Starting with the Student Experience: Rollins College Shapes Student Attitudes on Philanthropy to Shift
its Alumni Culture
By Meghan Moist, Assistant Director of Annual Giving at Rollins College
Last year, Rollins College students logged 43,225 hours of community service. Our students are
Bonner Leaders, campus allies and problem-solvers as they assist relief victims, spread literacy initiatives
and provide leadership in areas like the Democracy Project. There is no doubt in my mind that our
students are giving-minded and passionate about becoming responsible citizens and global leaders.
That being said, in meetings with young alumni I often find myself needing to explain why
annual giving to the College even matters. Thus, in June 2012, at the start of the quiet phase of its
comprehensive campaign, Rollins sought to more purposefully create a culture of philanthropy on
campus.
Assistant Director of Student Engagement & Alumni Programs Nichole Schlund was charged with
creating student engagement and philanthropy programming for the College. After extensive research
of schools like U Penn, UCLA and Georgia Tech, Nichole realized that an all-encompassing organization
would work best for the Rollins community. “What I saw was that the comprehensive programs—ones
that include things like school spirit and traditions and tie them together with philanthropy—seem to be
the most effective in engaging students,” Nichole said. So, that’s what she helped build.
R-Pride, which was named and branded with the help of Marketing & Communications and
current students, was born in August 2012 as a student organization with several committees of student
interest: alumni relations, traditions, school spirit, senior gift campaign, student alumni ambassadors
and philanthropy. The organization focuses on the four components of awareness, gratitude,
involvement and giving. In two years, R-Pride grew from a meager nine to a total of sixty active
members.
Nichole attributes the rapid growth to a strong partnership with student leaders and student
affairs professionals on campus. “Student leaders’ peer-to-peer recruitment was crucial, and our division
of student affairs has been so welcoming. They are a true partner in our efforts,” she explained, and
these elements made the campus buy-in process much easier.
Tying in tradition and school spirit are really what helped win the students over. R-Pride revived
a 1950s College tradition called Fiesta, a pseudo-homecoming event with carnival booths and trivia. The
organization also started College Colors Day, Love-“R”-Alumni Week (a gratitude campaign that helps
students meet alumni as they come back to campus) and frequently offers promotional giveaways like
Phil the Pig piggybanks on National Philanthropy Day. Connecting students to donors is an important
aspect of creating a culture of giving on campus. Rollins does the normal banner signage and thank you
notes for Scholarship Donors, but the College is also trying to find new ways to subtly educate students
on philanthropy. All of these efforts spread awareness and connect students with alumni.
We all know that our students need to have a positive experience on campus if we want them to
give their time, talents and dollars long after graduation. We realize that they will spend much more of
their lives as alumni of the College rather than as students. But we can all do a better job of capitalizing
on the time we have right in front of them. After graduation, we can send solicitation after solicitation,
we can meet with them in person and tell the story, but nothing is as powerful as the conversations we
can have when they are still learning in our classrooms and around campus. And the conversations
resonate only when we find ways to connect with them and facilitate peer-to-peer bonds.
“When you look at donor motivations and organizational identification theory, it is evident that
people are not going to give unless they have a sense of connection to the College. And to build that, the
sense of oneness with an institution, you can’t just do the philanthropy programming. You can’t just rely
on student affairs to handle identification programming. It takes a joint effort. Things like traditions and
school spirit become crucial in driving philanthropy,” Nichole explained.
R-Pride is slowly building a culture of philanthropy—this year, we saw 20 percent of our Class of
2013 return to campus for Alumni Weekend, a group which 36 percent gave last year in their senior
campaign. And this year’s graduates surpassed them with 51 percent participation, a number which we
believe shows we are heading in the right direction. Before this concerted effort, a meager 19 percent
gave toward their senior class gift. Current students were also disengaged with alumni, but now RPride’s programming engages students, increasing awareness of philanthropy on campus and helping
students meet the donors who make their Rollins experience possible.
One campus organization cannot do it all; it takes a campus-wide effort to make this culture
shift a reality. We further this buy-in through initiatives like our 24-hour challenges and faculty/staff
giving campaign. This year, 46 faculty and staff helped promote the campaign and 44 percent gave in
this fiscal year. And then we see the giving message start to spread organically – for instance, we have a
faculty member in international business who is notorious for encouraging her section of seniors to
make a gift to The Rollins Fund together. Ideally, it will become engrained in our students that giving at
any level makes a difference and that it is an important way for them to stay connected to the College.
Our alumni career network further deepens the student-alumni connection. From the smallest
gesture of encouraging students to join our alumni network on LinkedIn, to planned programming like
Backpacks to Briefcases, a student and alumni networking event, we fight to create a seamless studentto-alumni transition. Developing this relationship, at least we believe, will make all the difference in our
students’ willingness to participate once they graduate.
These campus-wide efforts are fulfilling our Alumni Association’s vision of Connected for Life,
and together, we are building a culture of philanthropy which stretches well beyond the brick and
mortar of our small campus.