Make your annual report unthrowawayable

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For some schools, an annual report represents a frustrating, yawn-inducing, can’t-seem-to-get-it-right publication. For some, it’s literally the only major print publication their alumni and donors get each year. (For some, both of those things are true!)

From my perch, I see nothing but amazing opportunities to make them irresistible — and to make them good enough to earn the coffee table for a few days, a few weeks, or even a few months.

Here’s how.

1. Develop a brand-aligned concept with narrative movement

Too often, an annual report is a jumble of charts, graphs, letters from VIPs and a long list of donor names.

Do you need most of those things? MAYBE!

Do you also need something more than that?

Yep.

Your print annual report is one of the small handful of publications you send out each year, and it’s a chance to earn space in your readers’ homes and in their minds.

It’s a way not just to show them your financial successes and stewardship (though it should do that). It should also connect those financial successes to meaning, to emotion, and to stories of your institution and its people at their best.

Find a way to tell a cohesive story about the ways you’re living out your mission in a meaningful way.

One example? This “How to make history” concept that Capstone did in partnership with Kent Place School in 2021:

The big concept: Strong financial stewardship helped the school make smart decisions during the pandemic that supported students’ education at a precarious moment. Everyone stepped up and made a difference.

2. Always remember the “you” in your report

In the most obvious ways, your annual report is about your institution: its financial health, its important accomplishments, and its most inspiring and important people.

But it is also about the readers who (presumably!) also played a role in the institution as a supporter in some way.

Whether they chipped in a few bucks to the annual fund, attended an event as an alum, or sent their child (and some serious tuition dollars) to your institution, the story you tell about your institution is also one that you should hope that your readers can see themselves in.

That can be a moment of literally seeing their name in your pages (like in those donor rolls), or it can be the emotional resonance the feel when they read your institution’s story and realize: I am proud of this institution, and their values align with mine.

You can see this idea in action in this “Because” annual report, in which Capstone partnered with the Blake School. (Click to see all of the pages.)

The story is (seemingly) all about Blake and its students and teachers and programs. Until it becomes about the readers holding the report in their hands.

Notice that this annual report concept also follows the first principle! There is literal narrative movement, since you can’t see the entire story without turning the pages.

3. Create a premium experience for your reader

Unlike magazines, where you might get two or three or four swings a year, you get ONE chance per year to make your annual report great.

While that can be daunting when you realize how many donor names you could possibly misspell or when you think about whether or not you can really make that endowment growth chart interesting, it’s also a call to think bigger about the experience you’re giving your reader.

That includes creating a beautiful cover the single most important page of your annual report. It means elevating the tactile experience for your reader by creating perfect-bound publication, testing unique print finishes, or using a silky paper that feels just a little more luxurious.

Your annual report is a major print publication. It’s difficult! But done right, it will tell your school’s story with numbers and emotion. It is more than just a publication to check off of your to-do list. You should aim to create something with a lasting impact.

3 ways to actually use your alumni magazine’s mission statement

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For a long time, I thought magazine mission statements were a bunch of baloney.

They were just a few lofty but meaningless sentences created in conference rooms, posted on websites, and immediately forgotten.

Take, for example, the mission statement of a trade magazine I worked at not long after college. It was something along the lines of “We aim to constantly raise the bar while delivering proven results.”

But then I joined an alumni magazine where the publication’s mission actually mattered.

It had been thoughtfully crafted, it meant something, and it got referred to during the process of making the magazine.

The statement itself wasn’t magical.

I don’t remember it exactly, but it was about supporting the institution’s liberal arts aims, connecting alumni to the college, and demonstrating the college’s ongoing value to alumni.

In some ways, it was pretty straightforward.

But its implementation did feel a little magic.

For example, we had a great advisory board that met before we began working on each issue.

While our team provided a list of potential stories to the board long before the meeting, board members would occasionally ask us to include a truly wretched story. (“We should run a profile on an administrator who won an extremely niche award in their industry!”)

We’d pretend to think it over before we noted that the idea didn’t really mesh with the larger mission of the magazine.

Usually, we were able to find a better place to share the announcement.

Notice that we weren’t shooting down their idea because we thought it was dumb! We were returning to the mission of the magazine — which we’d all agreed was the correct one — and we were making sure that every story was taking us in the right direction.

Your magazine mission can help you create a better publication

Your mission statement really can matter! Here’s how:

1. Good mission statements make it easier for leaders to say YES to unorthodox (but still really great) ideas.

One of the goofiest things I ever pitched as a staff writer for an alumni magazine was a series of one-page, tongue-in-cheek interviews with the leaders of wacky student groups: a startup croquet or Quidditch team, or a fly-by-night pep band that insisted that its entire repertoire was different versions of “I’m a little teapot.”

While sometimes administrators got a little grouchy about it, it proved to be enormously popular with alums.

After all, for every Rhodes Scholar or fellowship winner, there were 100 other students who grinding away getting pretty regular grades — but maybe taking on a fun or experimental project in their spare time. In some ways, these extracurricular groups and projects were the whole point of a liberal arts college! And that was how we pitched it.

By recognizing those students, who were smart and interesting and pretty relatable, we really did help connect alumni to their alma mater.

By the end of my tenure at the magazine, these inventive but outside-the-box students (like this guy, who launched the school’s inner-tube water polo team) were landing cover stories. Alumni loved it. Judges loved it. Did I mention we won a Sibley? We won a Sibley.

2. Good mission statements make it easier for you to say NO to bad ideas.

Like the story I mentioned at the beginning, you’ll sometimes get requests to cover a story that is not relevant to your audience or your mission.

Often, you’ll want to figure out a way to make it work!

After all, the people making the request are probably nice and well intentioned (and maybe a lot more powerful than you are). And they probably think of the magazine first because it’s visible and high-status.

But saying yes to almost every request is how your publication ends up with eight pages of campus news with irrelevant stories about internal promotions and boring awards.

Those stories doesn’t serve your audience. And it probably doesn’t even serve the subjects of the story or people who requested the story it in the first place!

Your mission statement is a way to articulate what your magazine is for — and also, by default, what is not for.

3. Good mission statements make it easier to hone in on the right stories for your magazine

When I worked on staff at an alumni magazine, we were always spitballing ideas that we thought readers would find irresistible.

Sometimes we veered into NSFAM (not safe for alumni magazines) territory.

A roundup of alumni white collar criminals? The secret history of the biggest money pit of a building on campus? BOY DID WE HAVE STORIES.

But these stories, while delightful to us — and maybe in some cases interesting to our readers! — didn’t really help us achieve our mission.

By contrast, we might not have been thrilled to devote pages of the magazine to retiring faculty (for the millionth time). We might have secretly been plotting to kill the class notes, which were tedious to assemble and always included a typo that we saw only after print copies hit our desk. But the reality was that these were sections that did help us achieve our mission. And it was our job to figure out how to make those sections the best they could be.

A good mission statement kept our magazine team honest.

Even today, when I am writing up story assignments or pitches for clients, I have have a separate line item called “why” that I fill out. WHY are we doing this story? Why this topic, why this angle, why now? If I can’t make a compelling case for it at the point of the pitch or the assignment, it’s time for me to take a closer look at the value of the story.

Now what? Questions to ask yourself about a mission statement

Yes, your mission statement actually can make a difference to the magazine you put out into the world every few months! Here are three questions to ask yourself to see if you’re on right track:

  • Does your magazine have a mission statement?
  • Do you AND your leadership buy in to your magazine’s mission statement?
  • Does your mission statement help steer your story development?

A good magazine mission can serve as a north star, guiding your work.

It can help you say YES to the right ideas and NO to the wrong ones. It can help you stay on track to make a magazine that connects with your readers and helps you accomplish the larger goals of your institution.

Who is in your alumni magazine’s “secret audience?”

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I was two years into my college running career, and I was at a crossroads.

Despite diligent training, I was shaping up to be a mediocre Division III athlete: a junior varsity runner who earned coaches awards for dedication, but who never broke out of the middle of the pack.

Still, that spring, I’d gotten it into my head that if I just put in the kind of miles that the top-tier runners on my team put in — 50-mile weeks, instead of my usual 35 — I might be able to hang with the varsity squad.

It wasn’t just that I wanted to be a better runner (though I did).

It was because while the faster runners were all my pals in the dining hall and in the library after practice, I desperately wanted them to see me as a peer on the track and on the trails.

Erin’s self-created recipe for disaster

On our track team’s annual spring break trip, I saw my chance. If I just added a couple extra miles per day to my two-a-day practices, I had a shot at one of those magical 50-mile weeks.

And reader, let me tell you, I did it.

I ran 50.5 miles over seven days on that spring break. I compared notes with my teammates about the hills at the tail end of a 10-mile run and the agony of waking up the next morning for an “easy” five-miler. I had done it! I was in.

But if you’re a runner — and even if you’re not — you might be able to predict what happened after I upped my mileage by 50 percent: I got injured.

The shin splints that had been troubling me for weeks turned into stress fractures which turned into the end of my track season.

After returning from that trip, my teammates headed out for runs on gorgeous spring afternoons, and I glumly nursed myself back to health on a stationary bike in the stale gym air.

Lesson: Don’t get distracted from your real goal

As a runner, my main job was to finish ahead of the competitors standing right next to me on any given starting line. It was to do the best that I could do, given my admittedly minimal natural talent. That was what my coach was training me for!

But I was focused on a secret audience: my running peers. And in aiming to earn respect from that audience, I ended up failing to accomplish anything at all.

Who’s in your magazine’s secret audience?

For a lot of you, I suspect my story sounds ridiculous.

But if you’re responsible for your school’s alumni magazine, you might have a secret audience for your magazine just like I had a secret audience when I was running on my college team.

And just like I ended up sabotaging my season by focusing on that secret audience, your focus on your secret audience may be sabotaging your magazine’s chance to make a meaningful impact with its real audience.

Let me give you a few examples of the ways I’ve seen editors and comms teams focus on secret audiences:

  • Secret audience #1: your president/chancellor/dean
    While I probably don’t need to state the obvious here, you should never try to intentionally upset the top brass! But when your leadership insists on writing deadly boring letters on the opening pages of your magazine, this is not treating your real audience with the respect it deserves. (It’s also not doing any favors for the leaders who are featured.)

    Find another way to share your leader’s priorities in ways that make the most of your pages and make for compelling reading.

  • Secret audience #2: your internal colleagues
    When I see entire magazine sections devoted to recent promotions, faculty publications, and internal awards, I do not think: “Wow, what an accomplished group of individuals, I would be proud if I were an alum of this institution.”

    Instead, I think: “I am so mad that they think that I want to waste my time reading this boring irrelevant stuff that I would like to light this magazine on fire and throw it out the window.”

    Your magazine should not feel like a series of glorified LinkedIn promotional posts! It’s meaningless and often confusing to the thousands of readers who get your publication.

  • Secret audience #3: your advancement team
    When snoozeworthy donor profiles appear on the pages of magazines, it’s typically not because lots of readers are clamoring for them.

    Certainly, advancement officers may see them as a way to publicly thank these generous individuals, pave the way for future gifts from that person, or even subtly influence future donors.

    But your audience, while it may include that donor, is a whole lot more than that single person or even a handful of other potential donors who might see it. Make those profiles more interesting, make them more widely relevant, or make them go away.

  • Secret audience #4: your imagined detractors
    One of the things I often see in this field is editors who deeply want their magazine to be seen as “legitimate” — a smart and unbiased publication that happens to focus on a school. Journalism, not marketing.

    They resist telling any stories that have even a whiff of boosterism, because they imagine that their peers in journalism — or maybe even a particularly prickly alum —will call them out for their insincere propaganda.

    But here’s the truth: your actual audience — the tens of thousands of people who receive your magazine every few months — don’t actually expect traditional journalism.

    They understand that your publication is funded by your institution, so you’re probably not going to be spending a lot of time disparaging a strategic priority or promoting a rival institution.

    But if you do thoughtful and interesting work issue after issue, they will trust the stories you tell. When you have bad news to share about your institution, they will be open to hearing the ways that your school is addressing it and trying to remedy it, and they won’t automatically distrust your publication’s motives. And they will be open to the stories that share how great your school is, and why it’s worth it to continue supporting it.

  • Secret audience #5: award judges
    Look, I get it: it’s nice to be recognized. I’ve happily touted Capstone’s many awards over the years, including a Sibley and a gold award from CASE in 2022.

    But remember that award judges are not actually your magazine’s audience.

    Here’s one example that sticks with me: years ago, I talked to an editor who had devoted an entire issue of her magazine to a beloved coach who had recently retired.

    Her readers adored it, showering her with more letters of gratitude than she had ever gotten, as well as anecdotes and photos about the coach that she could use in future issues. Alumni kept the issues in their home for months, then years. They sent in gifts to recognize the coach’s impact on their lives.

    It was a huge success, and it accomplished every goal their institution could have wanted.

    But when that issue didn’t win a single award at a statewide competition, she was crestfallen.

    Yet in many ways, that snub makes sense: the story was so specific to her school’s audience that a more general audience didn’t appreciate it.

    And that’s fine! In some ways, the best stories for your audience will be so specific that they will seem almost bizarre to an outsider.

Don’t let secret audiences sabotage your magazine.

Understand who your true audience is. Understand what makes them sit up and take notice. And focus relentlessly on serving their needs.

Make this year the best yet for your print alumni magazine

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Over the past few years, I’ve learned it’s a fool’s errand to make predictions for the coming year. At the end of 2019, for example, I shared everything I felt certain the following months would hold for print alumni magazines.

But 2020 had a few other ideas.

Then 2021 and 2022 added their own unique twists, as paper supply chain issues and dramatic cost increases upended plans for many institutions’ alumni magazines.

Fortunately, I feel confident that absolutely nothing bad or unexpected will happen in 2023!

If there is one thing that I’ve learned from all of this chaos — and if there’s one thing I do think you can take forward from these past few years, regardless of what the next year holds — it’s this: you’ve got to have a strategy.

Your print alumni magazine must have a rock-solid strategy

I get thousands of alumni magazines in my mailbox every year, and thousands of emails from the editors of these magazines.

What I’ve noticed is that the magazines that struggled most have been the ones that swung wildly to react to the moment — pivoting online, going on hiatus, upending decades of steady work to pursue shiny tech that turned out to be more misfire than miracle.

It’s true that the Covid era may have been a “move fast and break things” moment. But turns out that when many of us moved fast to transform what we offered to our readers…we really did break a lot of stuff, too!

It may just be time to return to what most academic institutions are designed to do best: thoughtful, methodical work that’s improves steadily over time.

That’s why I predict that the magazines that make the biggest impact this year will make sure that they have — and relentlessly execute on — a solid strategy. Those that do will see good results: more meaningful engagement, helpful feedback, more recognition, and more significant return on investment.

Those that don’t will likely see cuts: fewer issues each year, fewer pages each issue, fewer people on the mailing list, and most worryingly: dwindling impact.

Do you have a smart strategy for your print alumni magazine?

Every institution will have a different strategy for their alumni magazine, but if you to see if yours is on track, review the questions below to see if you can answer them clearly and purposefully.

  • Who are your primary readers — and how are you devoting your time and resources to giving them what they most want and need from your magazine?
  • How do your magazine’s mission statement and values guide your decision-making from issue to issue — even story to story?
  • What boundaries have you set? What do you say ‘no’ to — and why?
  • What are you tracking to determine if your publication is on course?

If you can answer these questions about your publication, you’re probably in great shape! And if not — you’re not alone.

I’ll be talking a lot more about your print alumni magazine strategy, including the specific tactics that work IN PRINT to achieve your institution’s goals, whatever they are.

Your “reasons to love” story roadmap

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A couple months ago, I was in the market for a new bike.

After walking aimlessly around the local bicycle shop for a while, I nabbed a sales associate, described what I was looking for, and asked if he could help me narrow my choices.

He pulled a few bikes for me, highlighting features that would make my three-mile commute to the local co-working space faster and my occasional desire to haul a bag of groceries easier.

I tested them all out, thanked him, then left.

Then I went home and spent hours reading customer reviews for every bike he’d recommended. I wanted to know what real people who’d actually bought the bikes and put them to the test thought about them.

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe the sales associate; it’s just that I trusted the motivations of actual customers a little bit more.

By the time I’d finished my research, I couldn’t wait to buy one of the bikes the sales associate had initially recommended.

And recently, I added my own recommendation to the chorus of happy customer reviews.

Why am I telling you this story?

If you’re responsible for an alumni magazine, you know that many of your stories require you and your team to trumpet your institution’s best qualities and paper over the (very rare, I’m sure) flaws.

Research suggests that alumni readers probably *mostly* trust what you tell them about how great your school is.

But if you turned over the pages of your magazine to folks outside of your communications office — alumni, students, faculty, staff — your readers might trust their opinions about your school’s excellent qualities even more.

In other words, in this analogy, your alums might consider you and your team generally reliable sales associates.

But your school’s students, alums, and other community members are even more trustworthy. Their love and enthusiasm for your school make an even more meaningful impact.

That’s the idea behind this story that I did for Grinnell College, “20 reasons to love Grinnell.”

In it, Grinnellians share their own reasons that the school mean so much to them, in their own words.

If you’re interested in doing a story like this, I’ve shared my own processes so you can get off to a running start. Grinnell Magazine editor Linda Hirsch weighs in with additional insight on their internal processes to help guide you every step of the way.

See what you think — then steal it for your next issue.

The ‘TK reasons to love your institution’ process

Okay, let’s do this!

The story

“20 reasons to love Grinnell.” Read it online or in print.

💡 Start with a powerful premise

The right concept will build enthusiasm for the story even before the reporting begins.

Erin says
Here’s what we started with:

In their own words, students, alumni, faculty and staff share love letters to their school. From tiny (a beautiful path across campus) to vast (an inspiring mission), every reason in this list illuminates something unique and valuable about the institution.

I loved this premise from the moment I saw a similar one featured in New York magazine. I knew immediately if it was adapted for the right school, it was a sure-fire winner.

Learn more
Use the exact process and tools that I do to uncover, collect, and organize, smart story premises for your magazine.

👥 Source wisely — and widely

An inclusive source list will make or break this story.

Erin says
To build a killer source list, I recommended including a wide range of people — alumni and students, donors and other VIPs, beloved faculty and longtime staffers. I pulled names based on titles and roles that seemed most relevant. Grinnell’s team also threw the question out on social media channels.

I recommend “going big” with stories like this.

You’ll end up with a much better story if you contact 50 people to get 30 responses and print 20 of the best, tightly edited answers, rather than reach out to 20 people and realize you have to include some extremely mediocre responses just to round out the story.

Linda adds
I made it a point to brief several colleagues on the nature of the feature and asked them to make suggestions about individuals who maintained connection with the college and could authentically represent a diverse range of Grinnell experiences.

We tried to develop a subject list that reflected different ages, ethnicities, and academic interests. We did keep in mind that among current students in particular we consider those who would be game to speak to their personal feelings.

Our alumni relations colleagues were especially helpful in identifying alums who they thought would be thoughtful, willing participants.

In addition, we frequently include a prompt question in an issue to encourage alumni engagement and gauge interest in topics we might cover in a future issue. This story was seeded with the magazine’s back cover “Prompted” question, “What are your reasons to love Grinnell?” That generated several great contacts, several of which were incorporated into the final piece.

Learn more
Read more on inclusive sourcing by reviewing #3 on this post.

🎙️ Ask compelling questions

Once you’ve got a list of sources, smart questions lead to irresistible stories.

Erin says
I’ve spent years studying and testing smart questions that get meaningful responses.

I tried many different questions for this story. Some were total duds! That said, here are three questions that resonated and led to unique, interesting answers:

  • What is your favorite spot on Grinnell’s campus? Why?
  • What is a specific thing that makes you proud to be associated with Grinnell?
  • When you think about Grinnell and the very best parts of it, what comes to mind? If someone saw your face light up while you were talking about some aspect of Grinnell, what would it be?

Learn more
Here are a few more thoughts on interviewing.

✂️ Edit and curate with intention

It’s a fine balance: you must be both ruthless and generous.

Erin says
A magazine’s value comes from your editorial judgment: choosing the best answers, framing them appropriately, and sharpening them. Each page of your magazine has a literal cost in dollars and cents, so every word should earn its way onto the page.

I cut the word count of some responses by 85 percent, and that was before they reached Linda! To make sure that alumni weren’t surprised — and that I didn’t introduce any critical errors in my edits — I sent the final quotes to the alumni for their approval after Linda reviewed and edited the piece.

Source approval is a time-consuming process. But no one should ever feel surprised or upset by their appearance in your publication. Remember that you’re not just an editor. You’re an ambassador for your institution.

Learn more
Read more on source approvals, including my exact process and template.

🎨 Match the words with standout art and design

The choices you make will set the tone of the story as much as the words on the page.

Linda says
Illustration worked well for us. I think the right style of illustration can amp the fun factor and helps make it clear that this is a different type of story. It also alleviated some of the hassles of getting contributed images.

I think photographs could work but would need more lead time. It could be fun to ask subjects to get a photo booth type image or use some framing or sign device, but again, that would take more pre-planning and time.

Learn more
I loved the illustrations. But if you’re interested in learning how to make submitted photos work for you — for this story or any other — read #34 on this list and get the helpful PDF.

💯 Accept the kind words

Your magazine should inspire warm feelings and prompt enthusiastic responses. Here’s one story that all but guarantees it.

Linda says
The feedback to the story was all very positive.

People said it was nice to get an upbeat perspective in the subjects’ own words. The print story motivated some follow-up emails and letters from alums who wanted to share their own take on why they love their alma mater. A few people commented on the piece being very readable.

That level of response is always nice.

Erin adds
I was thrilled to hear that the feedback was so positive.

Remember, too, that for every note you receive from an alum, there are many others who will read a story like this, come up with their own reason to love your institution, and feel more warmly toward your school.

This is true even if they never share their response with you.

📈 Learn and improve

Spend time thinking about how you can use the lessons of this story to make other stories even better.

Linda says
I certainly would consider running another story like this sometime in the future. If so, I would weigh doing some of the alumni intake during a reunion or homecoming-type of event, especially if we already had plans for a photo booth. I might consider including brief bio text about the subjects.

Erin adds
Read through this story, see what you learn, and think about how you might adapt it. I definitely have!

  • Can you imagine ways you could do a story like this in your magazine and pull it apart to share pieces on social media?
  • Could you include those VIP alumni your leaders would love for you to include — but don’t seem “story worthy” on their own?
  • Could it go to prospective students and families who want to see the institution through the eyes of its community?

This story has so many cool opportunities embedded within it! If this story concept resonates with you, I hope you try it — and take it in the direction that’s perfect for your institution.

Optimize your print alumni magazine’s mailing list

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For years, I’ve subscribed to the Harvard Business Review.

I’ve always loved its gorgeous covers and illustrations, its silky, high-end paper, and the way it made me seem extremely smart when I pulled it out of my bag to read on airplanes. 🤓

So a few years ago, when I got a notice that starting immediately, I’d be getting half as many issues because the publication sought to offer me an “integrated print and digital experience,” this is how I felt:

Look, I get it: organizations want to save money. They want to be more sustainable. They want to offer integrated print and digital experiences.

But they aren’t always thinking as much as they should about the actual impact on the reader — including one like me, who loved the actual magazine when it showed up on my doorstep, but who also wasn’t scouring HBR websites or social feeds for the latest business insights.

Who are you focused on?

You can probably see that parallel I’m making with your print alumni magazine.

As costs continue to increase for print magazine essentials like paper and postage, plenty of communications offices are looking at ways to save.

Your mailing list is probably one of those line items that looks like an easy way to trim thousands from your budget.

After all, you can probably send these readers a note about how this decision shows that your institution is a careful steward of its resources. It’s making a smart, sustainable decision. You’re offering your readers an “integrated print and digital experience.”

I’ve seen it countless times. What segments go? Here are just a few groups who’ve gotten cut:

Maybe these alumni don’t get cut from every issue, but maybe they get one or two issues a year instead of three or four.

Unfortunately, the fury that it invokes in readers might be greater than the money that it saves. And the reality is that your magazine might benefit from having more people see it, not fewer.

How to see your mailing list as a valuable asset, rather than an expensive cost

Certainly, budgets are budgets and if you don’t have the money to send print magazines to everyone, you’ll have to make some difficult choices.

But instead of sending your magazine to an ever-shrinking pool of alumni, you might want to start making the case to expand your mailing list.

Who else might want to see your publication? Who else might value it? And what other offices at your institution might help you pay to get it to these groups if they understand the difference it might make?

After all, you and your team have worked hard to develop great stories, include beautiful photos, and tell the story of your institution and its people in ways that move readers.

Research shows that print is uniquely effective at reaching people in memorable and meaningful ways.

Your print magazine is also a social signifier — a way for your audience to show others who they are and what they value without saying a word (like that HBR that I hoped signaled my business acumen on the plane).

Tangible objects are subtle social signals. “Digital experiences” aren’t. (Read more about how this works with alumni magazines.)

Here’s exactly how institutions have expanded their mailing lists effectively

So what does expanding your mailing list look like? And what’s the actual impact?

Here are some examples of how this more expansive approach to mailing lists works — and how institutions that are able to think bigger about the value of their publication to a wide variety of audiences.

  • Send to admitted students. Milton Academy sends its Sibley-winning magazine to its admitted students each March. “Is it a marketing piece specifically? Not really, but we do use it as one way to attract students,” says editor Sarah Abrams.
  • Send to prospective students. Macalester sends the winter issue of its magazine to prospective students. I love this idea, because it helps prospective students (and their families) see beyond admissions promises to actual results. The alumni featured in the magazine are products of Mac’s stellar education. Prospective students can see not just the alums highlighted in profiles, but also the dozens and dozens of alums who self-select to tell the stories of their lives through class notes.
  • Send to parents and families. For many families, having their child attend your school is the culmination of some of their most fervent hopes — whether that student is the first in the family to attend college, or the most recent in what may be generations of family members who have attended. Sure, parents may show off their kid’s successes with their sweatshirts and bumper stickers, but they can also strengthen their connection with the school through your print magazine.
  • Send to a wider swath of engaged alumni. Not every school sends its magazine to all of its alums, but it might make sense to send the magazine to more alums, not fewer. For example, Rebekah Tilley at Tippie Magazine strategically tripled the school’s mailing list from about 5,000 to 15,000 alums — focusing on adding alums who had shown some sort of engagement in the institution, such as attending a webinar.The result? The institution saw a huge increase in giving.)
  • Expand and test.
    When Clemson’s Nancy Spitler partnered with her school’s annual giving team to strategically expand the school’s magazine’s mailing list, they tried a number of different experiments. One of them expanded their mailing list to include thousands of alums who had never given to the institution.The cost was a cool $40,000. Yet the results more than paid for themselves. “From October to December of that year, we had gifts from 191 “nevers” for a total of more than $52,000,” she says. “And it’s not just that first gift that matters. It’s the beginning of engagement with those alumni with whom we had lost touch.”

These strategies work!

Your print magazine is a unique and beautiful object that the people in your community — however expansively you want to define it — can receive a handful of times per year that will remind them of their connection to your institution and its enduring value in their lives.

My best advice for you is to stop thinking small — about your work, about your mailing list, about the value of your magazine to your community. Find ways to partner with other areas in your institution, find ways to make your case, and find ways to expand your publication’s impact.

Your magazine matters, and you can make sure that you’re doing everything you can to make the most of it.

57 rules that will make your alumni magazine better

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Today I’m going to sum up 25 years of of my best alumni magazine advice in one post.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably are familiar with a lot of these ideas. And if not, I hope this will be a quick introduction to the best insights I’ve gleaned from reading thousands of alumni and university publications over the course of a quarter century. (!!!)

Without further ado, here are 57 of my best alumni magazine ideas:

  1. You can almost always add more reader entry points: headlines, deks, subheads, captions, sidebars.
  2. Spend more time on your story leads.
  3. No more faculty promotion announcements.
  4. No more sports season recaps.
  5. But you can never have too many class notes. (Really, never.)
  6. Stories readers always love #1: campus myths
  7. Stories readers always love #2: elaborate college pranks
  8. For stories you do every single year (graduation, reunion, retiring faculty), try to shake it up with new formats or approaches so you don’t get bored.
  9. Perfect-bound magazines communicate a premium experience.
  10. Take at least one big swing with a story in every issue.
  11. Don’t be afraid to have an advisory board.
  12. If you have an advisory board, set clear expectations and boundaries.
  13. Alliterative headlines are almost always terrible.
  14. Good headline format: a sharp quote from the story.
  15. Sweat the details.
  16. Good profile headline format: full name + sentence
  17. Start more conversations with your readers. They’ll help you create a better magazine.
  18. The best number of “letters from the desk of…” columns per issue is zero. The maximum number is one.
  19. Conduct a short reader survey at least annually. Make sure to include a question about what they love about the magazine. Save the answers so you remember that your work matters.
  20. Photo color correction can make a drab photo pop — and transform a page entirely.
  21. A great cover helps win the coffee table.
  22. Two spreads of campus news is probably plenty. One might be better.
  23. Be funny (at least every once in a while.)
  24. Top four most important pages: front cover, back cover, inside front cover, inside back cover. Make the most of them.
  25. Try more story packaging techniques: quizzes, lists, round tables, as-told-tos.
  26. Remember to treat your profile subjects as humans, not highlight reels.
  27. You can probably cut that story’s word count by 10 percent. Your designer will love you. Your readers will, too.
  28. To get a good headline, write at least 20 and choose the best one. After 15 is when things start to get interesting.
  29. If you have to have a president on a cover, at least make it interesting. Like this. Or this.
  30. Prioritize excellence over meeting an arbitrary deadline.
  31. Headlines should almost always be more than three words.
  32. Can’t get out of the boring institutional story? Get into it. Make it GREAT.
  33. Subscribe to at least three consumer magazines and see what you can adapt from them. My current top three: New York, Cosmopolitan, Fast Company.
  34. Create a one-page instruction template for anyone who needs to submit a photo. It’ll minimize the “can you send a bigger file” back and forth. Here’s one.
  35. Stories readers always love #3: campus concerts throughout history
  36. Fill in the blank to get a killer headline and story concept: “The secret history of ________”
  37. Mystery photos can encourage audience participation and can help your archivist identify images for posterity.
  38. Your magazine does not need to “compete” with consumer magazines or make “everyone” want to pick it up. Focus on your exact audience first.
  39. Build feature well categories to strengthen your magazine’s structure and improve story generation possibilities.
  40. You don’t need theme issues.
  41. But if you want to do a theme issue, start planning a year in advance to make it amazing.
  42. Two issues annually? Publish in March and September to maximize reader impact.
  43. Three issues annually? Publish in March, July, and November.
  44. Four issues annually? Publish in March, June, September and December.
  45. Your alumni magazine should not make people feel bad.
  46. Want faculty to share their best research and stories? Ask them. Here’s how.
  47. Add more illustrations and infographics to your magazine to make it visually interesting.
  48. For profiles of high level/celebrity clients who can contribute art, ask for it all: headshots, environmental, action, supplemental photography.
  49. Department headers should feel specific to your institution.
  50. Offer prompts to engage your readers. Ask about campus jobs, life-changing professors, favorite hangouts.
  51. Remember that in your role, you are more than an editor, you are an ambassador for your school.
  52. For stories you might do just once a decade (new leaders, major campaigns, new strategic plans) get advice from others who have recently been in your shoes.
  53. Quote your sources saying things that sound human, not things that make them sound like institutional robots.
  54. If you want to know how to pair your magazine with social media, use this research as your guide.
  55. Awards can help you make the case for the overall excellence of your publication, but the audience that you actually need to win over is your readers, not a handful of judges.
  56. Remember, YOU know your audience best. Add your own “alumni magazine rules” that make sense within the context of your institution.
  57. Make sure there is something in every magazine that makes you proud.

A history-making Sibley winner

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Every year, I’m thrilled to be able to talk to the editor of CASE’s Robert Sibley Magazine of the Year, and this year is no exception.

Milton Academy’s Milton magazine, edited by Sarah Abrams, is 2022’s winner. It’s a beauty!

Every winning publication is a little different, and one particularly notable detail about Milton magazine is that it’s the first independent school to win the Sibley since the award started in 1943. (!!!) Check out the winning entry, entry materials, and judges’ comments.

First, a few details about Milton Academy and their magazine: Milton is an independent boarding and day school in Massachusetts with a total K-12 enrollment of just under 1,000 students, about two-thirds of which are at the upper school (grades 9-12).

Milton’s 80-page + cover magazine is perfect bound and published twice a year. It is sent to 13,500 alumni and families; it is also sent each spring with acceptance letters.

Sarah is a contract editor; the magazine also has a freelance designer. All of the writing, meanwhile, is done in-house (with the exception of the stories written by Sarah).

Sarah and I had a wide-ranging conversation, so instead of doing a typical Q&A, I’ll share some of the most illuminating insights from a longer discussion.

On Sarah’s background in higher ed communications.
I’ve worked as an editor of alumni magazines for many years — I started at Harvard in 1987, and I edited an alumni magazine for the School of Public Health and then for the Harvard Kennedy School. I had just retired when I was asked if I’d be interested in doing this as a freelance job. I’ve been doing this now for three years.

On the difference between higher ed and independent school magazines.
Well, parents are involved — that doesn’t usually happen at universities! So you’ve got to consider that, particularly when you’re writing about young students. You’ve got to check to make sure it’s okay to use their names, for example. There are privacy issues.

An independent school is a very small, very loyal community — there’s a sense that everyone knows one another and that your readers are definitely paying attention. Their time here was during a very formative stage in their lives. The coverage at this level feels much more personal.

On how the magazine is used as a tool beyond the alumni audience.
When admission letters go out in March, the magazine goes out with it. Is it a marketing piece specifically? Not really, but we do use it as one way to attract students. It doesn’t currently go out to parents, but I would like it to! We find that there’s tremendous loyalty among the parents and families; they’re very involved. And while there are different online newsletters and letters that go out, I think the magazine is it, in terms of printed pieces.

On the push to move from print to digital.
I know a lot of places are asking why they should be printing a magazine — why they shouldn’t just be putting it online. But at Milton they seem to value print. I haven’t had to make a case for it.

I think they get it: sending it to people’s homes and putting the magazine on the coffee table or the nightstand is very valuable.

With an exclusively online alumni magazine, the alum needs to make the effort to go online and I just don’t think that happens as often. A print magazine serves a very important purpose.

A story she is particularly proud of.
“Climate science” (part of the larger “A generation looks ahead” package).

It was ambitious. I included several alums who all worked under the larger umbrella of the environment. It was a lot of work to pull it all together, and I think this is a topic that we’ll continue to write about.

On editorial and design collaboration.
At the production stage, there’s a continuous back and forth with the designer around multiple issues—from photos, illustration, and typography choices to what goes on the cover — and you want to be working with someone you feel comfortable around — someone with whom you have a good rapport.

It’s so important to form a strong partnership with a good designer — whether the designer is in-house or a freelancer — someone whose work you respect and with whom you’re comfortable working. They play a huge part in the success of a magazine.

On what she still wishes she could improve.
The news section, which doesn’t quite have the right balance of school news to alumni news. I think readers would like to know more about what the students are up to.

Also, I want readers to be able to pick up information about the school in a variety of ways — maybe shorten some of the stories. I’d like it to have more energy.

On thinking about your audience.
When you’re putting together a magazine, you always want to keep the reader in mind.

Most people don’t have a lot of time. You want to offer them good, substantive feature-length stories, but also offer shorter pieces, strong headlines, informative subheads and pull-out quotes, and good photos with captions.

I’m always pushing to have more entries in class notes, with vibrant photos. Being aware of the reader — standing up for your readers — is really important.

On working with administrators.
We do send stories by our senior administration. They’re great at pointing out potential issues, which you need to respect. But you also want to help them see the magazine from the point of view of the reader. What will entice a reader to pick up the magazine and spend time with it? Administrators are deep into running a school and sometimes need reminding about what all of us look for when we pick up something to read.

On building trust through methodical advance work.
We always make a case for why we’ve chosen a specific theme, and the stories we want to tell. It’s not an off-handed conversation.

A lot of the trust we’ve built has come from what we’ve produced, and the fact that administrators are receiving good feedback. When they hear people like the magazine, that builds trust.

Inspiration.
I do look at other magazines. Some of the small, private colleges do beautiful work: Kenyon does a great job. Denison does too. Those magazines are both beautiful. Johns Hopkins. I’m impressed by the quality and depth of the stories they choose to cover.

Other magazines that stand out to me include Middlebury Magazine and Harvard’s School of Education alumni magazine, Ed.

They’re all inspirational and something to work toward.

On what she misses about in-person work.
It was nice to be right next door to the magazine team because there’s so much back and forth when you’re putting a magazine together.

 

Your magazine is not a kitchen sink

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There’s no question that alumni magazines are facing a lot of headwinds these days.

I won’t enumerate all of the paper and staffing challenges many teams are seeing right now, since you likely know them viscerally.

Often, these challenges lead to publications with fewer pages that are published less frequently.

These trends make what I see in some of today’s magazines so surprising.

Let me back up a bit first.

I’ve often talked about the idea of every story in your publication EARNING its way into print. One of the greatest strengths of print publications is the focus they inspire. Print demands hard limits to your storytelling. You’ve got to curate and share the very best and most vibrant stories from your school.

You might think this limitation would become even more clarifying as page counts dwindle and issue frequency diminishes.

But that’s not always what I see happening. Instead, I see magazines that trot out the same boring, unread sections issue after issue.

Let me give a few examples:

Faculty promotions

Yes, these ambitious and hardworking individuals deserve their due. Celebrate with an event or a cake or a raise or a letter they can save as a keepsake. Maybe all these things, I have no idea how faculty celebrate getting tenure!

But you definitely don’t need to be carving out a column in your campus news section just to announce that a handful of professors have been bumped up a rank. As a whole, your alumni probably don’t even understand why tenure is such a huge milestone, and it’s unlikely that the names will mean much to them.

Sports results

Your readers either are sports fans of your school’s teams or they aren’t.

If they’re sports fans, the best way to keep tabs on their favorite teams is not a three-times-a-year publication that shares the results of a months-ago dual meet or regional matchup.

And if they’re not sports fans? Well, your four-sentence writeup of a middling finish to a sports season won’t change their minds. If you want to do a knockout profile of an athlete who’s tearing it up on the field, you definitely should! Paired with a unique portrait or other images, you can go beyond the scores and the standings to tell a meaningful story about a student.

But roundups of the recent(ish) results are a waste of space.

Letter from the desk of [fill in the blank]

Letters from the president or head of school are dicey at best. If that person is a gifted writer or you’ve got a brilliant strategy, you can maybe (and that’s a big maybe) make a case for including them in your magazine.

But a letter from the alum who heads up the alumni association? The chair of your board of trustees? No thank you!

Most of these folks don’t want to write these letters, absolutely nobody wants to read them, and they’re taking up valuable space in your publication.

This is page space that costs real money, and that could be used to do more interesting and strategic storytelling.

The three things I’ve listed above are just starters. I could go on: most new hires, grants, lists of alumni boards and boards of trustees. You can probably come up with a list twice as long as the one I’ve already created.

Most of these things never belonged in a print alumni magazine.

It’s true that decades ago, there were fewer ways to reach alumni with this sometimes-relevant-to-a-tiny-audience material, so these inclusions are occasionally the result of editorial inertia.

But it’s time to cut these sections.

Your magazine reaches your audience just a handful of times per year. It’s a big investment for your institution! And it should feel like a gift to your readers. Lists of alumni board members (even if the reader of your publication is an alumni board member!) do not feel like a gift to readers, I promise you.

Your magazine should be as strategic and irresistible as possible — not a kitchen sink where anything and everything shows up, needed or not.

Interview “code words” — and what they really mean

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Over the course of my career, I’ve done thousands of interviews. I’ve talked to people who have never been interviewed for a story to folks who spend many of their days talking to the media.

Over the years, I’ve gotten a handful of questions and requests again and again (and again) during these interviews. If you’ve been doing interviews, you’ve probably heard them, too.

At first, I responded only to what they actually said.

But over time, I realized that there is often a request behind the question or the statement. And I needed to answer that question — the one that they didn’t even really ask — before I could get the best possible interview.

Today, I want to share three of those coded requests.

I’ll share what people are really asking about when they say these things. And I’ll also share how to respond to interviewees in ways that give them not just the answer to what they actually said out loud, but also to the hidden request.

I hope this is helpful as you do interviews for your own projects.

Code words: “Can you send me the questions in advance?”

What they’re really asking: I’m feeling a little nervous about this interview. Can you reassure me that I won’t feel blindsided or unprepared for this conversation?

The background: I know a lot of folks — especially those who come from traditional journalism backgrounds — who bristle at the idea of offering questions to sources in advance. They don’t want to get overly rehearsed, PR-engineered responses. (It’s also a pain to have to come up with questions days in advance if you haven’t completed the research for the topic.)

But alumni magazines aren’t traditional journalism. And for the most part, you want people to feel prepared and comfortable going into an interview.

How to respond: “Yes, I’m happy to send a few questions in advance to get us started. I’ll make sure you have them by [date, time]. I should also add that you’ll have a chance to review the story before it’s published.”

Why it works: First, when you agree to their request, that will set them at ease. (Notice that in my response, I didn’t say that I’d provide a full list of questions — just a starting point!)

Next, when you create a deadline for myself and the interviewee and then meet it, you build additional trust before the interview has even started. When you share the process — that they’ll have a chance to review the copy before publication — they can let their guard down and not worry that a misstatement will make it into print.

This response — and the work that goes into it — will give your interviewees the confidence they need to be open and honest with you, because you have signaled that you will not let them fail.

I’ll add one more thing here: many people come very prepared to these interviews. Often, when I ask my final question of the interview — “Is there anything you wanted to add that we didn’t discuss?” — they will often refer to their notes. Occasionally, they will provide the best story or quote of the entire interview from their prepared notes! Everyone, including the reader, can benefit from this approach.

Code words: “Make me sound smart!”

What they’re really saying: I’m a little anxious about being quoted verbatim; I’d rather see a polished quote that captures my ideas accurately, rather than an exact one that makes me sound inarticulate.

The background: In your work, you’re likely talking to lots of folks who don’t consider themselves exceptional interviewers or haven’t spoken extensively about the topic you’re interviewing them about. They may understand that interviewees aren’t typically granted access to pre-publication drafts. They want to signal that it’s important they’re a bit flexible on their quotes as long as the larger ideas they’re trying to convey are correct.

How to respond: “I’m sure you’ll be great! If it helps to understand the process, you’ll have a chance to review all of your quotes before publication, which I expect will happen [WHEN]. It’s important to us that everyone is happy with the story before it’s published.”

Why it works: I like to give everyone a little nudge of encouragement before I get down to brass tacks: we want this story to succeed, and we’ll give them a bit of control over their words.

Even if I don’t promise that they can change their quotes (sometimes this makes sense, sometimes not!), they know that we’re all aiming at the same thing: a story that everybody’s happy with. This reassurance can help them be a bit more open and vulnerable in the interview than they might be otherwise.

Code words: “I’d be happy to take a look at this after you’ve written it.”

What they’re really saying: I’m not sure I trust that this story will be accurate, but I want to be diplomatic about my request. I need to know how carefully I need to speak during this interview. (A more direct version of this concern is “Will I have a chance to see this before it’s published?”)

The background: While anyone can ask a version of this question, you’ll probably hear it most often when you’re working with people who have expertise in technical areas (hard sciences, tech, etc.).

Why? They’ve probably been burned in the past. They may have been been misquoted or misinterpreted in some way. They may be wary, but they also know that they may not have much control over the process.

How to respond: “Oh, I’m so happy you brought this up. Let me share the process with you: after we talk, I’ll write up a draft, and my editor will take a crack at it. Once my editor has taken a look, you’ll also have a chance to review it for accuracy and to make sure your quotes are conveying what you intended. Because this is an alumni publication, it’s very important to us that everyone is happy with the finished story.”

Why it works: A clear explanation of a process can assure interviewees that you know what you’re doing — and that they will get a chance to weigh in on the story at the right time. Your response can help emphasize that everyone’s on the same page.