A Gift That Keeps Giving
Low alumni giving rate inspires senior class gift
By Eric Jaffe

Most SAIS students stress about how they will repay their massive loans after they graduate. It isn’t surprising, then, that students are taken aback – even shocked – when they’re asked to donate money to SAIS before they’ve received their first post-graduation paycheck.

But that’s exactly what the 2007 “Senior Class” Gift initiative asks them to do.

“Previous class gift [initiatives] missed the point of having a class gift, which is to start the habit of giving early,” SGA President Shakti C’Ganti said.

Alumni giving is important because the cost of a SAIS education is well over $40,000 a year, while tuition is $29,500 a year for the 2006/2007 school year.

“SAIS is dependent on 30 to 35% of its operations coming from fundraising every year, which does not nearly cover the cost of every students’ education,” according to Scott Rembold, the former Associate Dean for Development who worked on alumni issues and recently left SAIS.

According to C’Ganti, it’s important for students to get in the habit of donating money now – even a relatively trivial amount – so that they will continue to support the school throughout the duration of their careers. The imperative to begin a donation solicitation campaign targeted at current students and recent alumni propelled him and other concerned students to launch the unusually aggressive initiative and its audacious goal of recruiting 70% of graduating students to contribute.

Henry Nuzum, who helped to organize the initiative, felt compelled to act after reading about what he felt was a lackluster alumni-giving rate in the Donor Acknowledgments section of SAISphere.

“The major problem is that a low alumni donations percentage belies the notion that SAIS students are loyal to the school,” Nuzum said.

In fact, the statistics tell a mixed story. According to statistics obtained from SAIS, while recent alumni giving rates have been anemic (only 1% of the Class of 2006 has donated, and 3% of the Class of 2005), 11% of SAIS grads overall have donated to the school, compared with 13% of Harvard’s Kennedy School, 24% of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School, 26% of Tuft’s Fletcher, 6% of Columbia’s SIPA, 10% of George Washington’s Elliot School, and 5% of Georgetown’s MSFS.

SAIS is not the best, but it’s better than Georgetown, Columbia, and George Washington. According to Nuzum, though, it’s essential that the school aggressively solicit student donations from the moment they begin at SAIS.

“Even though the amount of money we can recruit from recent grads might not be a lot, it’s important to start getting people in the habit of giving,” he stated.

Rembold agrees that increased participation among alumni in the form of donations is necessary, but says the degree of participation is difficult to measure.

“The participation rate is the hardest thing to get at because everybody counts differently,” Rembold said. “It’s hard to get a really accurate comparison. The only thing I can say about our participation rate is that there is definitely a disconnect between the strong feelings of affiliation and value perception that we hear from alums every single day and their giving to the institution.”

According to Nuzum, for SAIS to be considered worthy of large donations from wealthy philanthropists, it is essential that the alumni donation rate be improved.

“If I was an institutional donor or a high-profile individual, the first thing I would look at would be the yield rates to judge whether it’s worth giving,” Nuzum stated. “We need to get our yield rate up.”

But Dean Rembold cautions against reading too much into the numbers, noting that SAIS’s international alumni significantly affect the donation rate.

“Forty-one percent of our alums are abroad right now,” Rembold stated, adding that the notion of philanthropy to a U.S.-based institution is an unfamiliar concept to students from a state or country-supported education system that costs them nothing.

“So when you look at the U.S.-based alumni participation, we’re at 26%. When you factor in the international alums, which are at 5%, it drags us down.”

And if one assesses the yield rate more realistically, according to Rembold, the statistics tell a different story. “If you factor out the 800 people who we counted as part of our denominator that we have not actually been able to get in touch with, the more realistic overall number is around 15 or 16%.”

When evaluating alumni support, SAIS’s endowment is also relevant. Compared with similar schools, SAIS is somewhere in the middle of the pack; at $105 million, it is more than Fletcher’s $95 million, but far less than Harvard’s Kennedy School at $765 million or Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson at $750 million. But Rembold rejected the comparison of SAIS with Harvard or Princeton, noting, “The Kennedy School is larger, has more alumni, and by virtue of the Harvard Association has the connections to raise more money. The Woodrow Wilson School is a bit of an anomaly – they have one large donation that has grown over time that puts their endowment at over $600 million.”

Rembold, to his credit, does not deny that SAIS has work to do in alumni development, and his office has begun a significant transformation, with the goal of upping alumni participation and donations.

“SAIS is certainly under-endowed,” Rembold admitted. “But we’re 60 years old, and the development effort really only began in the 80’s. We’ve raised a lot of money through foundations over the years, but most of it is in current use, and the endowment is more of an individual-giving type of a project. SAIS didn’t get large until the late 70’s or early 80’s, and that group is just coming of age in terms of their ability to make major gifts.”

Rembold was recently replaced by Dr. Amir Pasic MA ‘87, who returned to SAIS after serving as Deputy Vice President of Advancement at The George Washington University. From 2001 to 2005, he was Director of Development and Manager of Special Projects at SAIS.

Gift initiative organizers have suggested several common-sense ideas to boost recent grads’ involvement and donations, including starting an aggressive solicitation campaign and instituting a group of “class agents” to promote networking and solicit donations after students graduate. The SGA organized a recent event to celebrate the launch of the gift initiative, and an auction preceding this year’s Mr. SAIS competition raised over $4,600.

According to Nuzum, the SGA and SAIS Development office have been superb in coordinating their efforts.

“While this is a student idea, Development has been fully supportive and helped in making forms and keeping administrative track of things,” he said.

According to Spencer Abruzzese, Assistant Director of Development at SAIS, the students who have organized the effort deserve much praise.

“The Class of 2007 Fund initiative is a remarkable effort by a group of students who understand the importance of giving back to SAIS. What makes this effort extraordinary is that these students want to give back, even before they have received their degrees, and are challenging other SAIS alumni to get involved in giving back to SAIS.”

Rembold is enthusiastic about these new fundraising initiatives, and notes encouragingly that SAIS alumni look fondly upon their time spent at the school.

“Our challenge is to figure out ways to engage alums to make us current in their lives. Even when we talk to alums with multiple degrees, SAIS does seem to rise to the top. But they go off and have careers and have families, but there are so many causes out there, so how do we get back on their radar screens? We haven’t done such a great job of educating students while they’re here about the need for philanthropic support.”

Eric Jaffe is a 2nd year MA candidate in Strategic Studies