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It’s planning time of year in most universities. The time of year when you need to defend your existing resources (see my past blog) and justify any additional requests. Looking ahead to a tough year in HE and, probably, a tough year for fundraising, here is my budget checklist.

Ethics The Sackler debate has only just begun. Expect more stories and scrutiny around the source of funds donated by trusts, companies and individuals. Now is the time to invest in due diligence and review your practices and processes. The governance route for taking decisions as to who you will accept gifts from needs to be very strong. It’s not enough for the VC to have been given information and to have decided. He/she needs the assurance of a strong governance process to protect the reputational risk to the institution. If you haven’t the skills or capacity to review your ethics process, then seek external expert guidance. This is too big an issue to keep postponing; there will be no time to do this if you are enveloped by a crisis.

Prospect pipeline Economic uncertainty may turn into a post-Brexit downturn, so make sure your pipeline is healthy and check your major gift portfolios are working – now more than ever you need to prioritise and focus your energies on the best prospects. Many institutions are reviewing their prospect pipeline and the received wisdom around portfolio size is being challenged. One size doesn’t fit all, and you won’t find the answer as to what works for you by looking at the size and shape of other institutions’ teams – you will find it in robust analysis of your pipeline. If you haven’t got the skills or capacity to do this in-house, buy it in as a one-off piece of consultancy – it will reap rewards much more quickly.

Talent Good fundraisers are hard to find, so you need to keep the ones you have and develop their skills. Investment in coaching and training is a must. Ideally this should go beyond letting team members go to the odd conference (as useful as that can be). One-to-one coaching for your fundraisers can step-change their performance and enable them to explore prospect cultivation strategies, plan asks and deliver greater results. Team ‘asking training’ can build skills, teamwork and a shared culture around asking. Every team is different, so it’s vital that the training you buy in is tailored to your team’s specific needs. Bespoke coaching or training will cost you less than headhunting for a post if someone moves on, and is the best way to show that you are committed to your staff. Sometimes it’s valued more than even a pay-rise can be, and given that many institutions have pay freezes in place it might be the only thing you can do to show you care.

Case Does your case stand up against the negative mood music in the media and politics regarding universities? Can you answer the questions you might receive from prospects? Are your asks highly strategic? Can you demonstrate how your institution is playing its part – locally, regionally and internationally? Can you demonstrate value for money for your students? Now might be a good point to invest time and energy into reviewing and refreshing your case – cast a critical eye over your materials, revisit your ‘scripts’, review your proposals. In tough times you need the very strongest story in order to win support, and a case toolkit to act as a script for your fundraisers to go forth with.

Outsourcing Make sure you have the skills within your team to eloquently convey your strategy/case. This doesn’t have to be a staff communications post – it could be ad-hoc copywriting support from someone who understands fundraising communications. Money spent on outsourced communications support or a review of your fundraising materials could guide your team towards a powerful refresh. This is probably a better and more flexible way to invest in this area than fighting for another team member and locking budget in recurring salary expenditure – let alone finding desk space and buying the computer etc. You could also consider outsourcing other jobs to plug skills gaps in your team.

Campaign planning Don’t put off your campaign plans because of uncertainty in the economy or sector – campaigns look to the longer term. The current storms will pass and regardless of what the sector looks like at the end of the storm philanthropy will still matter, maybe more than ever. If you plan now you can set a 5-10-year journey for philanthropy at your institution. Looking longer term is the diligent thing to do, and investment in campaign planning will help you to do so with confidence. Building enough money into your budget for a robust campaign feasibility study is the ideal route. If that proves too expensive, or you are not quite ready for it, then it’s at least worth considering putting in some budget for high-level strategic advice to support you to work with senior leadership on framing what a campaign might look like.

Get your University leaders fit for fundraising VCs, DVCs and Deans may need support to engage in the fundraising process and be involved in cultivation and asking. This is often best done through the combination of a workshop and 1:1 coaching so that you develop a team approach but also give them a safe space in which to test out their skills. Given that you will need them to get involved, this investment really is crucial, and an external trainer can say things to them that you simply can’t. Whether you are in campaign, planning a campaign or simply in business as usual mode, this kind of training is valuable.

Restructure support If your team isn’t performing as you hope or if you are being pushed towards making significant cost-cutting measures, now may be the time to invest in a resources review so you can be sure that you are restructuring your team in the most effective way to protect fundraising income and deliver your work as efficiently as possible. It’s hard to do it as the leader of the team, so investing in professional support will be money well spent. It will help you to objectively identify changes you can make, benchmark your resourcing against other institutions and consider what you need to deliver best value from your pipeline. Better to invest in robust analysis than make blunt cuts that cause long-term damage to income.

If you are considering building these kinds of investments into your plans and budgets and would like more detailed information and costings contact the Halpin team.

Susie Hills is Joint CEO of Halpin Partnership, a management consultancy designed specifically for the needs of the higher education sector. We are the home of experts in fundraising, strategy, governance and marketing.

Our equalities work with Royal Centre School of Speech and Drama, a world-leading conservatoire, focused on race equality. It came from a commission by Central to assess the BAME student and staff experience, factors affecting recruitment and retention, and external perceptions of BAME students and professionals as a specialist institution.

Download the full Report here.

Understanding the sensitive context in which the brief was presented, Halpin fellows were drawn upon by specialism including strategy and HR to develop a highly focused review that had meaningful and considered staff and student consultation at its heart. As the profile of the review developed internally, so did the scope, becoming more comprehensive due to the positive impact and perception of the organisation from its staff and students.

Our work with Central addresses how to operationally deliver changes to policy and practice alongside a clear plan of execution informed by the staff and student body.

Outcomes

• Full comprehensive evidence and opinion-gathering via survey respondents.17 individual staff interviews and 68 members of staff and students consulted via discussion groups.
• Detailed research and analysis on sector trends and benchmarking, culture, student recruitment, admissions and communications.
• Recommendations for a plan for operational implementation of the recommendations.
• Support around the communication and dissemination of the findings to the board, staff and student body.

Halpin Partnership, a management consultancy specialising in higher education, is pleased to welcome Bob Rabone to its growing team of Consulting Fellows.

Bob was recently a member of the Steering Group which produced the Financial Sustainability Strategy Group’s report ‘Understanding the Impact of Income Cross-Flows on Financial Sustainability in the UK Higher Education Sector’.

Bob is a Chartered Accountant with over 30 years of commercial experience as a Finance Director with private and public companies, operating in a range of sectors. For 12 years to July 2017 Bob was the Chief Financial Officer of the University of Sheffield with responsibility for Finance, Estates, IT, Accommodation and Commercial Services.

He began his career training with Coopers & Lybrand (now part of PricewaterhouseCoopers) before joining a medium-sized accountancy firm offering consultancy services in financial planning, funding and information technology to a range of clients: from owner managed enterprises to public companies. A common thread through all of Bob’s executive roles has been the development of clear organisational strategies during periods of business growth or change.

Bob was chair of the British University Finance Directors Group from 2013 to 2016 and contributed to several HE sector reviews, such as the Diamond Efficiency, Effectiveness and Value for Money review. A focus of his activity in the HE sector has been to aid the better understanding of financial performance and financial sustainability by funders, regulators, governors, staff and students. This focus continues as a member of the sector’s Financial Sustainability Steering Group.

Joint CEO Susie Hills commented, “The breadth and depth of experience that Bob brings to Halpin is unrivalled. He is a respected finance expert and is already delivering great value to our clients.”

I realised recently that 2019 marks my 25th year in international higher education. This made me pause to reflect on what has changed over that period.

This article highlights three key changes – one at individual/operational unit level, one at organisational level and one at national/international level – and speculate briefly on what the future looks like. Observations are based mainly on the UK context, but some elements may resonate in other parts of the world.

Approaches to international engagement have become more professional The last 25 years have seen a marked professionalisation of International Office roles and operating practice. There are clearly demarcated functions, with career paths and opportunities for professional development. It isn’t just assumed that, if you work in an International Office, you can turn your hand to anything vaguely ‘international’.

Decisions are driven more by insight, market intelligence, data and evidence – and less by gut feel. In the early days, before international student recruiters really had regional specialisms, some people seemed to have landed themselves a plum role as ‘international officer for small islands in the sun’. They would pop up seemingly randomly in Mauritius, Cyprus or Penang.

Now, there is robust strategy behind international engagement plans, with expenditure needing to be justified, business cases made and return on investment measured.

In late 2016, I interviewed eight Senior International Officers (those in Vice-President, Director, Head of Office roles) from several different countries for an article published in the European Association for International Education’s Forum magazine on ‘the shifting profile of the modern international officer’.

Their stories tended to be a variation on my own (studied languages, spent time overseas, liked building intercultural relationships, fell by chance into an International Office role and worked their way up). They observed that, in future, they foresee ever greater professionalisation, with specialist roles requiring regional knowledge, geo-political nous, specific skillsets and the ability to straddle cultures.

Institutional understanding of internationalisation has broadened and deepened

Another major change is the integration of an international ethos across entire institutions, rather than ‘responsibility for international’ being vested within an International Office silo.

An academic colleague, whom I interviewed in the early 2000s, commented that the aspiration of any International Office should be to ‘do itself out of a job’. In other words to make itself redundant because an international perspective has become fully embedded in the thinking and actions of every single member of staff, and in every strategy and process.

When I conducted a national survey of UK HEIs in 2005, all respondent institutions had an international student recruitment strategy but far fewer had a broad internationalisation strategy. For many, internationalisation was equated to international student recruitment, with lip service paid to other activity strands.

Since then, there has been increasing understanding that attracting international students is just one small element of internationalisation. Most UK HEIs have recognised that having (and fostering) a global outlook is an important part of being a university on multiple levels. This has increasingly been reflected in strategy and infrastructure.

Institutional strategies started to include an explicit international dimension and were often supported by a dedicated internationalisation strategy. Other supporting strategies (e.g. Learning and Teaching; Student Experience; HR; Marketing) began to adopt a more global perspective. Many more Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International/Global Experience) posts were created to lead internationalisation efforts, foster an international ethos and coordinate activity across all functions.

Certain functions that used to sit firmly within the International Office (e.g. international student support; international exchanges; international marketing and student recruitment) were gradually brought into the mainstream. They were aligned more closely with (or, in many cases, absorbed into) other relevant professional services, recognising the benefits of inclusivity and embeddedness over segregation and silo working.

But there is another layer to consider. Concerns exist not just about whether internationalisation is fully integrated, but whether the type of internationalisation being pursued is ethical and sustainable (for all concerned). That is a question that only a few UK institutions are beginning to grapple with, but is likely to come under increasing scrutiny.

The external context has become increasingly challenging

It is tempting to look back with rose-tinted spectacles to the time when the UK was seen as an outward-looking nation and government policies supported a widely held perception that students and staff from beyond our islands would be welcomed with open arms.

From 1994/95 to the end of the first decade of the 21st century, international student enrolments grew and grew (despite the Asian financial crisis of 1997, despite the SARS and bird flu outbreaks of the early 2000s). Tony Blair’s 1999 Prime Minister’s Initiative provided an additional boost and sent out positive signals to the rest of the world.

The Post-study work route (PSW) was introduced in 2004, making the UK an even more attractive destination – until the 2010 election when the aim to reduce net migration to the ‘tens of thousands’ was positioned as the centrepiece of UK migration policy. Immigration requirements started to tighten in 2011 and PSW was closed in 2012. There was a refusal to consider removing international students from the net migration target.

Growth slowed drastically and damage has been further exacerbated since the Brexit referendum campaign. The rhetoric of the Leave campaign and large swathes of the media left the UK looking insular and xenophobic.

HEIs and individuals working in them have expended a huge amount of energy and effort trying to counteract these impressions. Although frustrating, this has perhaps been good for us.

It could be argued that we had become complacent about our ability to attract overseas talent. That we took for granted other countries’ interest in partnering with us. That we were concerned only about maximising income. That it was all take and no give.

Recently, UK institutions have had to do some soul-searching about different ways to ‘be international’. For example, there is much greater focus (at institutional and national level) on the outward mobility of domestic students.

The critical ‘international’ question for leaders within the UK HE sector over past decades tended to be ‘how do we make the UK as attractive as possible for international students?’. Some are now seriously addressing another question: ‘how do we equip our domestic graduates to thrive in a world where they constantly need to engage across cultural boundaries?’

Perhaps our recent challenges as a sector will force this higher up the agenda at more institutions? (Or perhaps financial constraints post-Augar will send us scuttling back to a fixation on maximising income from international student fees?)

And the next 25 years?

At the time of writing (early March 2019), it’s difficult to know where we’ll be next month, let alone in 25 years’ time.

I hope that, over coming years, we will critically engage with the ‘why’ of internationalisation (perhaps embracing the continental European perspective that it is ultimately about enhancing quality), question our practice from an ethical and sustainability point of view and remember that the benefits of internationalisation should be felt by all stakeholders.

If, in 25 years’ time, it is second nature to consider the global implications of our decision-making without prompting, we’ll be further ahead than we are today.

Dr Vicky Lewis is a Consulting Fellow for Halpin Partnership – a leading higher education management consultancy. Follow us on LinkedIn for more insight, news and comment. This article is a shortened version of one first published here.