Colleges and universities measure loyalty by alumni giving. Using that yardstick, alumni of The Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College are the most faithful of the nation's graduate business school degree recipients.
More than 60 percent of Tuck School alumni open their wallets and purses when the annual fund solicits them each year. It's been that way for the past dozen years. For this year's fund drive, just completed, 64 percent gave, tying Tuck's all-time record.
That places the Tuck School well ahead of other graduate schools of business in alumni giving percentage. In 1993 a confidential survey of the top 20 graduate business schools done at another Ivy League institution found The Tuck School far in front of the second-place school which had 44 percent of its alumni give. The third-place school showed only a 37 percent donation rate. Many of the top B-schools were in the 20 percent range. No surveys have been done in the years since.
While a few undergraduate schools maintain alumni giving rates in the 60 percent range-- Princeton, Williams, Amherst, Centre College and a number of women's colleges among them-- it is unheard of for graduate school alumni other than those at Tuck to show generosity on that scale.
"I can't tell you it's the alumni office doing anything magical," says Andy Steele, director of alumni affairs for The Tuck School. We're a small alumni body and we do try to use a personal approach. We write personal solicitation letters and we write personal letters thanking for gifts.
"But most of it is the demographics of a small school in a small town. Faculty know you. They're accessible. Alumni can come back ten years later and quite a few faculty members will recognize them because they didn't have ten thousand students.
"When you leave Tuck, you know everybody in your class. And you hear from people in your class. If an old buddy calls you up and says, "Hey you've been out three years, you're only giving $50. You ought to be giving $500,' it's hard to say no."
Steele credits approximately 300 Tuck alumni who serve as class agents, assistant agents and telethon volunteers for a large measure of the success.
The oldest (founded 1900) and smallest of the nation's top graduate schools of business, Tuck admits only 180 students per year into its two-year curriculum. Thus only around 360 students are on campus at any one time.
Living alumni number 6,700 and many of them stay involved with Tuck. In October, 63 percent of the class of 1991 returned to celebrate their fifth-year reunion. The alumni office is in e-mail contact with about one-third of the alumni. Some of those this year are participating as on-line resources to students in an Internet strategy course taught by Prof. Phil Anderson.
In terms of real dollars, Tuck alumni giving is impressive, also. A recently completed capital campaign raised $48.5 million for the Tuck School with $23 million coming from more than 200 alumni and friends. Their gifts ranged from $10,000 to $2 million.
As far as the annual fund is concerned, women Tuck alumni (only 11 percent of the total) tend to give at higher rates than men do--85 percent vs. 62 percent. International alums have a 76 percent participation rate.
In many alumni fund drives, it is the older classes that show the highest percentage of participation. At Tuck, however, in no class from 1980 through 1996 does the participation rate drop below 70 percent. This year's award for the highest participation rate goes to the class of 1992 where 95 percent gave. Young alumni are clearly among Tuck's most loyal.
"Last year's graduates, the class of 1996, had nearly 89 percent of the graduates making contributions," says Steele. "That's remarkable for a class only one year out."
If alumni giving really is a barometer of student satisfaction, The Tuck School must be doing some things right.
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Editors: If you would like to find out more, please feel free to contact Andy Steele at 603-646-3279, Dean Paul Danos at 603-646-2460 or Mary Tatman in the Tuck School Communications Office at 603-646-2733. For information on Tuck alumni giving to the capital campaign, the source is Phyllis Tremaine. Her number is 603-646-3352. Contact Dick Jones Communications at 814-867-1963 or at [email protected] if we can provide anything further. We help the Tuck School with some of its public affairs work.
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