For Colleges, Universities and Independent Schools
Your lapsed alumni are not lost. 83% of them are giving elsewhere.
The generosity is intact. The relationship thinned. Gratefully reads the advancement records you already keep and tells your team who to contact this week, and why.
In short. 77% of alumni give to charity, but only 31% of those donors gave to their alma mater last year, and 10% of Gen Z. The generosity is intact, the relationship thinned. Gratefully ranks who on your own file to contact now, with the reasoning attached and a source behind every number.
On this page
The finding that should change how you plan next year
Advancement teams talk about lapsed donors as though those people stopped being generous. The national data says the opposite, and it is not close.
The 2025 RNL National Alumni Survey collected responses from more than 50,000 alumni across 21 institutions. It found that 83% of alumni who had given to their alma mater at some point but not in the past year were actively supporting other causes. Among alumni who report never having given to their institution at all, 59% were still giving elsewhere.
Your lapsed file is not a list of people who stopped giving. It is a list of people who are giving to someone else. That is a different problem, it has a different solution, and it is a far better problem to have.
What the national data actually says
Every figure is named, dated and sourced. We do not publish numbers we cannot point at.
| Finding | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Alumni who say being philanthropic matters to them | 81% | RNL 2025 National Alumni Survey |
| Alumni who made charitable gifts | 77% | RNL 2025 |
| Of those donors, gave to their alma mater last year | 31% | RNL 2025 |
| The same figure among Millennials | 19% | RNL 2025 |
| The same figure among Gen Z | 10% | RNL 2025 |
| Lapsed alma mater donors actively supporting other causes | 83% | RNL 2025 |
| Higher education as a top giving priority, Silent Generation | 52% | RNL 2025 |
| The same, Gen Z | 18% | RNL 2025 |
| Alumni who donate once a month or more | 47% | RNL 2025 |
| Alumni feeling burdened by student loan debt | 20%, up from 11% | RNL 2025 |
| Alumni saying debt is NOT important to their alma mater giving decision | 57% | RNL 2025 |
| Gen Z ranking debt ‘very important’ to that decision | 44%, against 35% of Millennials and 17% overall | RNL 2025 |
| Alumni who donate because they care deeply about the cause | 81% | RNL 2025 |
| Alumni who donate because they are passionate about what they are asked to support | 74% | RNL 2025 |
| Most valuable channel for staying connected, across all generations | Email, 69% | RNL 2025 |
| Volunteers who have also donated, against non-volunteers | 81% against 50% | RNL 2025 |
| Alumni who gave more than $10,000 who were active volunteers | 72% | RNL 2025 |
| Total giving to US higher education, year ending 30 June 2025 | More than $78 billion, up 4% | CASE Insights on Voluntary Support of Education, 14 April 2026 |
| Contributions designated for a specific use | 81% | CASE Insights 2025 |
Two of those rows sit oddly together on purpose. Sector giving passed $78 billion and rose 4%, while participation keeps thinning. More money is arriving from fewer people, which is precisely the condition in which knowing your own file matters more than buying a bigger list.
Why participation falls even when generosity does not
The survey points at three things an advancement team can act on.
Connection weakened, not generosity. Fewer than one third of alumni in any generation feel “very connected” or “connected” to their alma mater, with a further 32% feeling only “somewhat connected”. Satisfaction with the student experience falls from 72% among the Silent Generation to 42% among Gen Z. The willingness to give is intact. What thinned is the relationship.
And satisfaction is not a soft measure. Alumni who report being “very satisfied” with their student experience are 18 times more likely to have given in the past year than neutral alumni, and 73 times more likely than dissatisfied ones. As the report's own conclusion puts it, this is not something an advancement team can fix alone.
Debt matters to younger alumni, but it is not the main story. This one is easy to overstate, so here is the full picture. 20% of alumni feel burdened by student loan debt, up from 11% the year before, and 44% of Gen Z rank debt as very important to whether they give to their alma mater, against 17% overall. But a majority of alumni, 57%, say debt is not important to that decision at all. What outranks it is purpose: 81% give because they care deeply about the cause and 74% because they are passionate about what they are being asked to support. The report's reading is that debt is a roadblock that can be navigated when the giving opportunity matches what an alumna actually cares about.
Your volunteers are your donors. 81% of alumni who volunteer with their institution have also given, against 50% of non-volunteers, and 72% of those who gave more than $10,000 last year were active volunteers. Among alumni who volunteer, 36% feel “very connected” to the institution, against 5% of those who never volunteer. In the open responses the most common theme was alumni who wanted to help and did not know what was available.
None of that is solved by scoring your file for wealth. It is solved by knowing who has already raised a hand, and reaching them before the signal goes cold.
On gift officer turnover, the number the sector gets wrong
This matters for advancement because a major gift cycle is measured in years and staffing is measured in months. But the figure everyone repeats is not supported.
The frequently repeated short-tenure claim traces to consultancy research from around 2013 that we have never been able to read in the original.
The peer-reviewed figure is different. A study by the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, surveying 1,663 US fundraisers, found mean current job tenure of 3.6 years, with a median of 2 years, and mean tenure across all their fundraising jobs of 3.9 years.
The authors state plainly that fundraisers' tenure shows “a greater range” and “lower intention to leave their organizations and profession than commonly thought.”
We are telling you this because it makes the real problem clearer, not smaller. Even at 3.6 years, a twenty-year alumni relationship passes through five or six officers. The issue was never how often people leave. It is that when they do, nothing they knew survives the handover. What transfers is a giving history and a few notes. Everything about why the relationship worked leaves with them.
That is a knowledge problem, and it is fixable.
What this data does and does not imply about software
Most of what the RNL findings point to is not a software problem, and we would rather say that than pretend otherwise.
Shifting from loyalty language to purpose, reporting impact so an alumna can see what her gift did, building volunteer opportunities worth doing, improving the student experience that sets all of this up years in advance: those are institutional choices about strategy and staffing. No tool buys you any of them. The report's own conclusion says the responsibility “cannot rest on the shoulders of the advancement team alone”, and the honest reading is that most of the work here belongs to people, not systems.
Two things in the data are different, because they are retrieval problems rather than strategy problems.
Knowing who in your own file is already signalling. The 83% finding only helps if you can identify which of your lapsed alumni have history worth working, and what that history was. On a file of thirty thousand records that is not a judgement call a person can make by scrolling. It is a question that has a correct answer sitting in data you already own, and answering it quickly is what changes whether anyone acts on it this week.
Keeping what your team knows. At a median tenure of two years, the reasoning behind a relationship has to live somewhere other than one person's memory, or the next officer starts from a giving history and a few notes.
That is the whole of what we claim. If you are choosing between a tool and hiring a second gift officer, hire the officer. If the officers you have are spending their weeks deciding who to call rather than calling, that is the gap this closes.
What Gratefully does for an advancement team
Grace, the assistant inside Gratefully, reads your records, documents, notes and correspondence, builds a private knowledge graph your institution owns, and works through your portfolio overnight.
| What you get | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| A ranked daily action list | Who needs attention now, in priority order, with the reason on each card and one-click next steps: draft an email, prepare a call brief, log an interaction, or snooze |
| Answers with citations | Ask in plain language and get an answer grounded in your actual records, cited and specific |
| Calculated figures, not estimated ones | Reports use exact numbers from your data, never approximations |
| Living donor segments | Every donor is automatically classified as Champions, Loyal, New, At-Risk, Lapsed, Lost and more, from the recency, frequency and value of their giving. Scores refresh nightly and immediately after every import, and each segment explains in plain English what it means and what to do |
| Drafted outreach in your institution's voice | Re-engagement appeals, cultivation letters, thank-you and stewardship notes, year-end asks and planned giving openers, grounded in real giving history. |
| Morning digest and weekly recap | Your top priorities in your inbox before the day starts, and a portfolio health summary each week |
| Handover dossiers | When an officer leaves, Gratefully generates a branded package for every donor in their portfolio, viewable in-app and exportable as PDF, with giving history, relationship stage, recommended next steps and risk flags |
What we do not do
Being plain about this saves everyone a demo.
No wealth screening and no capacity ratings. We do not buy or append external wealth data and we do not produce a capacity score. Where Gratefully surfaces something like a business sale or an inheritance, it is because somebody on your team already wrote it in a note and it had been forgotten, not because we rated anyone from the outside. If what you need is capacity ratings on your whole file, DonorSearch, Kindsight and Windfall are built for that question and we are not a substitute.
No prospect research on people who are not yours. We read your records. We do not go and find new names in external databases, and we do not append social or demographic data.
No grant writing. Corporate and foundation relations is a different job with different tools.
No whole-file predictive scoring for an appeal. If you are mailing 60,000 alumni and want modelling to cut that to 40,000, that is what Dataro does and it does it well. We work the other direction: one officer, one portfolio, one week at a time.
Not a CRM and not an alumni community platform. We do not replace Raiser's Edge, Ellucian, Jenzabar or Salesforce Advancement, and we do not do mentorship, networking or event management the way PeopleGrove, Hivebrite or Almabase do. We sit on top of the records you already keep.
Three questions to ask in your first week
These are real questions the product answers. We have deliberately not printed sample results, because the answer depends entirely on your file and an invented example would tell you nothing.
- “Who are my top lapsed donors from last year?” Against the 83% finding above, this is the list worth working first, because these are people with history who are demonstrably still giving somewhere.
- “Which donors haven't been contacted in over six months?” The quiet failure in moves management. People still giving to you while nobody is in contact.
- “What is the giving history and relationship context for this donor?” Pulls records, notes, correspondence and uploaded documents into one answer, with the sources named.
A note on how the questions work. Gratefully answers in plain language over whatever your records actually hold, so if a field is in your CRM and syncs, you can ask about it. What it does not do is ship a fixed set of higher-education segment definitions. Its automatic segments are based on recency, frequency and value of giving, not on class year or constituency codes.
It works with the CRM you already have
There is no migration and no data project. Gratefully connects to Salesforce for Nonprofits, Bloomerang and Little Green Light, syncing automatically overnight, plus Mailchimp, CSV import and document upload for everything else. Every integration is included on every plan, including the free one.
One precision worth stating, because it matters in higher education. Our Salesforce connector covers Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud and NPSP. It is not the same product as Salesforce Advancement on Education Cloud, which many universities run, and we do not have a direct connector for that. Institutions on Salesforce Advancement, Raiser's Edge NXT, Ellucian CRM Advance or Jenzabar work through CSV and document upload today. Your CRM stays the system of record either way.
What it costs
Start on the Free plan at $0 for one person, free forever, no card. Every new account begins with a 14 day trial of Advanced, our top plan, and moves to Free when the trial ends rather than locking. Paid plans are $79, $399 and $799 a month. Full detail on the pricing page.
Worth knowing before you plan around it: the Free plan is genuinely permanent rather than a countdown, but it is metered. It covers one person, five things to do each week and ten AI answers a month, with your donors kept in sync throughout. It is enough to judge whether the product is right for you. It is not enough to run an advancement office on.
On putting alumni data into AI tools
Alumni records are not ordinary contact data. They carry giving histories, family relationships, staff notes and, in many institutions, information covered by FERPA. Consumer AI plans do not come with the agreements those obligations require.
Identifying details are removed before anything reaches a language model, your data never trains anyone's AI, and each institution sits in an isolated tenant. If you are writing the rules for your own team first, our AI acceptable use policy template is free and ungated.
Frequently asked questions
Do we have to move off Raiser's Edge, Ellucian, Jenzabar or Salesforce Advancement?
No. Gratefully reads the system you already use and your CRM stays the system of record. Our direct connectors are Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud and NPSP, Bloomerang and Little Green Light. Note that Salesforce Advancement on Education Cloud is a different product and is not covered by that connector, so institutions on it, or on Raiser's Edge NXT, Ellucian or Jenzabar, work through CSV and document upload. Nothing is migrated in either case.
Is this wealth screening or prospect research?
Neither. We do not rate capacity, tell you what someone could give, or append external wealth and social data. We rank the people already on your file by what they have actually done, and show the reasoning. If you need capacity ratings, a screening vendor is the right tool.
How is this different from EverTrue, Gravyty or Almabase?
They solve different problems. EverTrue builds insight partly from external wealth indicators and social data; we read only your institution's own records and never rate capacity. Gravyty and Almabase are strongest on engagement, events and digital giving programmes. None of them is replaced by us and we do not replace them.
Does it score alumni engagement against the CASE engagement metrics?
Not as a built-in framework, and we would rather say so than imply it. Gratefully's automatic segments are based on the recency, frequency and value of giving, so they cover the philanthropic mode well and the other three only to the extent your records hold them and you ask about them directly. If your institution scores engagement across all four CASE modes today, that stays in your CRM or your engagement platform.
What about FERPA and student records?
Treat student records as out of scope unless you have decided otherwise and documented it. Identifying details are redacted before anything reaches a language model, data is never used for training, and each institution has an isolated tenant. Our PII redaction whitepaper sets out the mechanism, and the free policy template includes a section on regulated data.
Does it understand class years and reunion cohorts?
You can ask about any field your CRM holds and syncs, including class year, so a question about a reunion cohort is answerable that way. But there is no purpose-built reunion or class-year segmentation, and its automatic segments are giving-based rather than cohort-based. If reunion campaign segmentation is the core of what you need, your advancement CRM does that job better today.
What happens to donor knowledge when a gift officer leaves?
That is what handover dossiers are for. The knowledge graph belongs to the institution, not the individual, so notes, correspondence and history stay and can be handed to whoever picks up the portfolio. Even at the peer-reviewed mean tenure of 3.6 years, a long alumni relationship will pass through several officers.
Do we have enough data for this to work?
The segments are built from recency, frequency and value of giving, so the more giving history you have, the more useful the ranking is. A file with almost no history gives any tool very little to read, and we would rather say that now than after you have imported it. You can also seed a sample portfolio in one click to see how the product behaves before importing a single record, then clear it when your real data arrives.
Does it work for independent schools as well as universities?
Yes, and in some ways it suits them better, because a two or three person advancement office feels the loss of a departing colleague harder than a large shop does. One caveat on the data on this page: the RNL survey covers alumni of higher education institutions, so do not assume the generational figures transfer unchanged to a school file where parent giving sits alongside alumni giving.
Can it find alumni we have lost touch with, or new prospects?
It cannot find people who are not in your records, and it does not do address or contact appends. What the data suggests is more productive anyway is the 83% of your lapsed donors who are demonstrably still giving elsewhere, because with them you already have history to work with.
How long does setup take?
There is no implementation project, because nothing is being migrated. Once a source is connected, segment scores refresh nightly and also immediately after every import, and you can trigger a portfolio scan on demand whenever your data changes rather than waiting for the overnight run.
Does it replace our annual fund segmentation?
No, and it is aimed at a different job. Annual fund segmentation decides who receives which appeal. Gratefully decides what one person should do this week with the people in their portfolio. Our annual fund page covers the first job.
Sources
- RNL 2025 National Alumni Survey, Ruffalo Noel Levitz. More than 50,000 alumni across 21 institutions. Read the report.
- CASE Insights on Voluntary Support of Education 2025, Council for Advancement and Support of Education, released 14 April 2026. 670 participating US institutions. CASE applied an updated methodology for the 2025 cycle. Read the report.
- Turnover Intention and Job Tenure of U.S. Fundraisers, Shaker, Rooney, Nathan, Bergdoll and Tempel, Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, Indiana University. n=1,663, fielded late 2015. Read the study.
- Social Impact Staff Retention Report 2026, n=412, collected fall 2025.