A couple of months ago a Bloomberg article shared a report by the Council for Aid to Education in New York, which revealed that college donations in the US had reached a record $33.8 Billion. This exceeds the peak that had previously been reached in 2009, before the global economic recession. An article in the British newspaper “The Guardian” also demonstrates that the phenomenon is spreading to the UK.
Why is this happening?
The rise cannot be put to be down to a single cause. A major factor is of course that economies across the globe are finally beginning to recover from the recession.
However Ann Kaplan, director of the survey performed by the CAE, stated in the Bloomberg article that, “What came to fruition this year didn’t come in just one year… It means there’s some careful planning. They’ve been either in campaigns or cultivating the connection.” Kaplan believes that institutions have been working harder at building relationships and that this one of the main reasons for the rise in donations.
How is it happening?
Building relationships and utilizing relationship capital is not an exact science. In fact, traditional methods have proved they can be unpredictable and inefficient. However, the disrupting factor in recent years, has been the introduction of advanced Relationship Mapping services.
In an era where advances in data-gathering and visualization technology are being made at an incredible pace, these services have been able to help provide institutions with greater access to their relationships than ever before.
Conclusion
What this shows is that relationship capital - long recognized as an asset in the enterprise sector - has become an even more valuable commodity for educational institutions because of the advantages provided by relationship mapping.
If you're a University or College that is interested in getting more out of your existing relationships, feel free to get in touch with us and we'll be happy to share some ideas on how relationship mapping could help you.