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What she described to Ryan Catherwood in this week’s episode of Keynote is a masterclass in how, by centering clarity and empathy, you can handle the closure of a college in a way that breeds cooperation, not resentment.

“For donors, it was really important that we, as best we could, clearly stated what we were doing, why we were doing it, and what that meant for them and for our students and our mission in the coming year,” said Huyser, who is also a 1997 Trinity graduate.

“Clear communication” may sound like an obvious strategy, but institutional wind-downs are incredibly complex. Financial and regulatory challenges loomed from all directions, and Huyser’s team was tasked with marshaling donor support to help get their students to the end of the academic year.

“Certainly, there were questions: ‘Why would you possibly need money now?’ ‘You have a campus you can sell, you’re closing, what would you possibly need resources for?’” she said. “Education became a really important part of our donor engagement.”

Huyser’s team needed to get donors on board with redirecting restricted money scholarships and endowed funds to more pressing needs. Thanks to their straightforward approach, about 90% of donors agreed to help ensure current Trinity students could not only finish the year but be supported as they moved forward.

The secret? Empathy.

For each donor or alum who reached out with concerns—or even anger—Huyser offered to have a one-on-one conversation. On Keynote, she referenced one recent 45-minute conversation with an alum during which she helped explain Trinity’s financial situation and the headwinds it faced, such as the enrollment cliff.

“I think we both left really appreciating that time of understanding and sharing what happened so she could be a little more clear on what we were doing and why we were doing it,” Huyser said.

Her team’s response to this incredibly challenging issue reminded me so much of Jaime Hunt’s book, Heart Over Hype. Although the book focuses on enrollment marketing, in Chapter 7 she addresses “Responding to a Crisis with Care.” The example she shares in the book is an isolated act of on-campus violence, not something with the finality of a closing. Yet the crisis communication scaffolding she shares is directly applicable to a closure situation:

· Outline immediate actions

· Set expectations

· Provide timelines

· Commit to regular updates

· Be clear about accountability

· Listen and adjust

That last piece is the hardest, but also the most important.

“Emotions drive how people perceive and respond to a crisis. When stakeholders feel their emotions are dismissed and ignored, their fear or anger often intensifies, making it harder for your messaging to land,” Hunt wrote in Heart Over Hype. “On the other hand, when people feel understood and acknowledged, they’re more likely to engage constructively, even under challenging circumstances.”

Most of us will never have to manage the closure, but anyone in engagement and communications will face moments when we have to deliver not-so-great news to people who care deeply about our institution. Empathy isn’t a communications strategy you can automate. It’s what happens when you decide that every interaction, however difficult, is a chance to reveal who you are.

Kristin Simonetti Hanson is an award-winning editorial content strategist, writer, and editor based in Baltimore, Md.

For nearly 20 years, she’s served higher ed and nonprofit organizations with her distinctive, creative voice and sharp, strategic insight, turning complex priorities into clear, compelling narratives. In 2021—after working in-house for Johns Hopkins University, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars, and Elon University—she went out on her own, founding Kristin Hanson Writes, LLC.

Big Themes This Week

• Institutional closure reveals what people actually value about colleges and universities: belonging, memory, relationships, and shared experience.

• Clear, empathetic communication can preserve trust and cooperation even during moments of institutional crisis and uncertainty.

• Higher education institutions may need to do a better job educating alumni and donors about the broader financial and demographic pressures facing the sector.

• Engagement often increases during moments of urgency or loss, raising difficult questions about how institutions create meaning and affinity during normal operations.

• Alumni engagement should increasingly be viewed as institutional infrastructure, not simply programming, especially as colleges face enrollment pressure, financial strain, and long-term sustainability concerns.

Team Discussion Questions

• How transparent should institutions be with alumni and donors about financial and demographic pressures?

• At what point should institutional leaders begin communicating urgency externally?

• How should institutions balance transparency with reassurance during difficult moments?

• Are our teams equipped to handle emotionally complex conversations with alumni, donors, students, and staff?

• What can advancement teams learn from Trinity’s approach to one-on-one donor conversations and education?

• What responsibilities do alumni have in supporting the long-term sustainability of their institutions?

• How can alumni contribute beyond philanthropy during periods of institutional strain?

What she described to Ryan Catherwood in this week’s episode of Keynote is a masterclass in how, by centering clarity and empathy, you can handle the closure of a college in a way that breeds cooperation, not resentment.

“For donors, it was really important that we, as best we could, clearly stated what we were doing, why we were doing it, and what that meant for them and for our students and our mission in the coming year,” said Huyser, who is also a 1997 Trinity graduate.

“Clear communication” may sound like an obvious strategy, but institutional wind-downs are incredibly complex. Financial and regulatory challenges loomed from all directions, and Huyser’s team was tasked with marshaling donor support to help get their students to the end of the academic year.

“Certainly, there were questions: ‘Why would you possibly need money now?’ ‘You have a campus you can sell, you’re closing, what would you possibly need resources for?’” she said. “Education became a really important part of our donor engagement.”

Huyser’s team needed to get donors on board with redirecting restricted money scholarships and endowed funds to more pressing needs. Thanks to their straightforward approach, about 90% of donors agreed to help ensure current Trinity students could not only finish the year but be supported as they moved forward.

The secret? Empathy.

For each donor or alum who reached out with concerns—or even anger—Huyser offered to have a one-on-one conversation. On Keynote, she referenced one recent 45-minute conversation with an alum during which she helped explain Trinity’s financial situation and the headwinds it faced, such as the enrollment cliff.

“I think we both left really appreciating that time of understanding and sharing what happened so she could be a little more clear on what we were doing and why we were doing it,” Huyser said.

Her team’s response to this incredibly challenging issue reminded me so much of Jaime Hunt’s book, Heart Over Hype. Although the book focuses on enrollment marketing, in Chapter 7 she addresses “Responding to a Crisis with Care.” The example she shares in the book is an isolated act of on-campus violence, not something with the finality of a closing. Yet the crisis communication scaffolding she shares is directly applicable to a closure situation:

· Outline immediate actions

· Set expectations

· Provide timelines

· Commit to regular updates

· Be clear about accountability

· Listen and adjust

That last piece is the hardest, but also the most important.

“Emotions drive how people perceive and respond to a crisis. When stakeholders feel their emotions are dismissed and ignored, their fear or anger often intensifies, making it harder for your messaging to land,” Hunt wrote in Heart Over Hype. “On the other hand, when people feel understood and acknowledged, they’re more likely to engage constructively, even under challenging circumstances.”

Most of us will never have to manage the closure, but anyone in engagement and communications will face moments when we have to deliver not-so-great news to people who care deeply about our institution. Empathy isn’t a communications strategy you can automate. It’s what happens when you decide that every interaction, however difficult, is a chance to reveal who you are.

Kristin Simonetti Hanson is an award-winning editorial content strategist, writer, and editor based in Baltimore, Md.

For nearly 20 years, she’s served higher ed and nonprofit organizations with her distinctive, creative voice and sharp, strategic insight, turning complex priorities into clear, compelling narratives. In 2021—after working in-house for Johns Hopkins University, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, The Washington Center for Internships and Academic Seminars, and Elon University—she went out on her own, founding Kristin Hanson Writes, LLC.

Big Themes This Week

• Institutional closure reveals what people actually value about colleges and universities: belonging, memory, relationships, and shared experience.

• Clear, empathetic communication can preserve trust and cooperation even during moments of institutional crisis and uncertainty.

• Higher education institutions may need to do a better job educating alumni and donors about the broader financial and demographic pressures facing the sector.

• Engagement often increases during moments of urgency or loss, raising difficult questions about how institutions create meaning and affinity during normal operations.

• Alumni engagement should increasingly be viewed as institutional infrastructure, not simply programming, especially as colleges face enrollment pressure, financial strain, and long-term sustainability concerns.

Team Discussion Questions

• How transparent should institutions be with alumni and donors about financial and demographic pressures?

• At what point should institutional leaders begin communicating urgency externally?

• How should institutions balance transparency with reassurance during difficult moments?

• Are our teams equipped to handle emotionally complex conversations with alumni, donors, students, and staff?

• What can advancement teams learn from Trinity’s approach to one-on-one donor conversations and education?

• What responsibilities do alumni have in supporting the long-term sustainability of their institutions?

• How can alumni contribute beyond philanthropy during periods of institutional strain?

That’s not what happened.

Events filled up. Alumni who hadn’t been back in years started showing up…

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One of the things that surprised me most during my conversation with them was that the dominant emotion was not anger. It was gratitude. Gratitude mixed with grief. Joy mixed with sadness. A deep sense of connection was emerging precisely because people realized their time together was limited.

As Trinity Christian College moves through its final months before closure, Mackenzi describes something that many institutions spend decades trying to manufacture: authentic community, emotional openness, shared reflection, and collective meaning. In many ways, the conversations around Trinity reveal what people actually value most about institutions once the operational and transactional layers fall away.

These clips capture several of the most powerful moments from the Keynote conversation.

Clip 1 — “The Death of an Institution Is Incredibly Beautiful”

This is the emotional centerpiece of the conversation. Mackenzi reflects on the unexpected coexistence of heartbreak and joy as the Trinity community gathers during its final months together.

What makes the clip so powerful is that it reframes institutional closure not only as loss, but also as a moment of clarity about what people truly value: shared experiences, rituals, relationships, and time together.

Clip 2 — “The Spirit of Trinity Will Continue”

In this moment, Mackenzi talks about how institutions outlive their physical campuses through the lives and work of their alumni.

It is a reminder that affinity is not ultimately tied to buildings or even organizational structures. The identity and spirit of a place often continue through the people shaped by it.

Clip 3 — Releasing Scholarship Funds for the Wind Down

One of the most revealing stories in the conversation centers on Trinity’s outreach to donors about releasing restricted scholarship funds to support the institution’s closure process.

The response from donors was overwhelmingly generous and immediate. The clip illustrates how trust, transparency, and long-term relationships matter deeply during moments of institutional crisis.

Clip 4 — “Give People a Space to Grieve”

Mackenzi argues that institutions have a responsibility to create spaces where people can process grief, memory, and transition together.

For advancement and engagement professionals, this raises a larger question about whether our work is sometimes too focused on activity and not focused enough on emotional connection, reflection, and care.

Big Themes This Week

• Institutional closure reveals what people actually value about colleges and universities: belonging, memory, relationships, and shared experience.

• Clear, empathetic communication can preserve trust and cooperation even during moments of institutional crisis and uncertainty.

• Higher education institutions may need to do a better job educating alumni and donors about the broader financial and demographic pressures facing the sector.

• Engagement often increases during moments of urgency or loss, raising difficult questions about how institutions create meaning and affinity during normal operations.

• Alumni engagement should increasingly be viewed as institutional infrastructure, not simply programming, especially as colleges face enrollment pressure, financial strain, and long-term sustainability concerns.

Team Discussion Questions

• How transparent should institutions be with alumni and donors about financial and demographic pressures?

• At what point should institutional leaders begin communicating urgency externally?

• How should institutions balance transparency with reassurance during difficult moments?

• Are our teams equipped to handle emotionally complex conversations with alumni, donors, students, and staff?

• What can advancement teams learn from Trinity’s approach to one-on-one donor conversations and education?

• What responsibilities do alumni have in supporting the long-term sustainability of their institutions?

• How can alumni contribute beyond philanthropy during periods of institutional strain?

Watch the Full-Length version on YouTube. (48 mins)

What makes this conversation remarkable is that it is not centered primarily on anger or blame. Instead, Mackenzi describes something much more complicated and much more human. Since the closure announcement, alumni have returned to campus in large numbers, former communities have reconnected, and the institution has experienced a surprising mixture of grief, gratitude, joy, and reflection. One of the most striking moments in the conversation comes when she says, “My heart is broken and it’s never felt so full.”

For those of us working in advancement, alumni engagement, and communications, this episode raises difficult but important questions. What do institutions owe their communities during moments of crisis? How should schools communicate financial realities before it is too late? And what does it mean when closure creates more engagement than normal operations did? Beneath all of that is a larger reminder that people do not ultimately connect most deeply to strategic plans or marketing campaigns. They connect to memory, belonging, relationships, and shared experience. That truth sits at the center of this conversation.

Big Themes This Week

• Institutional closure reveals what people actually value about colleges and universities: belonging, memory, relationships, and shared experience.

• Clear, empathetic communication can preserve trust and cooperation even during moments of institutional crisis and uncertainty.

• Higher education institutions may need to do a better job educating alumni and donors about the broader financial and demographic pressures facing the sector.

• Engagement often increases during moments of urgency or loss, raising difficult questions about how institutions create meaning and affinity during normal operations.

• Alumni engagement should increasingly be viewed as institutional infrastructure, not simply programming, especially as colleges face enrollment pressure, financial strain, and long-term sustainability concerns.

Team Discussion Questions

• How transparent should institutions be with alumni and donors about financial and demographic pressures?

• At what point should institutional leaders begin communicating urgency externally?

• How should institutions balance transparency with reassurance during difficult moments?

• Are our teams equipped to handle emotionally complex conversations with alumni, donors, students, and staff?

• What can advancement teams learn from Trinity’s approach to one-on-one donor conversations and education?

• What responsibilities do alumni have in supporting the long-term sustainability of their institutions?

• How can alumni contribute beyond philanthropy during periods of institutional strain?

Read more

At a tiny number of schools, they really are just getting the solicitations. I can think of a few institutions where, due to staffing changes, alumni engagement literally came to a screeching halt, but solicitations kept coming. That’s pretty rare, though.

In Mallory Willsea’s words from the Keynote this week, “Marcomm cannot fix a broken experience, but oftentimes marcomm is the only function with the data to see that the experience is broken.”

She’s right! When the Facebook posts are getting terrible engagement and no one is reading or sharing the digital alumni magazine stories. It’s advancement comms that knows it. And the data is all there, screaming for a change in approach, but it’s not shared because that would create disruption.

It’s much easier to blame the channel or the content rather than take a hard look at what is probably a stale set of engagement tactics. But I do disagree slightly with one of Mallory’s takes. She said, “Communications is what you send. Engagement is what they feel.”

I’d amend this slightly to say, “Engagement is what they feel and do, as a result.”

Inherent in this quote is that engagement should be motivating. It should be fun and exciting. Ask yourself whether your communications are boring. Are you bored creating them? Are you bored reading them yourself? If so, your alums are too. Maybe it just feels like you’re only asking for money because that’s the only communication that elicits an emotion.

The key is also to take a look at the conversions you’re trying to facilitate through the communications. What do you want alumni to do next? Maybe they’re all set with their options. Time to rethink.

About Speaking Engagement

I’ll be sending a message to members early next week with instructions on how to add the private RSS feed for podcasts, because it’s a little tricky. This is the podcast icon art that members would see if the private RSS feed for the podcast stream is set-up.

The Members podcast stream has the Keynote and Breakout podcasts, all the articles read aloud, and will also contain some of our Book Club content and Agora speaker talks. Let me know if you have members access but are struggling to grab the private feed.

Shoot me a message or make a comment, and let me know how to make your membership as accessible as possible.

Next Week’s Keynote Speaker

Our Keynote on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday) is Dr. Mackenzi Huyser. Mackenzi is the VP, Advancement and Chief Academic Officer at Trinity Christian College. Unfortunately, Trinity is closing its doors and shutting down operations at the end of August. We talk about what it’s been like since the closure was announced. We both wipe away a few tears during the convo, so consider this your trigger warning!

Also, register for the Agora on Tuesday of next week at 12 pm eastern time. It’s going to be fun and a chance to meet some new people.

Onward!

Ryan

At a tiny number of schools, they really are just getting the solicitations. I can think of a few institutions where, due to staffing changes, alumni engagement literally came to a screeching halt, but solicitations kept coming. That’s pretty rare, though.

In Mallory Willsea’s words from the Keynote this week, “Marcomm cannot fix a broken experience, but oftentimes marcomm is the only function with the data to see that the experience is broken.”

She’s right! When the Facebook posts are getting terrible engagement and no one is reading or sharing the digital alumni magazine stories. It’s advancement comms that knows it. And the data is all there, screaming for a change in approach, but it’s not shared because that would create disruption.

It’s much easier to blame the channel or the content rather than take a hard look at what is probably a stale set of engagement tactics. But I do disagree slightly with one of Mallory’s takes. She said, “Communications is what you send. Engagement is what they feel.”

I’d amend this slightly to say, “Engagement is what they feel and do, as a result.”

Inherent in this quote is that engagement should be motivating. It should be fun and exciting. Ask yourself whether your communications are boring. Are you bored creating them? Are you bored reading them yourself? If so, your alums are too. Maybe it just feels like you’re only asking for money because that’s the only communication that elicits an emotion.

The key is also to take a look at the conversions you’re trying to facilitate through the communications. What do you want alumni to do next? Maybe they’re all set with their options. Time to rethink.

About Speaking Engagement

I’ll be sending a message to members early next week with instructions on how to add the private RSS feed for podcasts, because it’s a little tricky. This is the podcast icon art that members would see if the private RSS feed for the podcast stream is set-up.

The Members podcast stream has the Keynote and Breakout podcasts, all the articles read aloud, and will also contain some of our Book Club content and Agora speaker talks. Let me know if you have members access but are struggling to grab the private feed.

Shoot me a message or make a comment, and let me know how to make your membership as accessible as possible.

Next Week’s Keynote Speaker

Our Keynote on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday) is Dr. Mackenzi Huyser. Mackenzi is the VP, Advancement and Chief Academic Officer at Trinity Christian College. Unfortunately, Trinity is closing its doors and shutting down operations at the end of August. We talk about what it’s been like since the closure was announced. We both wipe away a few tears during the convo, so consider this your trigger warning!

Also, register for the Agora on Tuesday of next week at 12 pm eastern time. It’s going to be fun and a chance to meet some new people.

Onward!

Ryan

The conversation begins with David Rosowsky’s follow-up article to “The 60-Year Degree: Why Universities Must Pivot From Recruitment To Perpetual Partnership” called the “Built for Four Years. Needed for Sixty” concept, which argued that higher education’s biggest challenge isn’t philosophy — it’s infrastructure. Ryan, Dave, and Kristin unpacked whether institutions are truly equipped to support lifelong learning relationships, or whether the complexity of governance, data sharing, employer alignment, and faculty capacity makes the idea far more difficult than it sounds.

The discussion also surfaced a deeper tension around the idea of “subscription-based” education. While there may be real opportunity for institutions to provide ongoing learning, reskilling, and professional development throughout adulthood, the group questioned whether higher ed risks replacing relationship-based engagement with another transactional service model. Kristin raised the possibility that universities could create entirely new lifelong learning entities that provide meaningful value to alumni, while Ryan wondered whether companies like Amazon may ultimately be better positioned to own that market instead.

The second half of the episode turned to Dartmouth’s argument that AI is exposing a deeper problem in higher education: universities can no longer treat polished output as proof of learning. Instead, institutions may need to refocus on judgment, reasoning, adaptability, and intellectual accountability. We discuss an article published on Dartmouth President Sian Beilock’s LinkedIn profile written by Provost Santiago Schnell called, “When AI makes answers cheap, what must universities teach?”

The panel debated whether most colleges—particularly large public institutions built around scale—can realistically deliver the kind of high-touch, discussion-based learning environment this model requires. Ultimately, the conversation landed on a broader point: the future value of higher education may depend less on information delivery and more on teaching people how to think, learn, and navigate uncertainty in a rapidly changing world.

Week 3 - Learning Guide - Key Themes - Questions to ask your teams

Themes

• Marketing and communications teams are increasingly being asked to carry institutional survival through enrollment, retention, trust-building, and brand positioning.

• Communications cannot fix a broken student or alumni experience, even if marcomm teams are often the first to recognize the problem.

• Engagement should be measured by how people feel about the institution, not simply by activity metrics like opens, clicks, attendance, or impressions.

• Community-building requires discipline, consistency, and strategic subtraction rather than constantly adding new initiatives and platforms.

• Advancement and marcomm teams need better ways to identify emotional connection, belonging, and relational drift before disengagement shows up in traditional dashboards.

Questions

• Are our marketing and engagement teams being asked to solve problems they do not actually control?

• Where are the biggest disconnects between institutional messaging and lived experience at our institution?

• If our marcomm team is the “canary in the coal mine,” are we listening closely enough to what they are seeing?

• Do our dashboards measure activity, or do they measure relationship strength?

• How would we know if alumni no longer felt emotionally connected to the institution?

• Are we trying to build too many communities, initiatives, or programs at once?

• What parts of our alumni journey currently create friction, disappointment, or distrust?

The conversation begins with David Rosowsky’s follow-up article to “T

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When everything is a priority, nothing is. And in most advancement shops, everything is a priority.

The average alumni engagement professional is managing a calendar of events, a volunteer board, a social media presence, a newsletter, a giving day, a reunion, a young alumni program, and sometimes a community platform that someone launched three years ago and nobody quite knows what to do with. Discipline applied across all of that doesn’t build anything. It just keeps everything from falling apart.

Mallory named the underlying dynamic clearly: the first move in true innovation is subtraction, not addition. Higher ed almost never subtracts. We add. A new initiative gets launched. An old one never quite gets retired. The portfolio grows, the staff stays the same size, and everyone gets a little more spread out and a little less effective at any single thing.

Community building is particularly vulnerable to this because the launch moment is the easy part. There’s a campaign kickoff, a platform launch, an announcement that signals something new is underway. What comes after that, the slow, unglamorous work of showing up consistently, adding value regularly, and trusting that connection compounds over time, is where most initiatives quietly stall. That kind of work gets deprioritized in organizations that reward visible activity. It’s harder and takes longer to measure. The launch gets celebrated. The tending doesn’t. So it waits while everything else gets done first - and then it’s always waiting.

And so the communities fail. Not because the people running them lack discipline. But because discipline requires focus, and focus requires making choices about what not to do. Those choices are genuinely hard in environments where every stakeholder has a program they care about and subtraction feels like abandonment.

Here’s the other thing worth naming: you don’t need a new platform to build community. That assumption — that community requires a dedicated app, a new login, a custom space — is one of the reasons so many initiatives die before they find their footing. The community technology graveyard in higher ed is littered with tools that had great demos and empty discussion boards.

Mallory’s MarCom Barbie community started as a party and became a Slack channel. It has hundreds of members and is, by her description, thriving. No custom platform. Just a consistent space, a clear sense of who it’s for, and someone showing up in it regularly. The technology was already there. The discipline to tend it was the differentiator.

So what would subtracting first actually look like in your shop?

It might mean auditing your event calendar and retiring the one that’s been running for years out of inertia rather than impact. It might mean closing the LinkedIn group nobody is posting in and redirecting that energy into the one that has some momentum. It might mean choosing one community initiative — a focused newsletter, a small cohort that meets quarterly, a LinkedIn group with a clear purpose and a consistent moderator — and giving it the protected time it needs to actually compound.

None of that is glamorous. All of it takes time. But it’s the work that actually builds something.

Mallory said that innovation stalls not because of bad ideas, but because of process barriers, resource barriers, and the discipline to do the thing. The invitation here isn’t to work harder. It’s to work on fewer things, and protect the time to do them well.

The programs that last aren’t the most sophisticated ones. They’re the ones someone decided to show up for, every time, without stopping. And the only way to show up for the thing that matters is to stop showing up for the things that don’t.

That’s what subtracting first means. Not doing less. Building something that actually has a chance.

Annie Quade is an advancement strategist with more than 15 years of experience spanning major and planned gifts, alumni engagement, annual giving, talent management, and organizational design. She serves as the Associate Vice President of Advancement Strategy & Engagement at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), where she oversees integrated engagement, talent and people operations, and the division's growth strategy — and currently provides interim leadership of the development team.

Annie began her career in frontline fundraising at the University of Missouri, first as a regional and planned giving officer and then as director for the School of Law. She is also co-founder of Advancement Talent Co., a community for advancement professionals focused on talent management and organizational strategy.

Week 3 - Learning Guide - Key Themes - Questions to ask your teams

Themes

• Marketing and communications teams are increasingly being asked to carry institutional survival through enrollment, retention, trust-building, and brand positioning.

• Communications cannot fix a broken student or alumni experience, even if marcomm teams are often the first to recognize the problem.

• Engagement should be measured by how people feel about the institution, not simply by activity metrics like opens, clicks, attendance, or impressions.

• Community-building requires discipline, consistency, and strategic subtraction rather than constantly adding new initiatives and platforms.

• Advancement and marcomm teams need better ways to identify emotional connection, belonging, and relational drift before disengagement shows up in traditional dashboards.

Questions

• Are our marketing and engagement teams being asked to solve problems they do not actually control?

• Where are the biggest disconnects between institutional messaging and lived experience at our institution?

• If our marcomm team is the “canary in the coal mine,” are we listening closely enough to what they are seeing?

• Do our dashboards measure activity, or do they measure relationship strength?

• How would we know if alumni no longer felt emotionally connected to the institution?

• Are we trying to build too many communities, initiatives, or programs at once?

• What parts of our alumni journey currently create friction, disappointment, or distrust?

Read more

Register

What the Agora Is

The Agora is our live gathering space. But it’s not another webinar.

Each session is designed to do two things:

• A TED-style talk from a practitioner about a big idea

• Create meaningful connection around it through small group discussion

We start with a 15–20 minute presentation

Then we shift into 40–45 minutes of active conversation. You’ll be placed into small, rotating groups to talk, react, and connect.

From Identity to Infrastructure: Building “Miner Nation” at UTEP with Alumni Storytellers

Speaker: Sydney Bertram, Assistant Vice President for Strategic Communications and Engagement

In this session, we’ll explore how the University of Texas at El Paso built Miner Nation as a unifying engagement framework that connects students, alumni, and supporters through shared pride and purpose.

Sydney will unpack how alumni “contributors,” operating like freelancers, have strengthened Advancement communications by expanding digital touchpoints and content creation. More importantly, she’ll show how scalable participation models —and Miner Nation Contributors (MNCs) with donor experience — are turning affinity into sustained engagement, and ultimately, into pipeline.

Register

By Kristin Hanson

Every year, an institution runs a giving day. And every year, the returns decline.

After each event, the alumni engagement and advancement comms teams survey representative groups of alumni and donors. The feedback is consistent, almost word-for-word, year after year…

Read more

Register

What the Agora Is

The Agora is our live gathering space. But it’s not another webinar.

Each session is designed to do two things:

• A TED-style talk from a practitioner about a big idea

• Create meaningful connection around it through small group discussion

We start with a 15–20 minute presentation

Then we shift into 40–45 minutes of active conversation. You’ll be placed into small, rotating groups to talk, react, and connect.

From Identity to Infrastructure: Building “Miner Nation” at UTEP with Alumni Storytellers

Speaker: Sydney Bertram, Assistant Vice President for Strategic Communications and Engagement

In this session, we’ll explore how the University of Texas at El Paso built Miner Nation as a unifying engagement framework that connects students, alumni, and supporters through shared pride and purpose.

Sydney will unpack how alumni “contributors,” operating like freelancers, have strengthened Advancement communications by expanding digital touchpoints and content creation. More importantly, she’ll show how scalable participation models —and Miner Nation Contributors (MNCs) with donor experience — are turning affinity into sustained engagement, and ultimately, into pipeline.

Register

This week’s Keynote with Mallory Willsea generated one of the more important conversations we’ve had so far on Speaking Engagement because it pushed beyond tactics and into the structural realities facing higher education marketing and engagement teams right now.

Over the course of the conversation, Mallory unpacked why communications teams are increasingly being asked to carry institutional survival, why community-building often fails despite good intentions, and how AI may fundamentally reshape the structure of marketing organizations over the next five years.

These three clips capture some of the core themes from the episode. Together, they point toward a bigger question facing advancement, enrollment, and marcomm teams alike: are institutions building systems that actually deepen connection and trust, or are they simply producing more activity?

Watch the clips below and join the conversation.

Clip 1 — The Power of Discipline in Innovation

Mallory argues that innovation rarely fails because institutions lack ideas. More often, it stalls because organizations create too much friction, too many processes, and too little focus.

For engagement professionals, this is an important reminder that community-building is less about launching something new and more about consistently showing up over time. The challenge is not usually imagination. It is protecting the discipline to keep tending the work after the excitement of the launch fades.

Clip 2 — Marketing’s Role in Institutional Survival

One of the strongest moments from the Keynote comes when Mallory explains why she believes marketing and communications teams are increasingly “carrying institutional survival.”

Her point is not simply about branding or enrollment campaigns. It is about the fact that marcomm teams increasingly shape trust, visibility, perception, and the systems through which institutions build relationships with students, alumni, donors, and external communities. In a moment of shrinking demographics and declining trust in higher education, that role has become existential.

Clip 3 — What AI Means for Marketing Teams

When asked what marketing teams will look like five years from now, Mallory predicts leaner, more senior teams augmented by AI-driven production tools.

What makes this clip interesting is that her answer is not really about technology. It is about where humans will still create value. As AI increasingly handles production work, the differentiators become strategy, positioning, relationship-building, and judgment. Those are deeply human skills, and institutions that understand that shift early may have a significant advantage.

Week 3 - Learning Guide - Key Themes - Questions to ask your teams

Themes

• Marketing and communications teams are increasingly being asked to carry institutional survival through enrollment, retention, trust-building, and brand positioning.

• Communications cannot fix a broken student or alumni experience, even if marcomm teams are often the first to recognize the problem.

• Engagement should be measured by how people feel about the institution, not simply by activity metrics like opens, clicks, attendance, or impressions.

• Community-building requires discipline, consistency, and strategic subtraction rather than constantly adding new initiatives and platforms.

• Advancement and marcomm teams need better ways to identify emotional connection, belonging, and relational drift before disengagement shows up in traditional dashboards.

Questions

• Are our marketing and engagement teams being asked to solve problems they do not actually control?

• Where are the biggest disconnects between institutional messaging and lived experience at our institution?

• If our marcomm team is the “canary in the coal mine,” are we listening closely enough to what they are seeing?

• Do our dashboards measure activity, or do they measure relationship strength?

• How would we know if alumni no longer felt emotionally connected to the institution?

• Are we trying to build too many communities, initiatives, or programs at once?

• What parts of our alumni journey currently create friction, disappointment, or distrust?

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