University Business - December 2007 - (Page 63)

Encourage connections to potential corporate dollars among all positions on campus. Consultant Ted Grossnickle of Johnson, Grossnickle, and Associates says he’s seen situations where a university corporate gift ofﬁcer initiates discussions with the corporate foundation gift ofﬁcer and where university researchers have initial conversations with company researchers. Even volunteering by faculty or staff members in the community can result in valuable relationship building. The Takeaway: Anyone can play the role of salesman and bring in a pledge. 17 22 MARKETING, PR, TOWN/GOWN When choosing a communications medium, ask your audience. Students, faculty, and staff might be open to getting online publications and saying adieu to print versions. Following the results of a survey, the University of Missouri-Columbia Graduate School learned that more than half of its constituents had no preference on whether they accessed the school’s graduate course catalog online or in print. By offering the catalog as both a PDF ﬁle and a collection of web pages, the move saved about $12,000 and countless hours. The Takeaway: Don’t assume a particular audience prefers either print or online communication. 18 Tell potential donors exactly what their gifts will mean. Last year at this time, a University of California, San Diego, press release titled “Forget the Gift Wrapping: Ten Ways Private Gifts to Public Universities Can Change Lives” was widely distributed internally and to local and national media. It stressed how support of any amount could make a positive impact—from the $100 gift that purchases a campus library book to the gift of $500,000 or more that could establish a permanent endowed faculty chair. While ofﬁcials can’t directly attribute the press release to increased donations, in online giving alone UC San Diego received 82 percent more donations via the web for December 2006 compared to December 2005. The Takeaway: Touching people with examples of how their money could be spent shows the institution takes their donations seriously. TECHNOLOGY, SECURITY Allow self-service scheduling of campus resources. Constituents at Yale, Harvard, and Northeastern University (Mass.) can arrange everything from campus tours and advising sessions to ﬁtness classes and lab time through a web-based hosted solution offered by TimeTrade. Customized to each campus, the system checks real-time availability, reserves resources, and sends attendees conﬁrmation and reminder e-mails. PeopleCube offers a sim- 23 ilar solution with Resource Scheduler and Meeting Room Scheduler. 19 Make it easy for the media to cover your school. The most effective media relations web pages can be reached via a direct link from the home page, include 24/7 e-mail and phone contact information as well as complete mailing address, feature an academic experts online directory, have searchable current and archived press releases with targeted RSS feeds or e-mail subscription options, offer background information, and include downloadable photos in high resolution for print quality. The Takeaway: If reporters can’t ﬁnd your media relations page, the institution will have fewer opportunities for positive stories to appear as well as less of a voice in stories that could be seen in a negative light. The Takeaway: Staff members are freed from scheduling appointments over the phone, and no-shows are reduced. Recognize the potential of business intelligence. A BI system can help digest and process data. For instance, rather than just sharing numbers about Organic Chemistry 101 enrollment, it will digest the information and other data to conclude that the class is being offered at a good time or, perhaps, that it’s losing students to the Biology 101 class being offered at the same time. The National University of Health Sciences (Ill.) has used its system to improve the registration process. By determining the peak online registration times, the system helped ofﬁcials decide to add more staff to answer questions. The Takeaway: BI quickly gives decision makers more data power than ever before. 24 Have a mass notiﬁcation system in place. Formerly thought of as a way to provide weather-related advisories or remind students about an event, in the post-Virginia Tech tragedy era everyone is talking about how to help ensure the safety of students, faculty, and staff during a true emergency. The best systems support multiple cell phone services. The Takeaway: With every minute counting as a troublesome situation unfolds, it doesn’t pay to be caught off guard with no system to use. Maximize revenues on product licensing. According to a Collegiate Licensing Company study, the top-performing licensor schools were generating nearly 60 percent of royalty revenue in apparel and almost 40 percent in nonapparel (such as insignia merchandise and gifts). Those that make much less in licensing revenues averaged 85 percent of royalty revenue in apparel and only 15 percent in nonapparel; they’re not taking advantage of nonapparel opportunities. The Takeaway: Consider licensing all types of products. universitybusiness.com 20 25 21 Verify data entered by students as part of a selfservice portal. Online address update functionality can save staff time, but if the data isn’t accurate, there goes the whole point. Many institutions are solving the problem inefﬁciently—having staff manually check address information—and some schools have even turned off their self-service applications for lack of a solution. A front-end address veriﬁcation strategy can help. At Northern Michigan University, bad address data was delaying time-sensitive student and alumni communication and impacting procedures such as the delivery of campus parking permits. The IT department’s strategy included integration of QuickAddress Pro Web from QAS with its administrative suite, SCT Banner from SunGard. Now, before student data is recorded, it is instantly veriﬁed against ofﬁcial postal authorities, and errors December 2007 | 63 http://universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of University Business - December 2007

University Business - December 2007 Contents College Index Company Index Advisory Board Editor's Note Behind the News Viewpoint Admissions On The Hill Marketing Future Stock Independent Outlook Technology Spending Survey '08 Conference Call A Working Education 30 Smart Business Ideas Educause in Emerald City What's New Calendar of Events End Note

University Business - December 2007

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