We make a lot of assumptions about alumni giving without the data to back them up. To help us test those assumptions, here are three graphs from rigorous surveys with hundreds of thousands of participants.
The data reveal that young alumni give at much lower rates than their more established counterparts— as many of us already know at our own institutions.
They also help us understand how we might improve those giving rates by addressing alumni's frustrations and needs.
We're excited to announce our partnership with Occidental College! We've been working with Oxy for several months now but haven't had the chance to share.
Occidental's tight-knit, purpose-driven community is the perfect fit for Switchboard. The Occidental Switchboard's 700 users are proof enough of that already. We couldn't be more proud to be serving such an inspiring group of people.
Courtney Stricklin is Occidental's Assistant Director for Employer Relations at the Hameetman Career Center, and Culley Johnson is Occidental's Assistant Director for Engagement Communications. We asked them to tell us a little bit about why she's excited to see the Occidental Switchboard continue to grow.
Higher education is instrumental in generating economic and social mobility, and networking within higher education communities is essential to that process. Student-alumni networks promote the transmission of social capital across generational and class lines and are often just as important (if not more so) to graduates' success as their degree itself.
Intergenerational connections produce the most worthwhile alumni relationships because they let older alumni offer advice and opportunities to their younger, less established counterparts. Without intergenerational networks, resources can only travel laterally among alumni in the same cohort, and the potential of alumni communities is squandered.
It isn't easy to meet the career needs of the student body of a large public university system—let alone those of its entire alumni population.
It's University of Tennessee Alumni Association's Director of Alumni Career Services Andrew Hart job to do just that. He serves 365,000 UT alumni to help them with everything from individual coaching to access to online job boards and other platforms.
We asked Andrew to discuss the UTAA's implementation of alumni career services five years ago, the success it's seen since then, and its use of online platforms.