, ,

The Missing Middle: Advancement and Alumni Relations's Ongoing Generational Deficit

, ,
The Missing Middle: Advancement and Alumni Relations's Ongoing Generational Deficit

Advancement and alumni relations had a formula for engaging alumni that worked for decades. But young alumni these days are breaking that mold.

Their giving rates are lower. They attend fewer events. They give for different reasons, care about different causes, face different economic challenges, and have different perceptions of higher education and its worth than their older counterparts.

Yet for all our self awareness and new strategies, we're still only scratching the surface when it comes to solving the problems underlying the young alumni engagement deficit. The problem lies in how we define "engagement" in the first place.

, , ,

How the Black Box of "Mentoring" Tricks Us Into Implementing Failing Strategies

, , ,

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

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.

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