The largest determinant of alumni giving—the student experience—has traditionally not been alumni relations/advancement's responsibility. But with so much hinging on a single variable, some institutions are taking a different approach.
Northwestern University's Senior Associate Director of Alumni Engagement Bobby Dunlap presented on Northwestern's approach at the recent CASE District 5 Conference. We asked him to share some of his advice.
Last week, in “The Problem with Alumni Network Platforms,” Ryan Catherwood shared a long overdue critique of alumni networking platforms. He questioned their efficacy and impact, and made public the private thoughts that many in higher education share.
As the co-founder of one of the vendors listed in passing, I’m responding not to refute or defend Ryan’s assertions, but to agree with and validate his sentiments. I’d argue Ryan’s take was charitable, and that the broader situation is more dire and disorganized than presented.
Our Higher Education Innovation Fellows had their first onsite workshop here at Switchboard HQ in Portland, Oregon last week. I have never seen an audience that engaged, so I thought I'd share some of the insights from the five HEIF faculty members who presented to the fellows across those two-and-a-half days.
These faculty will be returning in June to lead the first workshop for our summer cohort of fellows.
The funnel is a strategy that informs much of what we do in alumni relations, advancement, and alumni career services. We use it to move people from where they are to where we want them to be—engaged alumna to volunteer, engaged alumna to donor, engaged aluma to mentor.
I will explain how it is flawed by way of comparison. I invite you to consider an alternative metaphor: the engagement web.
Launching new strategies and programs is always daunting. We often feel like we have to have everything ready to go right out of the gate. (Not to mention the fact we don't want our colleagues and supervisors to think that we're winging it.)
But in reality, we have to start with small prototypes, adjust our expectations, and test and tweak our programs to fit our audience before we can scale up. That's how Concordia College, a liberal arts college with 2,500 students in Moorhead, Minnesota, doubled its young alumni giving rate in three years. First it simply began targeting online outreach to young alumni, and then gradually moved into young-alumni-specific events, and eventually established young alumni engagement committees run by volunteers.
Pick a career services professional at any school, and you’ll find that they’re busy. Too many students to help, too little time.
Not to mention alumni. Many career services offices don’t have time to serve alumni, and even those that do often only have one or two people serving a population of thousands—or tens of thousands.
No matter how many one-on-one meetings you have or events you throw, when you’re operating on that kind of scale, there’s no way that traditional methods can help all the students and alumni who need it.
