Start 2017 off right by brushing up on the empirical foundations of your advancement and alumni relations methodologies.
We handpicked these five articles from academic journals and elsewhere to give you a foundation for success in the new year.
How Oakland University Runs an Award-Winning Student-Alumni Engagement Program
"Early and often" is an apt motto when it comes to engaging students with alumni affairs, but putting that sentiment into practice is easier said than done.
Oakland University pulled it off.
Oakland's "Leadership OU" program fosters professional growth among students while highlighting the accomplishments of alumni through a mentoring program and a speaker series. The program won a Pride of CASE District V award for best student-alumni programming in 2015.
These Data Explain What Makes Young Alumni's Priorities Different
We all know intuitively that young alumni are different than their older counterparts, but we often lack the data to explain how—or to explain what we can do about it.
Now we have some data to help.
The Alumni Attitude Study surveyed over 500,000 alumni at 200 universities and colleges between 2001–2012. The survey asked alumni of all ages questions about their giving habits and relationships with their alma maters. The data explain why young alumni giving patterns are different than those of their older peers.
How Career Success Affects Alumni Giving, in 3 Graphs
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.
The Challenge—and Importance—of Intergenerational Alumni Networking
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.
A Brief History of Disintermediation in Alumni Networks
Back in the day, institutions served as the central hub for students, alumni, and employers.
For lack of a better metaphor, the role that schools played was like that of an old telephone switchboard. They connected people who needed something with people who had something. (Can you guess how we picked our name?)