I had alot of trouble memorizing people’s names and faces as well as just a few details about them-such as whether they are married, have kids, or have a very strong interest in a particular university program. Your principal gifts officer should pre-alert you to events, and ideally even help you with such matters at an event, but there is no substitute for knowing something about a donor…especially for a chance meeting.
You undoubtedly have a donor database, and you may have other lists of people with whom you interact-faculty leaders, student leaders, board members, legislators. How can you transform that information, at least a small subset of it, to a useful memory tool?
The tool that my son used in medical school seems very powerful. I’ll admit that I played around with it and never committed to it-but I would have been wise to do so. That tool is Anki. Originally developed as “intelligent flashcards” for language learning ( I think in Korea), it is used widely for lots of purposes. It’s very inexpensive, and you could even have staff develop the Anki cards for you, with what they think you should know about people. Anki offers different kinds of flashcards, that can ask questions in different directions (a face-give the name. the name-their interest). And, Anki will remember what you got right or wrong, and help you drill. Give it a whirl!
