Roberto Sanchez-Mejorada is director of communication and institutional development at Anahuac University, a private Catholic university in Mexico City, Mexico. He has worked at Anahuac for more than 20 years in leadership roles in alumni relations, communications and development. In July, Sanchez-Mejorada completed a term as an at-large member of the CASE Board of Trustees. He currently serves as a member of the CASE Mexico Advisory Group. He can be reached at mejorada@anahuac.mx.

How has the advancement field changed in Mexico, and where is it headed?

When I began working at Anahuac University in 1987, we were a much smaller university with plans to grow. In the beginning, I worked in alumni relations. Out of 7,000 alumni, we had up-to-date contact information on just 10 percent of them. Within five years, we had built the database up to 92 percent.

At the same time, we started an alumni magazine, Anahuac Generation. Starting with a circulation of 3,000, it has now grown to almost 60,000, partly because Anahuac University is part of a global network of 15 universities operated by the Legionaries of Christ, a Catholic organization in Mexico. We finance the magazine entirely through advertising, mostly from alumni and their companies. It helps us join the idea of Anahuac as a "big family" with our educational model and the values of the university. Our motto is "vince in bono malum"-"conquer evil by doing good."

Under the leadership of our presidents, Raymund Cosgrave, succeeded by Jesus Quirce, I also began to work with campaign development and strategies to complete our campus master plan. Our decade-long $70 million campaign was completed in 2000. The wonderful thing is that more than 70 percent of the donations came from alumni or companies managed or owned by Anahuac alumni.

CASE has been our school for learning our profession. I have attended all the annual CASE Summits and several Summer Institutes. These conferences are a great opportunity to network and get a broader picture of what professionals are doing in different parts of the world in philanthropy and alumni relations.

I just finished a term on the CASE Board of Trustees. It was one of the most wonderful opportunities of my life and one that made me more aware of our responsibility to be more internationally aware.

What can you tell CASE members about the international opportunities and challenges ahead?

Our biggest challenge is to promote our profession around the world. In North America and the U.K., CASE is well-known. But in non-English speaking countries, we need to break the language barrier to share our services with more educational institutions.

Beyond the four-year colleges, we must also reach community colleges, vocational institutes and public universities by offering them our advancement resources.

To move forward, we must remove barriers of economics, language and culture.

We must establish a community of practices among our members within each country. Even though English is the international language of business, we should promote the practice of members publishing materials on their own advancement experience in their native languages on the CASE Web site.

In Latin America, one large barrier is economic. Young people have to work and they cannot dedicate time to study. In Mexico, less than 25 percent of young adults pursue higher education-the country hasn't been able to offer widespread educational opportunities. There is a strong need.

We also need to help foster a new attitude toward learning at all levels. There is a special opportunity here for community colleges, which are forming and growing quickly along with vocational schools in Mexico.

There is also a cultural challenge facing countries including Mexico, where 70 percent of all college students attend public institutions but may not think about becoming donors. Many people think we have a fundamental right to education. It's important to communicate that it's not just a right-those who receive education also should make a commitment to give back to their institutions and help provide for future generations.

Regarding alumni relations, one very important difference is that in Mexico, most students live with their families and attend university in their home cities and towns. At Anahuac, 80 percent of students live in the cities where they attend university. Throughout the nation, we have very little campus housing.

That makes the integration process so different. Many U.S. alumni live for years around their campus and immerse themselves in the sports and culture of their universities. And that creates attachment with the institutions and the brand.

What is the Mexico Advisory Group working on?

MAG recently held a strategic planning meeting in Chicago to help grow the profession in Mexico. We began with about 14 member institutions in 1996; now we're at 27. Our goal is to reach 60 members within three years. We have moved forward under the leadership of recent chair Oscar Sastre, who has been succeeded by Paola Ochoa, and with the help of great volunteers like Norma Aburto.

There is a great opportunity to grow CASE membership among public institutions, which now stand at 25 percent of our membership in Mexico. We are using CASE members to talk to public institutions about the value of CASE and to explain that CASE works for all institutions, whether they are publicly or privately financed. It was a very important strategic milestone when the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City, one of the largest Mexican public universities, joined CASE in 2004.

CASE can offer many best practices and tools to help them showcase and create awareness of what they are offering. We can also help them realize how public operating funds can be leveraged with fundraising to pay for research and other projects.

This article is from the September 2007 issue of BriefCASE.
Please share your questions and comments with Pam Russell via e-mail at russell@case.org or by telephone at +1-202-478-5680.