The social networking trap - or why we are afraid

As I reflected in my pre-turkey post, I was contemplating Stephanie's post regarding use of Social Networking in the fundraising environment. After a couple of days with family, I have collected my thoughts on the matter.

In sum, I see a couple of significant hurdles:

1) Internal Perception - the view of social networking within most of the higher education community is that of trepidation. We proceed carefully in a world that is moving at internet speed to innovate and change. This is a result of the higher education approach to the world that is only now coming out of the dark ages of monks and scribes. This approach creates a huge gap between where our constituents are and where we think they are.

2) Investment in media - we all have a web presence that we pay/paid a significant sum of money for. For most of us that is likely an aggregate effort between some consultant help and full time employees. That investment has been further enhanced through the development and implementation of an online community that was often more successful in concept than in actuality. This has lead to a sense of investment already made and often the results from a funding standpoint have not met the expectations.

3) "Our folks on not on there." - VPs, presidents and major gift officers - in sum those who bring in the large dollars, are not familiar with these tools and even when they are, realize that the vast majority of our dollars are not going to result from the folks who are on the sites. While this is true today, those of us in Annual Giving realize that the next generation of major donors will most likely come from younger graduates who are making their decisions today about which charities they are going to support. This is true, for now. While we need to "fish where the fish are" from a major gift/dollars standpoint, this holds true for communications with younger alumni as well.

4) Lack of understanding about how to utilize these to further the advancement process. - these are specialized tools that have no cost to implement and much like email a decade ago, the view persists that making this a portion of someone already on staff's job is the way to approach it. While a small select group of institutions have been able to make significant headway in email fundraising without adding additional resources, tools and staffing, they tend to be places that have extraordinary success and investment in other aspects of fundraising. This is the largest gap in higher education implementation of fundraising tools through social networking.

The solution is simple, the process to do so is complicated. Success will come to those places that invest in creation, implementation, and execution in the social networking arena. That can come in the form of hiring staff, outsourcing implementation or even finding some volunteers from your alumni body to manage your efforts. We all know they are out there. The folks who are interested in us will find us and the communication stream is as close to 1 to 1 as possible, allowing two way communication and providing considerable connection. We remain afraid.