Mentoring programs for students and young alumni are increasingly popular in the higher education community, but they're not turning out to be all that we hope they are. Mentoring programs promise to tap into the inactive parts of our alumni networks to help students and young alumni advance their careers and engage older alumni at the same time. This promise isn't being realized.
Andrew Shaindlin Joins Switchboard as Vice President
We’re delighted to announce that on October 1, Andrew Shaindlin will join Switchboard as Vice President. Switchboard is an award-winning engagement platform based in Portland, Oregon that works with with leading colleges, universities, and independent schools across the world. Andy makes this transition building on his role as advisor to Switchboard for the last four years.
Designing for Outcomes: Announcing Goals
I’m proud to announce our newest feature: goals. With goals, Switchboard is now the only engagement platform that helps institutions set and track engagement goals across teams. This feature has been five years in the making. I want to share why it is one of the most important and industry-changing benefits we offer and why, after hundreds conversations with industry leaders, we’ve discovered it is mission critical for any institution making strategic investments in community engagement.
ACSN Presentation: Listen, Ask, Offer, Succeed: Alumni Community Engagement
As part of our sponsorship of the annual Alumni Career Services Network conference this year, we shared our thoughts on how schools can develop stronger relationships with their alumni communities.
We all have high hopes and limited resources to achieve them. In our presentation, we explained how we can leverage our communities to engage alumni whose needs are being met by our current programs.
Manufacturing Legibility: Measuring What Is Easy Is Not Measuring What Is Right
Flipping the Funnel: Engagement That Cultivates Giving in the Long Term
Cracks are showing in our traditional methods for engaging alumni. Alumni giving is down, fewer and fewer think their degrees were worth the cost, and they aren't giving for the same reasons. The fundraising landscape is changing, and so are public expectations of and perspectives on higher education.
In times of change like these, it's important that we examine—and challenge—our core assumptions.
So today we consider the funnel.