Closing Remarks - Week 4 - Fixing the Broken Experience

Closing Remarks - Week 7 - The Alumni Board We Really Need

The message from Nathan Chappell in The Generosity Crisis and reinforced in his interview on the Keynote podcast is that the focus must be on creating Radical Connection. Alumni and donors need to feel emotionally connected with their alma mater, and that spirit has been waning amongst graduates of more recent decades. So how do we go about doing this? What’s the best way to create a more meaningful connection between alumni and the school? Most colleges, universities, and independent K-12 schools already have an alumni board. Sometimes the board has a fiduciary responsibility to a 501(c)(3) non-profit, but it’s often the case that the alumni board is an informal council or advisory committee comprised of graduates. Alumni boards of this type have been essential over the years, and I believe they still are. But for the real connectivity to get stimulated. For the actual spark needed to move a university from transactional to relational, a standing committee comprised of institutional leadership from both the administration and the academy is required. The steering committee should also include students and alumni volunteers and serve as a working group. The purpose of the body is to champion student-alumni connections. Every educational organization needs this type of steering committee to begin creating the kind of experience involving alumni and donors that will resonate across campus, reach the far corners, and include online learners as well. This structure is needed to help create and deliver a framework that guides enterprise-wide engagement and maximizes the impact alumni can have across all aspects of the institution. The committee I’m describing also sends the signal from the school’s president that alumni engagement is imperative to reach all the school’s enrollment, career outcomes, and philanthropy objectives. Said more plainly, alumni engagement must be everyone’s responsibility, and senior leadership can make it so. A guiding committee both sends the signal and creates stronger internal collaboration. To create the Radical Connection that Nathan Chappell and his co-authors are describing, something different needs to happen on campus. A focused, ongoing, and collaborative effort is what’s needed. The new committee needs to be responsible for ensuring that alumni-ness is elevated and strategically layered onto student experiences — from perspective to Commencement and beyond. It’s not that our Alumni Association Board of Directors can’t be helpful, but these bodies, fiduciary or not, simply cannot affect change in the same way. An Alumni Association Board of Directors should support the Commission with a more tailored set of strategies and tactics. The Alumni Office itself is important in helping keep the trains running on time, but every unit on campus should have an engagement strategy that connects with an overarching approach. I can hear the groans already of university leadership asked to sit on another committee, but this one is one of the few that can truly drive all the university’s key measurables and desired outcomes. I don’t think this committee can be ad hoc or raised as a commission and then disassembled. There’s an ongoing need for strong coordination across the university; alumni will have the chance to really help students. About Speaking Engagement This week we launched our Book Club. I’m super excited to lead a regular book study and take the time to discuss the themes in small groups. We have 27 individuals who either submitted the interest form I sent in my newsletter or who indicated interest on their onboarding survey. The group includes members from all over the world. The Book Club experience will be delivered for members through moderated chat, Breakout podcasts, and a live event that completes the study. This was an exciting week, with Nathan Chappell as the Keynote and kicking off the Book Club with The Generosity Crisis. You guys having fun yet?! About the next Keynote On Monday, my special guest on the Keynote is Brandon Busteed. I’ve been an admirer of Brandon’s work in the higher ed space for a long time and I’m sure many listeners have been too. He’s been an advocate for applied work opportunities, particularly internships, for college students during his tenure at Gallup, then at Kaplan, and now as the CEO of Edconic. Brandon is also a write regularly for Fortune. Enjoy the weekend! See you next week. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.speakingengagement.org/subscribe [https://www.speakingengagement.org/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Making engagement an ‘inimitable product’

AI-reading of Kristin Hanson's new article, "Making engagement an 'inimitable product' This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.speakingengagement.org/subscribe [https://www.speakingengagement.org/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

N1 Philanthropy: A Donor Base of One

One of the most provocative ideas in my conversation with Nathan Chappell is that there may soon be no such thing as a “donor.” Nathan has spent more than two decades as a fundraiser and fundraising leader, and he’s become one of the clearest voices on AI in our field. This Keynote is also a milestone for us: it kicks off our first-ever Book Club, reading Nathan’s The Generosity Crisis, a book that has sat near my desk since I first heard him speak years ago at a Washburn McGoldrick conference. What makes the conversation memorable is how candid Nathan is about his own past. He described an afternoon early in his career at UC San Diego, spent with a colleague talking about how to “build a better mousetrap” — and realizing only later that they had spent the whole time referring to donors as mice. That discomfort is the seed of the idea he is chasing now (and is the subject of an upcoming book), which he calls “N1 philanthropy”: a future with no donors and no prospects, just individuals, each with a unique and evolving connection to the causes they love. Watch the full-length version (57 mins) on YouTube. [https://youtu.be/4AiStGrx7zc] For those of us in advancement, alumni engagement, and communications, this episode raises questions worth sitting with. If precision medicine can match a treatment to a single patient’s genome, can our institutions finally stop segmenting people by averages and build a relationship with each person as an “N of one”? What happens to affinity in an attention economy where the average person brushes up against thousands of algorithms a day? And the question I keep returning to: what is AI actually for? Nathan’s answer surprised me. The point is not to do twenty percent more outreach — it is to give every fundraiser back a day a week for the human work no machine can do, keeping, as he puts it, the human at the helm. “We’re going to give them their joy back,” he says. Beneath all the technology, the reminder is a familiar one: people do not connect to efficiency or strategy. They connect to being known. That truth sits at the center of this conversation. Big Themes This Week * The future Nathan calls “N1 philanthropy” treats every supporter as an individual an “N of one” rather than a member of a crude, averages-based segment, with predictive, generative, and agentic AI finally making that level of personalization possible at scale. * AI’s greatest value in advancement may not be efficiency or output, but the time it gives back — a “dividend of time” that frees fundraisers to do the deeply human work technology cannot. * Applying AI to a transactional or flawed fundraising practice only accelerates the problem; technology amplifies whatever culture and intent already exist. * The challenge facing institutions is fundamentally a relationship and connection problem, not a generosity problem, people remain generous when they feel genuinely known. * Keeping the “human at the helm” with people directing and accountable for how AI is used is what allows technology to deepen relationships rather than make engagement more transactional. Team Discussion Questions * Where are we still segmenting donors and alumni by averages rather than treating them as individuals, and where could AI help us build a relationship with someone as an “N of one”? * If AI gave every member of our team a day a week back, what human work would we want them spending it on? * Which of our current tasks drain time and joy, and which are the “last mile” moments that actually build relationships? * Where is it essential that a human stays “at the helm” of any AI we adopt, and how do we keep AI-assisted outreach feeling authentic rather than automated? * Do our donors and alumni feel known by us, or processed by us and what makes our institution worth connecting with between asks? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.speakingengagement.org/subscribe [https://www.speakingengagement.org/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Closing Remarks - Week 6 - Friendships through Affiliation

AI-reading of Ryan's new article, "Closing Remarks - Week 6 - Friendships through Affiliation" This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.speakingengagement.org/subscribe [https://www.speakingengagement.org/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Agora Talk: Introducing the Miner Nation Contributors program

What do you do when your engagement goals are climbing, your content has gone all-ask and no-story, and there's no budget to hire a writer? At UTEP, you stop looking inward and start looking out — to your own alumni. In this special Agora edition of the podcast, Sydney Bertram, Assistant Vice President for Strategic Communications and Engagement at UTEP, shares how her team broke out of the "transactional loop" by launching the Miner Nation Contributors Program — a fractional team of alumni freelancers who bring an authentic voice and institutional pride that money can't buy. Sydney walks through the build, the pay-per-piece model, the CASE-metrics framework that proved its impact (contributor content was UTEP's highest-engagement content type in FY25), and three diagnostic questions for your own shop. Hosted by Ryan Catherwood with Agora Leader - Annie Quade. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.speakingengagement.org/subscribe [https://www.speakingengagement.org/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]