The Care and Feeding of Volunteers: Philanthropic Stewardship Activities and Protocols in Community Colleges

Abstract

Community colleges increasingly make use of and even rely on philanthropic gifts to support their operations. This reliance has evolved from primarily business and industry giving to giving by individuals, major gift donors. This shift has led fundraising professionals working in community colleges to explore how certain cultivation efforts are employed to care for these current and future benefactors. The current study was designed to identify and come to consensus on the practices community college fundraisers perceive as the most effective for donor stewardship and cultivation. Using a national panel of 16 experts, a three-round Delphi survey was employed. The first round of the survey resulted in the identification of 46 activities, which when edited for duplication, resulted in 23 stewardship related strategies to be rated. As a group, the final mean rating of the items was 4.27 (on a 5-point Likert-type scale; 5=Strongly Agree), including four strategies that had complete agreement of effectiveness by the experts. Strategies identified ranged from sending thank you letters and issuing news releases to naming ceremonies, private dinners, benefactor recognition events, and meetings with faculty. These findings subsequently both provide a road-map for community college fundraisers, offering suggestions about how to steward their donors, and also provides a departure point for future research and theory building.