As the economic crisis draws on, its impact on alumni giving is still foggy.
Fritz Schroeder, senior associate vice president of Development and Alumni Relations, expects the economic crisis to affect alumni giving, though he says it is still too early to judge how serious it will be.
"We probably won't have a clear idea of what the outlook for alumni is like until about June of this year," he said. "Everyone's personal finances - from students and recent alumni to more wealthy established alumni - and we're had to adjust our time frames and requests based on donor's situations."
Schroeder noted that alumni events in recent months have taken a new tone.
"We've been organizing more alumni networking events. There's definitely been greater demand for these kinds of events, partly from people trying to tap into networks as they look for new jobs."
Schroeder also noted some changes in the types of involvement that alumni are looking for.
"In the past, alumni chapters used to have a lot of formal dinners with a faculty guest as a lecturer," Schroeder said.
Younger alumni are more interested in hands-on participation with the University. They would rather work directly with their alumni chapters or do volunteer work with the school than attend dinners and lectures. It is through these more engaging events that they will give money, according to Schroeder.
"We've tried to increase programs like this to meet the interests of our alumni and help keep them involved in the Hopkins community," Schroeder said.
As a student ambassador for the Alumni Association, Luis Oros's role is to attend University events with alumni present to help create a stronger sense of community between alumni and current students.
Last year, the program was in a test phase. Now in its second year, the ambassador program is taking steps to make it a permanent fixture because the Alumni Association has seen noticeable results.
"A lot of alumni call the office asking who the student they spoke with was because they want to contact them and continue the relationship," Oros said.
"One of the things that you oftentimes see during the events is when a student talks to an alumnus, the conversations are very enjoyable because it's not about school or business - there's a commonality between them."
With these and other programs in place, Schroeder remained confident that alumni giving would be strong.
"Since people have begun keeping track of these things in the 1960s or so, fundraisers have found that philanthropy, in general, tends to be recession-proof. Statistically, philanthropy increases both in and out of recessions," Schroeder said.
"In tough economic times, the relationships that we as individuals hold dear, whatever is most important to you - those stay important. We're operating with that as a core principle."
Schroeder emphasized that going forward, the University would focus its cooperation with alumni and make a particular effort to have physical contact with both groups and individuals, to help make contributions fit around the changing circumstances of students, alumni and the school itself.
"Hopkins alumni are doing a lot of different things. A hedge fund manager, an employee at a tech start-up, a recent grad who's still just getting started, the recession affects them all differently and we approach these people conscious of their unique experience."
It has been noted that Hopkins has a lower alumni giving rate than many of its peer institutions. According to US News and World Report college rankings, the Hopkins alumni giving rate in 2009 was 33 percent, placing Hopkins 16th among national universities. This compared to 32 percent for University of Chicago, 36 percent for Stanford, 41 percent for Harvard and 60 percent for Princeton, the leader among national universities. The 2009 statistics represent the average for 2006-2007 and 2007-2008, and so do not provide a full picture of changing behavior as the economic crisis unfolded.
Schroeder noted that Hopkins has very different alumni from many of its peer institutions. According to Schroeder, Hopkins has a total alumni base of 140,000 from all of its institutions and degree programs. Of the 140,000, two thirds are graduate degree holders and one third completed their degrees through a part-time program.
"The dynamic at schools like Stanford and Duke is closer to one third graduate degree holders, two thirds undergraduates," Schroeder said. "It is possible to theorize that graduate students or part-time students may not have the same emotional attachment to the school as their undergraduate alma mater."
Schroeder also argued that this represented an opportunity for the University to expand donations from alumni.
"We've achieved remarkable success, but we don't have the same broad alumni support as some of our peers. Moving forward, we have to ask ourselves what is it that we need to do to increase alumni engagement in the institution. President Daniels has already discussed increasing alumni involvement across all our institutions," Schroeder said.
