🕵️ The Paladin Report (August 2025)
How does Furman engage with alumni, with new director of Alumni Engagement, Ford Riddle.
Welcome to The Paladin Report — a new monthly publication investigating key aspects of Furman’s administration, academic culture, and student life.
This month, we focus on how Furman engages with alumni! The following is an edited version of an exclusive interview with Ford Riddle, Furman’s new director of Alumni Engagement.
We hope you enjoy the insight.
Tell me about yourself and your role at Furman?
I'm the director of Alumni Engagement here at Furman. Before this position, I was senior director of development and unit lead for the College of Engineering at Clemson. Before that, I was vice president at United Way of Greenville County. Before that, I was director of major gifts at Furman, so I spent the bulk of my time in major gifts fundraising. Eventually, I moved more into engagement with United Way, and then at Clemson, I did both. I'm delighted to be on the engagement side for Furman now.
I graduated from Furman in 2012 and majored in political science. I absolutely loved my time here. My experience was somewhat unique—I had a single mom who was terminally ill at the time, and I really owe a lot to my professors, friends, and folks who worked in administration who checked in on me and helped get me across the finish line at Furman. It was a big call for me to come back to Furman. This is a special place that did a lot for me. I'm not just doing this as a job—Furman is a place I believe in, and I want to give my time back and see Furman prosper in the years to come.
You've been an alum for 13 years. What was your experience of alumni engagement from the alum side? What do you think Furman did well, and where do you want to push for improvement?
I think one of Furman’s main strengths is its organic community. I'll focus on our professors as an example. You have professors at Furman who could be at R1 institutions or at other places more focused on research, and perhaps making more money.
Instead, they're choosing to be at Furman because they really care about the student experience. They're not just academic mentors, they're life mentors all the way around. Both as an alum and during my fundraising period, it always came back to those relationships. They’re our strength. If you talk to folks at other colleges, they just don't have that kind of ingrained culture and experience.
I think we can improve by listening to alumni, creating a more deliberate structure to connect alums to Furman now, and helping alums reengage in a way that's meaningful for them. We need to be more proactive — not just waiting for alumni to come to us. We need to talk to alumni, and see how we can connect them in a meaningful way.
What does that look like concretely? What programs or opportunities are there going to be for alumni?
Right now we're doing an audit internally of our office with all of our touch points and meeting with our campus partners to see what outreach they have, so that my team and I can look at the big picture.
In our office specifically, we're looking not just at increasing the number of alumni who come to events or show up for Homecoming. We’re looking to make meaningful connections. When I say meaningful connections, I mean engaging alumni who are having a meaningful impact on the student experience, recruiting students to come to Furman, or helping recent grads as they enter the world.
Then there is our digital strategy and our outreach strategy. We have a lot of areas to improve digitally. We've always communicated to our alumni the same way across the board: no matter what you care about, no matter what class year you were. We have a lot of opportunities to be much more specific and targeted about what people want to hear about. Is it the Health Sciences? Politics and International Affairs? Is it Tocqueville? That's great! Let's make sure people are connected in a way that makes sense for them. Regionally, we want events that have some tie-in to what's going on at Furman.
What do you want to see from alumni? What does the ideal alumni look like?
Like I mentioned before, we want alumni who are meaningfully engaged. We want to see people who are serving as officers in regional groups, mentoring students, or helping grads get their first job.
Engagement matters because when alumni are more engaged, it affects the university in a number of ways. For one, alumni are our greatest advocates within the community. They're much more likely to recommend Furman to prospective students. Also, they're more likely to be philanthropic if they're informed about and actively invested in Furman. It's important for us to build a strong network and affinity. That’s how a liberal arts schools and small colleges thrive. And the students—both current and prospective—know that they're not just getting a good education, but they're entering a really strong network.
In your mind, what is the role for alumni advocacy for the direction of the university?
When you graduate from Furman, you’re a Furman grad for life. So in terms of advocacy, I think it would help if we can increase our transparency. We have survey data that shows that alumni who feel like they are more informed look more positively at Furman and are more engaged with the institution. So, I would really say it really does start with our office and making sure we're being super transparent and putting information out about what's going on at Furman. We also need to be available to take calls and emails, hear from people, understand how they want to be involved, and answer their questions. The better informed people are, the more confident they will feel in asking questions.
I think we can also improve on telling stories that matter about what's going on at Furman, pulling back the curtain to say, ”here's what's happening.” Then the next layer to that is figuring out what people care about. This is a good segway. Alumni will receive an email from me in the next few weeks where they will be able to choose how they want to interact with the institution and what kind of content they want to receive. We will start releasing Dins Digest weekly to our alumni, and hopefully increase our transparency with the community.
Recently Fitch downgraded Furman’s credit outlook and many alumni, particularly donors, are concerned about Furman fiscal future. Broadly, is there anything you want to say about Furman's financial outlook, the confidence that alumni should have and in Furman’s stability, and how that should inform their willingness to give?
I'm not at capacity to speak for the financial future, but I will say this: I know a lot about what's going on, and knew a lot about what was going on before I accepted this role. I would not have
accepted this role if I thought that Furman couldn't survive until its third century.
I really do believe that the alumni network is one of the key aspects to assist with securing Furman’s future—building that strong network and helping with enrollment. I believe that this office, in partnership with the rest of the university, has a key role to play in achieving these long-term goals. I have full faith in the folks in leadership; full faith in the Alumni Board and the Young Alumni Council. There are a lot of folks who are ready to take on the challenges of this new, tough environment for higher ed. We're going to come out of this thriving.
Could you provide more information about the regional groups?
Our strategy previously has been, if somebody wants to start a group, great, we’ll help them. What our office is doing now is trying to flip that script.
Starting with Greenville as an example: their team's doing a tremendous job. They have planned their entire year. They're very proactive. We’re trying to help them by providing data on the ages, class years, and occupations of Greenville-based alumni. We also let them know where people live specifically, so they can think about doing more events in Taylors or Simpsonville, for example, since there are a lot of alums beyond Greenville’s borders. We're doing that with Atlanta and Charlotte as well.
D.C. is a great example where we can do more programming that matches with folks that work in the public policy or lobbying world. There are a lot of young alumni in DC, so it warrants doing more networking events and young alumni events. And, of course, we try to keep up events that support and follow athletics.
If readers are interested in getting more meaningfully engaged, where should they go to find out more about that?
For the short term, you can email me or email alumni@furman.edu. We will certainly plug you in. If you want to help with students, we can connect you with one, and you can help them with anything they need, be it the rigor of first-year Furman or helping with resumes.
What I'm working on right now with our team is a reset of our website that will allow people to click and say, “this is how I want to be involved,” and “this is where I live.” If you live in Atlanta, you can go to the Atlanta tab and see the upcoming events. People can also use Furman Connects. That can be a great place to start.
Is there anything else you would like to say?
Over the next year, expect a lot of new things from us. Also, shameless plug: come to Homecoming! On Saturday, we'll have the football and soccer games. On Sunday, we're going to be playing the University of Alabama in basketball. But there's going to be a lot of cool new stuff as well. Like, on the website, people can sign up if they want to go on a run with the Health Science Department or play golf. We want people to feel the nostalgia and build connections.
I also welcome feedback from the alumni. We want alumni to have an experience with Furman and to mentor and help Furman students in a way that is crafted to make the most sense for them.
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