Long-Term Greedy: How to Explain the ROI of Alumni Relations to Advancement

Long-Term Greedy: How to Explain the ROI of Alumni Relations to Advancement

Advancement professionals are obsessed with measuring the ROI of their institution’s fundraising efforts. They crave data that will help them do that.

Those of us in alumni relations are equally obsessed with ROI, though we often have a harder time quantifying the return on our investment than our fundraising colleagues. It’s easy enough to calculate the ROI of hiring a new gift officer or running a new campaign. It’s far more difficult to measure the worth of the number of attendees, relationships, and hires that an alumni relations team generates.

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It's Time for Advancement and Career Services to Work Together

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It's Time for Advancement and Career Services to Work Together

Career Services and Advancement offices have traditionally been separate, neither working together nor reporting to the same leaders. That makes sense, at first glance—what on earth do student services and fundraising have to do with one another?

Well, actually, a lot. That's why some institutions are taking a new tack. These schools recognize that their role in producing positive career outcomes has a major effect on alumni giving down the road. Prosperous alumni are grateful alumni.

Alumni Relations, Career Services, and the Grim Future of LinkedIn Groups

Alumni Relations, Career Services, and the Grim Future of LinkedIn Groups

Recent changes to LinkedIn groups have suffocated their activity made them strikingly less valuable to the career services and alumni relations professionals who rely on them. The future of groups is still in doubt.

LinkedIn started by slashing group moderation tools in late 2015. This year, they redesigned LinkedIn’s interface, hiding groups behind a dropdown menu and removing groups activity from users' main feed. Though LinkedIn employees deny that groups are going away, the recent shutdown of the groups API further shows the feature is not a priority for LinkedIn going forward.

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Starting an International Alumni Relations Programme From Scratch

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Starting an International Alumni Relations Programme From Scratch

This guest post was written by Victoria Barthram, a Senior Consultant of Graham-Pelton Consulting, a leading global fundraising and non-profit management firm.

A range of global changes and challenges mean that our leaders have an increased expectation that every institution should be implementing and investing in a comprehensive international engagement strategy, regardless of their team size, budget, and resources. 

This is not only understandable, but also admirable – education has a powerful role to play in reaffirming the core values of our global society, and it is right that our leaders are looking for ways to step up and play their part. In fact, I have often referred to international advancement professionals as the ‘diplomatic corps’ of their institutions, with successful fundraising having a direct impact on advancing the mission, ethos, and vision that define our Schools and Colleges.

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How Hamilton Got Over 90% of Seniors to Give—and Keep Giving After They Graduate

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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.

"It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are." —Wendell Berry