Higher Education in the US faces lots of pressure to adapt to new funding and operations models. We have been working with a development team at a large American university to help them build the foundations for a culture of philanthropy, both inside the team as well as across the university and its partners.

 

We started with an all-inclusive, tone-setting, whole team launch program—focusing on raising the voices of both hope and concern. The program launched with a Planning Team that drafted a new mission statement for the organization and researched current conditions and future needs.

 

This team then passed the baton to a second phase Change Team, whose task was to craft initial steps.  This team is currently tackling improved cross-organization communications, ranging from new and improved brown-bag lunch learning experiences to stand-up meetings to team-led all-staff meetings. 

 

Now comes the big work of digging deeper, getting change goals to belong to everybody.  This effort focuses on providing peer-coaching sessions as well as overhauling the on-boarding process.  As part of that, the team has coined a new effort called All-boarding—an annual in-house education and training conference to make sure everyone is up to speed on the latest and greatest processes and technologies. All-boarding is meant to keep everyone all-aboard as the organization evolves into a culture of philanthropy.

 

New steps will unfold, as the team reaches out beyond its departmental walls and starts building its new groove. Stay tuned.