We’re pleased to announce that Grace Prosniewski has been hired as our new writer on the Storytelling & Engagement Team. Grace’s first day is Monday, November 14th.
Here’s what you’ll want to know about Grace — she’s a talented writer, a very nice person and she graduated from that “school in Ann Arbor.” Please know, going “two for three” in the big leagues gets you into the Hall of Fame!
Grace grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, where she graduated from Ladywood High School in Livonia — an all-girl Catholic prep school. Her 88 year-old Grandmother — a life-long Notre Dame fan — admitted to the family last week; “my prayers have been answered” — when she learned Grace got this job.
The family is looking forward to bringing Grandma to campus real soon — we’ll make that a special visit!
I had the honor of hosting Grace, Pam (mom) and Paul (dad) for breakfast this Saturday and a tour of campus. I learned Paul’s brother worked at Notre Dame in the late 70’s and Pam recalls coming to a ND football game with her brother in the 80’s. Grace has two older sisters — the oldest is a lawyer and her middle sister is a teacher. The Prosniewski’s are good people!
We are very excited about the talent, personality and humility Grace will bring to our team. You’re going to love her. Please be sure to stop by and welcome this “Michigan Wolverine” to the Notre Dame family!
Many thanks to Andrea Bullock, Tom Molnar, Ron Linczer, Mary Bueno, and Aaron Wall for powerfully sharing about their families at ND Shares. They blessed all in attendance.
It is a privilege to work A) alongside all colleagues who care so well for their families B) in a mission that deeply affirms, values, and supports families.
Per many follow-up requests, note:
All panelists are happy to share more about their family experiences; feel free to contact them directly.
Forget the Pecking Order at Work is the mentioned TED Talk that notes how taking time to build relationships of trust and candor with colleagues increases both individual wellness and organizational effectiveness. (Thanks to Gavin for highlighting.)
As always, feel free to contact me about presenter ideas for future sessions of ND Shares.
Please keep Mary Fisher and her family in your thoughts and prayers as they grieve the passing of Mary’s grandmother, Phyllis Hand, and her husband, William Hand, who passed within a few short days of one another this past week.
I’m very happy to announce the newest member of the NDAA team! Dan Allen has been hired as the new Spirituality Program Director. Dan is no stranger to campus, earning B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy in 2007 and a Masters of Divinity in 2011. Additionally, Dan has been the Assistant Director of Summer Housing and Off-Campus Student Services since 2014. Prior to returning to Notre Dame in that role, Dan served as the Director of Religious Education at St. Pius X Catholic Church in Granger, IN for three years. Dan and his wife currently reside in South Bend with their three children, Benjamin (5), Mark (3) and Nicholas (2).
Dan’s first day with us will be December 1st. Please join me in welcoming Dan!
I’m pleased to announce some exciting changes in the Alumni Association’s Marketing Communications team that will allow us to elevate engagement with our alumni and friends digitally and increasingly embrace a group that is growing in importance, our young alumni. These changes will involve shifts in positions and growth in the team and I wanted to make sure you were aware of these changing roles.
Bill Gangluff is being promoted to Senior Director of Marketing Communications. In addition to his outstanding leadership on the marketing front, Bill has increasingly taken on senior level responsibilities within the association, and I’m pleased to be able to acknowledge his contributions.
Kevin Brennan will assume a new role as Associate Director of Marketing Communications, continuing to report to Bill. Kevin will lead the execution of all digital communications with our alumni and friends through social media channels and our website. He will have the following three direct reports.
Josh Stowe will move from his role as a Digital Specialist into Kevin’s vacated role as Writer and Content Editor. In this role, Josh will provide the majority of the day-to-day marketing writing needs and partner with Kevin to provide feature writing for Echoes. He will also become the alumni editor of Notre Dame Magazine, overseeing the Class Notes section.
Josh’s current position, Digital Specialist, will be posted in coming days. This position manages all of our social media channels and web content.
The final individual who will report to Kevin is Jackie Thomas, as young alumni program director. Jackie will join Marketing Communications from our Programs team to partner with Kevin and the rest of Marcom to develop a strategic plan to engage young alumni.
If you have any questions about these changes, please don’t hesitate to ask either Bill or me.
Asking for Money? Compliment the Donor, Not Your Organization
Dear Reader,
You came to our hospital as a patient, in need of help. Thank you for that profound act of trust.
Now we come to you, humbly, to ask for your help in turn. The cause for excellent health care, here in our community, needs you. Will you consider becoming its champion … by making a gift?
WELL, WOULD YOU consider it? Would the opening paragraph of this one page, two-sided letter — personalized and signed by a hospital vice president — compel you to donate to a hospital that had cared for you or someone in your family?
The answer, for about 35,000 recipients, was yes. Over 10 years, that is the number of people who have responded with donations to this letter, which is tweaked and sent annually to former patients of the Sharp HealthCare system’s four main and three specialty hospitals in San Diego. The donations have ranged from $1 to $20,000.
Ten thousand of those responses were from new donors — an often hard-to-convince audience during any fund-raiser.
“It just goes to show you that an effective, well-crafted appeal can make a tremendous difference,” said James Sardina, the annual giving manager for the Sharp HealthCare Foundation.
Tom Ahern, the author of the letter, is one of the country’s most sought-after creators of fund-raising messages. He cites this piece as an example of how the language of giving — the right words, articulating the right appeal aimed at the right audience — can increase response rates.
“You have got to make your donors feel good in order to retain them,” said Mr. Ahern, who is based in Foster, R.I.
All good advertising copywriters know the power of the word “you” to generate a sense of immediacy and connection; Mr. Ahern used it in each of the first five sentences. But in explaining the success of this letter, he also cited the principle of reciprocity — meaning, in essence, we (the hospital) did something good for you (the reader and former patient). So perhaps, the letter suggests, you can do something good for us.
After all, it’s only fair, right? People like to think of themselves as being fair. Indeed, that is one of the nine moral adjectives that the psychologist Jennifer Shang has identified in her research on what motivates people to give. These “describe a core sense of who people actually are, as well as a core sense of who people would ideally like to be,” said Dr. Shang, a professor of philanthropic psychology at Plymouth University in Britain.
Photo
CreditDelcan & Company
The other eight adjectives are kind, compassionate, helpful, caring, friendly, generous, honest and hard-working.
In one study, Dr. Shang found that thanking those who contributed to a public radio station in the United States for being “kind and compassionate” increased giving among female donors by 10 percent.
That said, she added, successful fund-raising is complex. “Randomly injecting these words into the same communication that donors would not otherwise read anyway does not help anybody,” she said in an email. “It is about allowing the donors the opportunity to reflect on who they think they are.”
Yet many charitable organizations “churn out appeals that talk about how fabulous their organizations are and not about the donor’s part of the story,” said Jen Love, co-founder of the fund-raising consultancy Agents of Good. Making appeals more donor-centric, Ms. Love said, is the hallmark of effective fund-raising.
She and Mr. Ahern said the most effective medium to reach donors was one from the past: old-fashioned direct mail.
Older people, belonging to a generation that still prefers print, are the most generous: A 2013 study on generational giving habits commissioned by the software company Blackbaud found that those born in 1945 and earlier tend to give an average of $1,367 a year, surpassing millennials, who average $481 a year.
Because so much messaging has moved online, it’s not only older adults who are attracted by the novelty of delivered mail. “When you get something in your actual mailbox, that’s a thing!” said Ms. Love, whose firm is based in Waterdown, Ontario. “You think it might be an invitation to a wedding or a party.”
Of course, a good fund-raising appeal is just that: an invitation to help an organization that makes donors feel good about doing it, while communicating the urgency of the need.
“We try to get our clients to imagine that it’s 24 hours before your organization was founded,” said Ms. Love, whose clients include Habitat for Humanity, the Y.M.C.A. and Humber College in Toronto. “A group of people stood together that day and said, ‘We have to do something about this.’ Every single appeal now has to resonate with that same core value, that same ‘fist on the table’ insistence and energetic urgency.”
Urgency, and as Mr. Ahern said, the need to “celebrate how wonderful the donor is,” as he did in the windup of his letter for Sharp’s Chula Vista hospital, which is being mailed again in 2017, illustrate how the language of giving can have a huge effect.
“We cannot do great medicine without your help. So please consider Sharp Chula Vista in your decisions about charitable giving.
I know there are many good charities that will seek your help. Please know how honored we are when you choose to make a gift to Sharp HealthCare Foundation.”
We are delighted to announce that Eugenio Acosta will serve as our new Director of Academic Advancement for the College of Engineering. In this role, Eugenio will serve as the development liaison for the College as a member of Dean Kilpatrick’s senior leadership team. He will work closely with the Dean, faculty, advisory council members, and field fundraisers to advance the key priorities for the College of Engineering along with collaborative initiatives with ND Research, College of Science, and others.
Eugenio, who received a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Notre Dame in 2001 and M.B.A. from California State University in 2007, has been an integral part of our University Relations team since 2013 where he has served as International Alumni Relations Program Director. Prior to joining Notre Dame, Eugenio served as Senior Engineer and Project Manager for McCarthy Building Co. for twelve years in Newport Beach, Ca.
We believe Eugenio’s experience along with his strong work ethic, collaborative spirit, technical expertise, and dedication to the mission of Our Lady’s University, will enable him to advance an ambitious fund raising plan for the College of Engineering and multi-disciplinary STEM initiatives.
We look forward to welcoming Eugenio to the Academic Advancement Team in early December. In the meantime Eugenio, Nathan Utz, and I will be working closely to ensure a smooth transition for each of the roles involved.
Please join me in congratulating Eugenio on his exciting new position as well as thanking Nathan Utz on his great leadership in this role the past five years as he transitions full-time in his new role as Senior Director of Corporate Relations!
The John Cardinal O’Hara Society Fall Mailing was sent on 10/28/16. MBA student and MBA Military Veterans Club member Mark Faldowski is featured. The population for this piece includes just over 1,700 renewals, and more than 8,300 recruits. The creative pieces can be viewed here https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B6mu7Wo8yQtzTm05MHRLdEliRkE?usp=sharing.
Over the next few weeks, assigned and unassigned prospects receiving the mailer will be called by the AGSM staff.
If you have any questions, please contact Dan Peña at 1-0083
Annual Giving & Strategic Marketing dropped a direct mail campaign last week to approximately 24,000 alumni, parents, and friends with previous gifts to the Sorin Society, Corby Young Alumni, and the Notre Dame Fund.
The mailing included a letter from seniors Emily David and John Lee who shared their wonderful Notre Dame stories with an emphasis on their work with Campus Ministry and Notre Dame’s Catholic Mission.
I am excited to announce that Amanda Retartha is joining the Foundation Relations team as a Director of Foundation Relations serving the College of Arts & Letters.
For the past two years, Amanda has served the University through her stellar work on our Stewardship and Special Events team. By all accounts Amanda is smart, hard-working, and an excellent team mate. We are thrilled that she is joining the FR team.
Amanda will transition to Foundation Relations on November 28. Please join me in congratulating Amanda on her new role!
