We expect that this project will significantly raise our understanding about the motivations, perceptions and intentions of alumni towards their Greek Associations. Collectively, it will help us craft better fundraising appeals, design more effective strategies for alumni/ae engagement, and identify where investment is best placed to increase philanthropic support.

Every fraternity and sorority in the project will receive a series of confidential reports containing the results and findings for their own organization. This includes:

1. Aggregate data from every survey question asked of their members and, subdivided by meaningful demographic categories
   (e.g. age, giving history, etc.), as well as comparisons to national figures and a “peer group” of fraternities or sororities.
2. An Observation and Recommendation Report highlighting key findings from their members and accompanied with
   conclusions and strategic guidance from the research.
3. A Performance Benchmark Report revealing fundraising statistics about their own members’ participation in philanthropy,
   as well as a confidential performance comparison to national figures and their “peer group” of fraternities or sororities.

Participating organizations will also receive invitations to attend future industry events and webinars on implementing the findings from the research.

Yes, you will! We’ve retained the data of those fraternal organizations who participated in 2020 so that we can track how the response of their alumni and donors has changed over the intervening five years. One of the big benefits for returning organizations is that you will be able to see how the opinions and intentions of your alumni have changed over time. So, if your organization has changed its approach to communications, implemented new programs, or even enhanced how it engaged with alumni, we will be able to detect the impact of those efforts in the survey.

In addition, we expect key sections of the survey to be updated to reflect the issues and interests of fraternal organizations today (taking into consideration a post-pandemic world), shifting the research in new directions and providing new insights. To influence the 2025 study, we encourage key stakeholders to complete this survey by November 1, 2024.

It doesn’t matter if your fraternity or sorority was not part of the 2020 study. We would be thrilled for you to participate this time. The only difference for new organizations is that we won’t be able to show changes in their survey results from past iterations (2011, 2015, 2020). Otherwise you will receive exactly the same reports and have the same experience as all other Greek Associations.

The exact question topics will be developed over the coming months with the participation of the Greek Associations in this research, but we expect topics to include:

• Fundraising case statements and their impact
• Participants’ attitudes, preferences and philanthropic intentions towards their fraternities and sororities
• Expectations for communications and content
• Expectations and desire for donor stewardship and other related donor retention strategies
• Transitioning alumni to donors
• Participants’ engagement and volunteerism
• Participants’ philanthropic capacity, and giving to other organizations
• Demographic and attitudinal information from alumni

To influence the 2025 study, we encourage key stakeholders to complete this survey by November 1, 2024.

Reports for each individual fraternity or sorority become their own property at the conclusion of the project. They are confidential and will not be shared with other organizations. National aggregate reports will become the property of the Foundation for Fraternal Excellence who will be responsible for sharing this information among its members and donors.

All fraternal foundations are eligible to participate in the research project.

Each participating fraternity or sorority foundation must be willing to share their database records with Cygnus Applied Research so they can administer the survey to your members. Cygnus will provide each organization with detailed instructions on how to gather and upload database records and has an experienced team who can answer almost any question on data transfer. (More information about Cygnus and the security of your data is included in this document.)

We would ideally like to receive the following from each group:

• The last five years of member/donor database records. This is so we can calculate performance benchmarks as well as determine who should receive the survey.
• The current email addresses of alumni and donors so we can invite them into the research. Ideally, each fraternity or sorority will have a minimum of 5,000 active emails for its alumni and/or donors. However, the larger the number of emails, the better the outcome.

If your organization has a small number of emails on file, please talk to us, as we can always explore other solutions to get alumni into the survey, such as through your social media pages.

• Can view the recording of the kickoff session at Seminar and the the special FFE-Cygnus 2020 Webinar Series
• Receive the aggregate national findings report and related materials, including the expanded slides from Seminar
• Receive custom, organization-specific reports comparing their members to the national findings provided directly from Cygnus. If you have questions about your organization’s individual results, contact Jeff Dubberley.

• Can view the recording of the kickoff session at Seminar as well as the FFE-Cygnus 2020 Webinar Series
• Receive the aggregate national findings report and related materials, including the expanded slides from Seminar

• Can view the recording of the kickoff session at Seminar

• The full 99-page national data report
• Recordings of the project kickoff session at Seminar and the six-part webinar series from Fall 2020 that takes a deep dive into the data