the NIL ruling came out, there was a bit of shock that all of a sudden, we’re creating these other vehicles for giving directly to athletes—to a point that folks are still trying to deal with what’s happened and trying to find pathways to make it work, where it doesn’t impact fundraising as much.
And the question always was, am I going to lose philanthropic dollars? Are those funds now going to go to a sport or an athlete? Those were the concerns, and I think our profession has to deal with them. It’s not perfect. The system still has all kinds of challenges.
But I think more changes will be coming that are regulatory in nature, to make this feel a little bit more sensible. Thinking back to my days at the University of Miami, we had donors who were very philanthropic, who wanted to support the health and well-being of all our students, with athletics being just one part of that. The health and well-being of all of our students is a major priority here at Brown, led by numerous initiatives by our Athletic Director, who has made this part of her strategic vision.
And if you look around the country, there are still many significant philanthropic gifts being made to athletic organizations or athletic departments in higher education. So, I remain optimistic that we’ll find a better way, although right now it’s still evolving and doesn’t feel so great.
Tom: To wrap up, I’m going to ask you both to go out on a limb and think about what the future holds. First, when your successor hands over the reins to their successor, what will that fundraising team of the future look like? And second, what issues will higher ed philanthropy be facing that might be unique as compared to other areas of the nonprofit sector?
Amy: When I think about my successor’s successor, I think they’ll be inheriting a pretty efficient and lean operation. We will utilize technology to replace manual data collection and analysis, for example, in areas like collecting alumni information and conducting prospect research. We may be using blockchain technology to process gifts. The end result will be that almost everyone who is a human part of the team will have outward-facing responsibility from a donor standpoint. They will be fundraisers, and constituent service officers, and engagement officers.
And stewardship is going to get way more important—i.e., seeing and understanding the impact of your gift. This is particularly important with alumni, for them to stand up and say, “This was the most impactful thing that happened to me, and I cannot imagine a world in which I do not send my own children to a four-year institution.” Everything we can do to have them continue to feel that way about their relationship with us is critically important on the philanthropic side.
That’s really the future of the work that we do.
As for unique challenges, because of resource constraints, budget cuts, remote learning, a decline in research, and other factors, we may end up with a generation of students whose college experience is not as robust as it once was. We’re going to see a smaller and smaller population of four-year alumni in real numbers, and many of those people will have had a different experience than what we think of as the classic experience.
Higher education has always been very much about that sense of place, and a “campus experience.” Alumni donors want the nostalgia, while also seeing the new and the cutting edge. I think a smaller number of institutions are going to exist in that space. Things may not change dramatically for the flagship publics and tier-one privates, but for that next layer down, philanthropy may not be part of the equation as much for those institutions, or it may look very different. That demographic and generational shift is probably the biggest thing that will change higher education philanthropy.
Tom: Sergio, final thoughts?
Sergio: I’d agree with Amy that the fundraising operation of the future will be a well-oiled, efficient organization. If you asked me what our organizations looked like two generations ago, compared to today, they looked starkly different. Two decades ago, I’m not sure that the word “ROI” was used in advancement shops. It was more about the charitable gift. Today, we’re much more data-driven, process-oriented, and business-oriented. And we still have a lot of room to grow in those areas. That’s a permanent change that’s not going away.
It’s hard to predict what the equivalent of those things will be two generations down, but I think that we will be continuing to move in that direction. And that will also impact leadership skills and style; where maybe two decades ago philanthropy leaders were the top fundraisers, now we’re looking for folks with skills in business, strategic thinking, management, financial metrics, and data-driven processes. It’s hard to predict just how much further that trend will go, but philanthropy teams are going to look more and more like that.
As for unique challenges, I’d also agree with Amy on the need to reassert the value proposition of higher education. With a nonprofit like healthcare, people understand the importance and value proposition. That’s easier to understand, even though they’re under attack as well now.
But in higher ed, we’re in a condition where a significant number of folks do not understand or appreciate the value that our institutions bring to our country. And I don’t say that to imply blame. Part of it is the state of the world that we’re in right now, but part of it is also the need to further educate and communicate our value.
So, if there was one message I would want to get out to colleagues around the country, particularly in these challenging times—and I’m doing this myself—it would be that it’s very important to take stock and reflect on, “What are the positives?”
It’s easy to be discouraged by all the challenges. But what are the things that we’re all going to focus on to get our constituents, our donors, our parents excited? How can we move forward and create momentum behind their continued engagement and giving at our institutions?
I believe strongly that it’s important in these times to make an extra effort to push our teams and get them thinking on the positives—the primary one being a constant reminder that we’re in this business to impact lives. So, while there are certainly flaws in the higher education system, we work at some of the greatest institutions in this country in terms of having a positive impact on people’s lives. Not only for the students who come to our institutions, but the communities that live around us, and the research that’s done here, and the beneficiaries of all that work.
Focus on those things as personal inspiration, and let the broader community know about it. Use it in the work we do in the advancement profession, to motivate ourselves and our teams to continue on this mission that’s going to exist beyond the current short-term challenges we’re facing.
We will all come out of this, and these institutions will continue to exist and have that kind of impact. And I think that’s a message we have to get out to all our professionals.
Tom: Well said. Thank you both so much for sharing your experience and wisdom. Indeed, higher education needs a boost, in our morale and public image, because what we do is so important for our students, our communities, and the future of our country. Thank you.
NEXT UP on July 29: Tom Jennings will offer closing thoughts for higher education institutions, based on his decades of experience as a fundraising leader in the field. The piece will summarize overall trends from all the articles in the Future of Philanthropy series and offer a brief overview of what may lie ahead for advancement teams in higher education.
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