Since alumni giving rates are in decline, advancement offices must identify new donor segments to cover their fundraising shortfalls. Because of this, more and more schools are turning their attention to an often-overlooked constituency:
Parents.
Parents are an ideal donor pool for higher education institutions. You know they've already bought in to your school's mission and have a strong vested interest in their child's experience and success.
But parents are not like every other donor segment. They've already invested in your institution and may feel that their tuition fees (sometimes substantial) are enough. Advancement offices need to adjust their approach to cultivating them as donors and focus on the concerns unique to them.
In this post, we'll cover some of the best ways to engage parents in your fundraising efforts and keep them invested in your institution's success throughout and beyond their child's academic career.
How Do I Develop a Strategy to Increase Donations from Parents and Families to Our University?
One thing that distinguishes parents from other donor segments is the smaller window for cultivation and engagement, which is why a strategy to increase donations from parents and families has to start early. Engage new parents in the freshman year, build a personal connection through parent-focused events and volunteer opportunities, create giving programs just for families, and show how their funding improves student success beyond academics. For university advancement professionals and fundraising teams like you, parents are some of the most passionate supporters of the school community, but many parents only stay closely connected while their child is enrolled, so parent engagement needs to happen quickly and with purpose.
The good news is that they're already primed to learn about what your school offers their child and what it needs to succeed. The bad news is that their affiliation usually only lasts as long as their child's enrollment. You need to act fast to bring them into the fold, increase awareness of the school's mission, and turn interested families into long-term potential donors.
Parental interest in your institution is generally highest during a student's freshman year, especially among new parents, when excitement is highest, and relationship-building is easiest. If you want more university donations from parents and families, connect with current parents as early as possible — ideally before their child even sets foot on campus — so your earliest outreach establishes trust, community, and a personal connection.
Your school likely has a department that's responsible for new student orientation, but many universities also provide parent-specific orientation. The University of Waterloo holds family orientation sessions ahead of the start of each school year. The University of Texas mails a New Parent Guide to all parents of incoming students as soon as enrollment is confirmed. Early parent engagement can also include family weekends and webinars on student success that introduce the school's mission.
Personalized communication and early outreach improve giving rates. Parents respond best to initiatives tied to tangible student outcomes and the student experience, so highlight the impact of donations on career development, health and wellness, campus life, and support for current students. That makes it easier for families to connect the value of your institution to their child's success beyond academics.
Host Parent Engagement-Focused Events
In our post on annual giving stewardship, we talked about the importance of in-person events in building a strong relationship with donors. The same is true of your parent population, because engaging parents for university giving works best when the focus is on relationship-building rather than just attendance.
Most colleges and universities host Parent and Family Weekends for their students and families to showcase their campus and put a friendly face on their institutions. McGill University had nearly 4000 parents registered for their annual Parents Tent, a three-day event for parents of first-year students to learn about campus services and to connect with other McGill families. Family weekends and webinars on student success are effective formats for engaging current parents as well as potential donors among family supporters.
Outside of campus-wide events, smaller events organized specifically for parents create a feeling of community and shared interest. And they don't have to be elaborate. Small receptions or program-specific events are an excellent way to engage parents in a more intimate setting. Use those gatherings to share impact stories and success stories that build awareness of how donations improve the experience of current students, since parents generally respond best to tangible student outcomes over institutional needs.
Parent-focused events allow parents to meet and network with other parents and build an affinity through their shared interest in their children's success.
Ask Parents to Volunteer
While most parents may be accustomed to fundraising pitches, they'll appreciate being engaged in more meaningful ways than just a request for money.
Substantive volunteer opportunities are important for creating the relationship between parents and your institution. Many schools have Parent Associations or Parent Committees that offer parents a way to get involved more directly with university initiatives, often as unofficial ambassadors for the school. A dedicated Parent Leadership Council can be an effective model for strengthening fundraising efforts and deepening parent engagement.
With access to the institution's leadership team, Parent Committees can make parents feel more like stakeholders and partners who have a say in shaping the university's direction and activities. Membership is usually by application, and making it exclusive increases the prestige of serving in this way. Strong Parent Committees also send a signal to prospective parent donors that your institution values their participation and understands that their concerns go beyond academic curricula.
Some schools, like Duke University and Cornell University, tie Parent Committee membership to parent philanthropy, and emphasize the importance of financial support to enhancing the student experience at the school.
The advantage of having parents interact with other parents and advocate for your institution is huge. Prospective parent donors are more likely to respond to a message when it comes from someone like themselves, whose interest in their child's success is deep. In addition, the parent-to-parent interaction paves the way for future peer-to-peer fundraising, which is especially effective for university parent programs when it comes to soliciting parent gifts. These volunteers often become active donors and can bring in friends through their own networks.
Create Specific Opportunities for Your Parent Giving Program
While Parent and Family programs have been on the rise in the past 10 years, the 2015 National Parent Program Survey found that only 29% of higher-education institutions run their Parent/Family program out of their advancement office, even though parent giving works best as organized fundraising campaigns rather than one-off asks and can strengthen support across a national university.
Rather than targeting parents with mass solicitations for annual giving, create specific programs for parent giving, set clear fundraising goals for these campaigns, and tailor your messages to highlight impact.
A dedicated Parent Leadership Council and peer-to-peer fundraising can strengthen these efforts. A dedicated Parent Fund is an excellent vehicle for encouraging parent and family giving. The University of Virginia uses its UVA Parents Fund page to highlight specific impacts of its grants to student activities and scholarships, because parents respond when they can see how gifts shape student outcomes and the institution's success.
Georgia Tech's Parent Fund for Student Life and Leadership specifically targets areas that impact student life on campus — from food and clothing to professional development activities, offering new ideas for appeals that can also resonate with young alumni and reinforce alumni giving to their alma mater.
Princeton University includes a dedicated Parents Fund as a component of its annual giving campaign. Their Parents Fund page highlights the fact that unrestricted gifts to the Parents Fund allow Princeton to help less-fortunate students cover gaps in financing. Transparent impact reporting also builds trust and encourages future donations.
For the smaller number of high-net worth parents, you should share your major gift roadmap with them early, and pave the way for a larger gift towards the end of their child's senior year. While not as common, a major gift can have benefits well beyond the four-year trajectory of a student's academic career. Predictive modeling and AI tools can help identify potential donors and guide cultivation for this segment, improving long-term funding for major campaigns.
Dartmouth College developed the Arc of Family Giving model to solicit top-rated parents for structured gifts of increasing value over multiple years — culminating in a senior year capstone gift. Recurring donors generate 2.4 times more revenue than one-time donors, which makes this kind of structured commitment especially valuable and can pair well with a giving day or a move-in day touchpoint.
Parents: Your Secret Weapon in Annual Giving
Parents represent an ideal donor pool for your institution's fundraising efforts, and parent and family giving should complement alumni giving rather than compete with it. Their solicitation cycles are shorter than those of alumni donors, and their interest is personal.
Best of all, engaging parents in institutional giving often leads to higher student engagement — which predicts higher engagement as alumni. Many parents are among a university’s most passionate supporters when they see how their gifts help the institution's success and the student experience.
However, your efforts to engage them must recognize their values and concerns when it comes to your institution. By showing the impact of their gifts on the student experience beyond the classroom, using transparent impact reporting to reinforce trust, and encouraging recurring donations—which generate 2.4 times more revenue than one-time donors—you can make them your allies and advocates. AI tools are increasingly used in university fundraising strategies, and predictive modeling anticipates donor behaviors based on past data.
No matter the campaign type, multichannel outreach should continue and can include annual appeals, a giving day, and mobile-friendly donation options. Approach them the right way and at the right time, and strong campaigns can turn family supporters into long-term donors to their child's alma mater while also reinforcing habits that later carry into young alumni support for years to come.