Switchboard co-founder and CEO Mara Zepeda writes about calculating return on investment for Inside Higher Ed's Call to Action blog this week.
How Hamilton Got Over 90% of Seniors to Give—and Keep Giving After They Graduate
As advancement offices work to boost their young alumni giving rates, many are investing in efforts to increase student giving first. Senior class gifts are a natural way to introduce students to philanthropy and build affinity for their alma mater at the same time, but senior gift programs aren't always easy to pull off.
Hamilton College has found a way to make it work. The college's senior gift program has generated over 90% senior class giving rates for decades—and that giving rate doesn't drop off much for years after those seniors graduate.
We asked Hamilton's Assistant Director Annual Giving, Angela Suppa, to explain how they do it.
Introducing Switchboard's New Analytics Dashboard
With some design help from MetaLab, the company that designed Slack, the Switchboard dev team has been hard at work build our shiny new analytics dashboard and member directory.
The new dashboard makes it easier than ever to measure your community's activity and put Switchboard to work for your office's other initiatives.
Why Alumni Relations Should Adopt an 'Events-Plus' Model
Events are the staple of alumni relations, and for good reason. Reunions, regional gatherings, and chapter parties are excellent ways for alumni to reconnect with each other and their alma mater (and enjoy themselves, to boot).
This reunions season, it's important to think about all the other times in alumni's life when they aren't engaged with their alma mater but could be. Improving alumni engagement doesn't mean infiltrating every nook and cranny of their lives or demanding that they become superfans always decked out in school regalia. Nor does it mean cramming the calendar with even more events.
Consistent and meaningful alumni engagement can begin with events—but it cannot end there. What alumni relations needs is a strategy that includes events, but builds on them: an "events-plus" model.
Alumni Career Communities Checklist
Alumni career communities are networks used by career services and alumni relations offices to deliver value to their constituents at scale. As institutions demand more from these offices, career communities can help us meet the needs of our constituents efficiently.
We spoke with dozens of schools to put together this two-page checklist to help you implement career communities of your own. Fill out the form below to get the PDF.
How The Ohio State University Engages and Gathers Insight from 550,000 Alumni
Few institutions have as many alumni as The Ohio State University, with its 550,000 Buckeyes worldwide. But we all face similar challenges when it comes to keeping our alumni engaged at scale from afar.
Ohio State launched an online community called the Buckeye Room to solve those problems. They use the Buckeye Room to gather information on their alumni, solicit feedback, and keep them engaged.
We asked Molly Schmied, Director of Market Research & Insights in the Office of Advancement, to share more about the project and what other institutions can learn from it.