Soliciting and closing gifts can be a delicate dialogue in even the best situations, but it gets much trickier when the prospect has a child, grandchild, or other relative applying for admission to your institution. Have you ever been in that situation? How do you handle those conversations with candor and integrity? Does your institution have a policy for such eventualities? Should it?
The best policy is to be honest from the beginning. Someone at the institution, most often the VP for Advancement - or depending on the level, even the President, needs to clearly define the integrity of the admissions process to the prospect when an applicant is seriously deciding to apply. It can be a tough conversation, but without it there is no place to hide and no integrity.