U. of Michigan Fundraisers Land Big Gifts Faster Thanks to Videos From Dean
By NICOLE WALLACE
Features Editor
February 1, 2017 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Fundraisers at the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering long faced a dilemma: The dean plays a central role in securing large donations, but finding time for him to meet with a donor can take months.
The college’s creative solution: personalized videos from the dean that gift officers can share on a tablet as they travel the country to visit potential donors.
The video’s introduction and ending were professionally produced. For the meat of the clip, fundraisers film a personal message from the dean. He greets the prospective contributors by name, thanks them for meeting with the gift officer, and talks about why the program they might support is important to the college. The dean also invites donors back to campus to continue the conversation.
“The response from donors was as though they were receiving a present,” says John Balbach, who heads the Office of Advancement at the College of Engineering. “The dean’s mentioning their name, the dean’s mentioning the gift officer who’s sitting in the room with them while they’re watching it — there’s no ambiguity that this was done just for them.”
Recording each message and editing it into the professionally filmed portions takes roughly 45 minutes.
Buoyed by response to the videos, gift officers started booking time on the dean’s schedule coinciding with their visits to prospective donors. That way fundraisers can give the people they visit the option of bringing the dean into the meeting via video chat.
The personal touch from the head of the college helped fundraisers land big donations more quickly, Mr. Balbach says. In one case, a gift officer won a commitment for a $1.5 million planned gift on a second visit, and there have been three or four other large donations in which the videos played a role.
“It was shaving months off of the cultivation process,” he says. “We were able to get the dean into the conversation in visit one versus having to wait five months until his schedule was available to make a trip.”
