Ireland as a country is widely known around the globe for having an educated, english speaking and highly skilled population. We are lucky to have some of the top companies in the world base themselves in Ireland with even more companies arriving on our shores including Dropbox, Twitter and and Apple.
We have 7 main Universities on our Island who produce top graduates but yet out of all our graduates only 1% of our entire alumnus is giving back. This results in Universities depending on the semi state bodies for finance and constantly losing out on opportunities with their graduates due to lack of correct information.
The total of alumni donations was €50 million last year in Ireland in comparison to the UK with £856m and US with $23.1 billion. Universities in Ireland have a huge dependency on the state for funding such;
UCD- 60% funded by semi state bodies (€87million)
UCC- 81% funded by semi state bodies (€81million)
Ireland isn’t the only country battling this problem as the UK has becoming increasingly aware of the lack of donations into the third sector.Last year only 1.2% of all UK alumni donated back to their Universities totalling €856 million. Oxbridge University was one of the only successful Universities who had a successful fundraising model as they raised €329 million alone which confirms that by having a strong fundraising management team and tool that higher donations will be received.
Over the past six months we spent a lot of time in the US and the UK researching the alumni market and the importance of alumni relations and reasons for lack of donations.
Some of the most popular reasons are;
− Lack of a strong relationship between University and alumni
− Low attendance rates at events
− Alumni becoming irritated by constant calls for donations
− Universities having incorrect information to communicate with their alumni.
The UK and Ireland have a very traditional style when it comes to dealing with their alumni. It is extremely time consuming as it requires the University to have a large workforce trying to constantly keep up to date with the changing of information. This leads to
– Low turn out of alumni networking events
– Extremely low donations
– Difficult building business networks
– Hard to promote the success of graduates as a promotion tool for potential students
– Disadvantage to alumni community as they can’t reach out to alumnus community
The US is a dominant leader with alumni donations with their main source of income received from their alumni. Universities in the US have as high as 60% of their alumni donating back to their institutions. They have established long and strong relationships with their alumnus, which helps donations in the future.
It is essential that we improve significantly our fundraising model both in Ireland and the UK as fees are only due to increase. We must ensure Ireland is still globally recognised as an educated country by establishing stronger relations and realising the importance of keeping up to date with our alumnus.
By 2015 Irish student fee’s are expected to rise up to €3000 which is going to be a struggle for future and current students. Irish Universities can help this by working with their alumnus to have a strong donations platform that will help future students attend University. Education is the key to economic growth and there must be a stronger emphasis on donations.
Small changes Universities can make are as follows:
− Improving their donations by adding a ‘ click to donate’ button on their website.
− Establishing a stronger relationship with their alumnus by targeted events
− Keeping up to date with contact information
− Engaging with a platform to help them achieve goals
− Ability to demonstrate that public good is being served
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