ISU could set trend in endowing alumni position

Jeffery Johnson's job responsibilities may not have changed, but his title at the Iowa State University Alumni Association recently got a lot longer.

After years of heading the association, Johnson was named earlier this month as the first Lora and Russ Talbot ISU Alumni Association Endowed President and Chief Executive Officer.

The position — created by a $2.5 million gift from Lora and Russ Talbot of Belmond — is the first non-academic endowed position of any kind at ISU. It also may be the first endowed alumni association president position at a college or university in the U.S.

Endowing non-faculty, non-academic positions at universities has become more common in recent years, said Pamela Russell, senior director of communications for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

Among Iowa schools, for example:

• Grinnell College has the Daniel and Patricia Jipp Finkelman Deanship for the college's Center for Careers, Life and Service.
• Wartburg College has the Herbert and Cora Moehlmann Chaplaincy Endowed Chair, as well as the Lowell J. Walker Endowed Chair of Athletics.
• And a $2 million gift in 2010 allowed Drake University to endow and establish the Franklin P. Johnson Director of the Drake Relays.

But Russell said it is uncommon to have such endowed positions in the field of university advancement, which she defined in an email as "a strategic, integrated method of managing relationships to increase understanding and support among an educational institution's key constituents, including alumni and friends, government policy makers, the media, members of the community and philanthropic entities of all types."

Johnson also found that ISU was moving into uncharted territory. When researching the possibilities of endowing his position, he reached out to the Council of Alumni Association Executives as well as to his colleagues at other Big Ten and Big 12 institutions.

The word back, he said, was, "It would be great if someone could pull something like that off. If you do, capture that data and share it with the rest of us."

And depending on Johnson's success in his new position, other schools and their foundations may follow suit in prioritizing such donor-driven, endowed advancement positions in their fundraising outreach efforts.

"More and more public universities look to private giving as an important source of income for both academic and non-academic areas," University of Iowa Foundation spokeswoman Dana Larson said.

Although UI does not currently have endowed non-academic staff positions as goals, Larson said the UI Foundation is always interested in "marrying donor intent and the university's priorities." The foundation's current campaign, she said, includes raising money for many non-academic areas, "including libraries, athletics and Hancher."

"If someone wanted to endow a non-academic position …that would be amazing," Larson said. "… Once we complete this campaign, we will move into a new campaign and identify new possibilities."

Johnson said the main benefit of endowing the position is that it will create more flexible funding possibilities for the assocation.

"So often we have great ideas that come to us from the board and the institution itself and the alumni or programs that we see being done on other campuses," Johnson said. "The endowment gives us the seed money to invest in that opportunity."

He also is excited about the new Talbot Student Intern position that the endowment will create for the association.

"We've seen our profession change and grow over the years," Johnson said. "When I was a kid, no child was lying in their bed thinking, 'When I grow up, I want to be an alumni association director.' But it is such a part of the way that higher education works today."

Student intern positions, he said, allow associations to train and to learn from the next generation of advancement workers.

Much innovation and flexibility will be required, Johnson said, to counteract what he called "the graying of our alumni body."

Just as colleges and universities are focusing on more data-driven student recruitment information, so alumni associations need to rely on more market research to ensure that they are attracting as many members as possible.

"We need to refuel the pipeline, which means we need to grow more engaged alumni," Johnson said. "The way to reach this body of alums is so different than it was 20 years ago."

Johnson said that even his mouthful of a new title gives his position "some level of both clout and conversation in the academic community," and he is looking forward to telling the story behind it.

"It opens up a discussion on why someone would invest in us this way," Johnson said. "As a result, we get to talk about the work that we do."