Cooking Up Connections
How food hits the spot when it comes to engaging donors, alumni, and campus communities
Homecoming without a football game. That was the conundrum facing the alumni relations team at University of the Pacific some 20 years ago when word came that the football program would be discontinued.
Kelli Page, Associate Vice President for Alumni Relations at the university, was director at the time, and she had an idea. It was a complete pivot.
That idea—the Taste of Pacific—has become the signature alumni event of the year at the California, U.S., university.
“We needed to start a new tradition that wasn’t associated with football,” recalls Page.
“California is known for its vineyards and wine production, and I knew we had several alumni vintners.”
About a dozen of them came out for the inaugural wine tasting event in 2004, which was held in June to further disassociate it from the football experience. Over the years, the event grew into a full festival complete with food pairings, music, classes about wine making, and commemorative wine glasses.
The Taste of Pacific eventually moved to the fall and is the anchor event of Pacific Homecoming and Family Weekend, which is held every October on the university’s rolling green Knoles Lawn in the late afternoon shadow of the iconic, Gothic-style Burns Tower.
The event now draws upwards of 600 people, with 20 to 30 alumni vintners representing all regions of California and the Pacific Northwest.
In 2017, the university publicly launched its capital campaign at the Taste of Pacific. In 2022, the university community celebrated the close of the “Leading with Purpose” campaign, which exceeded its US$300 million goal, with fireworks at the not-to-be-missed festival.
Reflecting on the success of the event, Page says, “Food crosses all generations, all economic stations, all cultures. It celebrates what we have in common and is the link to learning about our differences. It is a great connector for all of us.”
When broader and deeper engagement is a goal for advancement professionals, food and beverages are the ultimate tools for bringing people together. Food can entertain, fascinate, please, inform, and coalesce those who come to the proverbial table. Nothing says “welcome” like a taste of something special. Advancement professionals know that, and their culinary creativity is whetting the appetites of the constituencies they serve.
Monday Morning Coffee
About an hour and a half from University of the Pacific, Erin Dineen is the Director of Alumni Engagement at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Her engagement idea was simple: a free cup of coffee. But the results were anything but small.
“You can’t ask new graduates to donate and become active in the alumni association when they’ve had no interaction with the alumni office as students,” explains Dineen.
“Engaging law students is a bit different than undergraduates. They are at a different stage in life and are very focused on their studies during this intense three-year period.”
In 2019, Dineen started greeting students every Monday morning with coffee. It caught on, and students began to look forward to the ritual that helped ease them into the week. They started asking about alumni engagement programs, and many began to take advantage of the school’s alumni mentoring programs. “While the coffee is self-serve, I make a point to connect with the students. We have great conversations. I’ll show up with signs wishing them well on finals or welcoming them back at the start of the semester,” says Dineen. “During the pandemic, we sent a coffee mug to every student just to let them know we were thinking about them.”
And as the students graduate, they are staying involved, volunteering, and joining alumni chapter groups.
“The big picture is eventually philanthropy,” says Dineen. “But for me, right now, it is all about engagement. And that’s what’s happening, with many [alumni] telling me it started with a cup of coffee.”
Alumni Owned and Operated
“When I think about alumni engagement, it’s all about relationship-building, making connections, and celebrating what we have in common,” says Colleen O’Neil, Director of Alumni Engagement Programming at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, U.S. “Those experiences are elevated with food, and if you can bring in alumni-owned businesses to supply the food, all the better!”
Much like Dineen, O’Neil considered how she could make inroads with students before they become graduates. While at her recent post at UNC Asheville, she sponsored Student Philanthropy Week (a program she plans to continue and expand in her new role at UNC Wilmington), with free food as enticement.
“Students think of philanthropists as Bill Gates or Oprah,” says O’Neil. “The goal of the programming is to help them see they too can be philanthropists through small gifts and other forms of engagement.”
Student Philanthropy Week begins with “Get the Scoop on Philanthropy” with a local alumni-owned ice cream shop. An alumni-owned Mexican restaurant sponsors “Let’s TACO ‘Bout Philanthropy,” and an alumni-owned cookie business provides the treats for “Chip In for GIVE UNC Asheville.”
While there is a clear benefit in promoting alumni entrepreneurs, O’Neil says the bonus is that students love meeting successful graduates.
“They feel an immediate connection and sense of pride, and for some, it’s a chance to consider all the places a UNC Asheville degree can take you,” she says.
Kim Roeder, Director of Alumni Networks and Constituent Programs at Amherst College, Massachusetts, U.S., says food is the great connector and equalizer.
“It’s a lot easier to mingle with people you don’t know when you have something in your hand. It provides a level of comfort and a way to strike up a conversation,” she says.
When the pandemic hit, Roeder had to rethink event programming without food—or did she?
While global Zoom events became the rage in 2020/2021, she tried to develop regional programming in order to keep tight local communities together virtually. She called on alumna Lola Mulholland, founder of Umi Organic, a local ramen noodle company based in the Portland, Oregon, U.S., region. Amherst invited alumni from that region to a virtual cooking event with Mulholland in December 2020. Those who registered were sent the ingredient list in advance for the winter squash miso ramen recipe they would be following together.
“It was not a fast dish to make, which allowed plenty of time for engagement,” says Roeder. “People were asking Lola questions as they cooked. You could see everyone in their kitchens with kids, spouses, and roommates. And conversations developed about what was going on in that region, especially specific to the pandemic, like when schools would be opening.
“It turned out to be a very personal, intimate event. And we learned that even in virtual settings, food brings people together.”
Unexpected Pairings
Food and drink don’t just bring people together—in some cases that’s what gets them through the front door. Bill Friar, Director of Development at the Haberdashers’ Elstree Schools in Borehamwood, U.K., recalls such a scenario when he was Head of Development at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
At the time, several years ago, he was working to build a prospect pool for a major infectious disease research institute that was being planned in partnership with another university.
“Getting people to understand what it was all about, let alone get them interested, was tricky,” he says.
His solution? Pairing research presentations with wine tastings. Each event, held regularly on Wednesday evenings, was kept to under 20 donors and prospective donors and the researchers were asked to keep their presentations to 10 minutes with no more than three slides.
“If some months we had fewer than a dozen prospects there, all the better—it made it seem especially exclusive,” he says.
The concept proved popular and “helped build some good networks,” says Friar. “In retrospect, it was probably most effective in building trusting relationships with the researchers and with my development colleagues at the other university, rather than bringing in the big gifts, but it was easy and relatively inexpensive to run. It also helped educate us fundraisers about the research we were promoting.”
Tapping into Campus Programs
Other advancement professionals in higher education are creating unique food events by partnering with on-campus agricultural or food science programs.
For Ally Rumpakis, Director of Alumni Relations for the College of Agricultural Sciences at Oregon State University, U.S., featuring food at alumni events is a given. The Oregon Wine Research Institute and the OSU Research Brewery are both housed within the college, as is a creamery program.
The homecoming tailgate party would not be complete without the Beaver (OSU’s mascot) Classic food truck offering grilled cheese and chocolate chip ice cream—to name just two dairy favorites.
“One of the easiest ways to evoke nostalgia for alumni is through food,” says Rumpakis.
“And we are lucky at OSU because we have so many food and beverage items produced right here on campus. It’s easy to get people excited for an event when you are featuring beer, wine, cheese, and ice cream."
In fall 2022, rather than just offer food and drink at the homecoming tailgate, she offered an experience. The alumni team partnered with a College of Agricultural Sciences alumnus who founded the Crux Fermentation Project. In his ventures as Brewmaster, he created an open-air fermentation brewing system, the Gypsy Coolship. This one-of-a-kind brewing system was on display at the event, where alumni saw firsthand how the vessel uses natural yeast and bacteria to create spontaneous fermentation.
The OSU Research Brewery team was also on hand passing out samples of student-brewed beer. The beer that was brewed in the Coolship is now back at Crux’s home base and will be debuted at the college’s tailgate in fall 2023, with branding specific to OSU and Crux.
“Food is the great common denominator,” says Rumpakis. “And when you can pair alumni events with food and beverage unique to your institution, there is an added level of joy and pride.”
The Advancement Stewardship staff at the University of Idaho (U.S.) would surely agree. Since 2008, it has partnered with the Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences to support a holiday recipe contest with recipes created by dietetics majors. Alumni, donors, and community members serve as judges, selecting the winning recipe at a student-hosted tasting event.
“We know from surveys and anecdotal feedback that our donors and alumni love knowing what current students are doing,” says Jamie Wagner, Director, Advancement Communications. “They want to know our students and see their successes in a concrete way.”
Each year, the recipes are posted on the university website, while the advancement team shares them through alumni and stewardship channels, with the winning recipe included in the president’s holiday card. The recipes feature Idaho produce, such as lentils, chickpeas, dairy, beef, and potatoes. They often include a suggested pairing with wines from the Vandals (Idaho’s mascot) Uncorked wine club.
Holiday cheesy potatoes and baked butternut squash in pecan puff pastry are among recent winners. In 2021, recipes celebrated the university’s Brave and Bold comprehensive campaign, with the Bold Vandal Soup Shooter Combo winning the day.
“We are so proud to be part of this cherished tradition created by Family and Consumer Sciences,” says Jamie Wagner. “People tell us they’ve saved all the recipes through the years. It’s such a beautiful way to bring the campus community together and celebrate what makes us unique.”
Farm to Community
At institutions that have a working farm on campus, savvy advancement teams are finding they bring seemingly endless opportunities for engagement, relationship-building, and unique programming. A farm, it turns out, is the gift that keeps on giving.
North Country School and Camp Treetops has a 200-acre bucolic campus in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. The junior boarding and day school and residential summer camp has gardens, a horse pasture, and a farm full of crops and animals.
The U.S. school is a founding member of the Edible Schoolyard Project, a nonprofit organization that fosters education programs that use organic school gardens, kitchens, and cafeterias to teach academic subjects along with community-building and stewardship. North Country School students work on the farm, planting and harvesting the produce served on their plates each day.
On the farm, students collect and boil sap to make maple syrup—a highly sought-after and delicious commodity that is not only used in the campus kitchen but also gifted by the pint and quart annually as part of a donor premium program.
“Food is intertwined with everything we do here,” says Emily Eisman, Associate Director of Advancement. “Our alumni tell us their fondest memories are often connected to the farm and the kitchen.”
With that in mind, one of the most popular events at a recent alumni reunion was an afternoon of bread making, during which alumni reminisced about the homemade bread they enjoyed as students.
In 2020, as the pandemic headed into the fall season, Eisman was looking for a hook to energize Giving Tuesday. She came up with an idea that also addressed the needs of the day.
“The fact that no students were on campus did not stop our laying flock of hens from producing eggs. At the same time, local food pantries were in greater need than ever,” she says.
Eisman decided to incentivize Giving Tuesday by donating a dozen eggs to a local food pantry for every gift made.
In advertising the campaign, the school community had fun. Students posted chicken trivia on social media, and the puns kept coming as they shared the “egg-cellent” idea. “Egg-stra” credit came in the form of a chance to win a golden egg, with the prize of naming one of the lambs born in the coming spring.
Eisman set a goal of 50 donors, and at day’s end, received 85 donations, resulting in 85 dozen eggs for the food pantry. The Giving Tuesday campaign has continued into its third year with 130 donors in November 2022. The eggs now are distributed throughout winter break when the students are away from campus.
A Canadian university is also taking advantage of a campus farm. Prairie Urban Farm is a one-acre, mixed-crop community food system on the University of Alberta campus. Alumni work on the farm during the summer months as volunteers—planting, harvesting, building garden paths, and weeding. What draws them to the unique alumni engagement program is the end result: the produce is boxed and delivered to organizations that help needy families in the Edmonton area.
Courtney Wagner, Program Lead, Volunteers, in the university’s Office of Alumni Relations, and her team offer several food-related volunteer programs.
“Volunteerism is a great option for building alumni engagement,” she says. “Our programs are thriving because our alumni love to return to campus and have the opportunity to be productive, learn skills, and experience the satisfaction of helping others.”
Other alumni volunteer opportunities include “trick or treating” in the community to collect food donations for the Campus Food Bank. Alumni also volunteer through the university’s Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative to deliver groceries in the Edmonton area. The program centers on food dignity by providing culturally appropriate food options to immigrants and refugees.
“We hear it all the time—food brings people together. It is such an emotional experience. We have a lot of memories tied to food. We think of family and friends and traditions,” says Courtney Wagner. “It is also a basic need. … Families in our communities experience hunger every day. When you can play a part in alleviating food insecurity, even on a small scale, that is the ultimate way that food brings people together.”
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May - June 2023
Cooking Up Connections: How food hits the spot when it comes to engaging donors, alumni, and campus communities. Plus how to make the case for unrestricted gifts, use maturity models to spark transformation, untangle gifts with strings, and more.
