Your alumni aren't disengaged.
They're waving at you from inside your database. 👋
Your ideal donors are already out there — living in joyful anonymity in your data.
Alumni Identity™ helps you find them, understand them, and inspire them to give.
Most fundraising and engagement strategies focus on behavior.
But behavior is only part of the story.
Why do some alumni give — while others don't?
Why do some remain deeply connected for decades?
Because giving is not just an action.
It's an expression of identity.
Your team is tracking attendance, email clicks, and event registrations. But engagement is not the cause of philanthropy — it's the byproduct of something deeper. The alumni who give most generously don't necessarily show up to homecoming or open your emails. By every traditional measure, they look disengaged.
But they're not. They identify deeply with your institution. And identity — not engagement — is what drives giving.
What if your low engagement numbers aren't telling you what you think they are?
For over a decade, Dr. Jay Dillon has studied why some alumni give — and others don't. The answer isn't demographics. It isn't event attendance. It isn't how many times someone clicked a link.
It's identity.
Alumni who see themselves as part of their institution's story give more, give more often, and give at higher levels. The Alumni Identity framework — built on social psychology and validated across 42,000 alumni at 11 institutions — gives your team the tools to measure that identity, strengthen it, and use it to accelerate philanthropy.
Alumni Identity works with small and mid-size colleges and universities — particularly tuition-dependent institutions building the philanthropic foundation for a stronger, more sustainable future.
If your team is working harder than ever on engagement but not seeing the fundraising results you need, the problem probably isn't your people or your programs.
It's the framework you're using.
“The Alumni Identity Assessment helped us understand which of our engagement efforts - from social media to e-newsletters to events and volunteering - were directly related to increasing a graduate’s likelihood to give. ”
“I have enjoyed working with Jay because, as a Alumni and Annual Fund Director, he knows what information is vital to connecting alumni to their institution and then turning that deep affinity into long-term support.”
Jay Le Roux Dillon, Ed.D.
Jay Dillon is the Chief Alumni Officer & Strategist at UC Berkeley and the creator of the Alumni Identity framework — the only empirically validated model for predicting alumni philanthropic behavior based on identity rather than engagement.
His research spans 11 institutions and 42,000 alumni over eight years. His consulting work has helped colleges and universities across the country identify ideal donors they didn't know they had.
