Alumni engagement in 2024 looks promising with institutions learning from lessons of the past few years. Here are five alumni engagement ideas you can leverage.
The past five or so years changed the landscape of innumerable things around us, and alumni relations was no exception. Existing boundaries were pushed, which resulted in new virtual methods emerging to resolve the challenges that the pandemic brought about.
While alumni engagement in 2022 looked promising as many institutions open up their campuses with adequate restrictions, the alumni relations landscape is currently undergoing a tremendous transformation.
Traditional alumni engagement metrics like event attendance and in-person fundraisers can no longer be relied upon entirely. Ever since the pandemic, schools, colleges, and universities have taken a step back and plan their programming in accordance with the ‘new normal’ and have continued to innovate and look for flexible solutions.
As you start planning your strategy for the year, here are five alumni engagement ideas you don’t want to miss out on.
The pandemic had everyone bottled up inside their homes for far too long. While you can’t go all out and invite all your alumni to campus every time, you can start the year with small meet-and-greets across various cities around the country, with the help of your local volunteers and chapters. We suggest creating proper guidelines, which can help the volunteers organize these events to increase engagement and guarantee a good time for everyone involved. These small-scale events can be a refreshing break from the webinars and large-scale fundraisers often attended by your alumni and students alike. This is also a great opportunity to help your alumni meet peers in and around their area, creating strong bonds within the alumni community.
Today, it is essential to find the right balance between online and offline events that stay relevant and useful for the near future.
Your alumni programming should be centered on your alumni. Regularly collect feedback and ask your alumni what they’d love to see. Open yourself to ideas beyond events and fundraising campaigns, when you ask for suggestions. An easy way to do this would be to send out questionnaires to your alumni via email or conduct polls on social media. Whether it is an online networking fair to promote interaction between alumni or a virtual dance party: you could be surprised at the innovative suggestions you might get from your alumni.
The best way to encourage alumni to share their suggestions is by providing lucrative incentives. An e-gift card or a small memento from their time at college could be a great motivation for your alumni to participate.
West Virginia Wesleyan College conducted a survey to ensure the opinions of their alumni are heard and taken into consideration while planning the virtual homecoming for the class of 2015.
Fundraisers continue to be a mainstay for any alumni relations program. Along with aiding important causes, turn your fundraisers into fun and festive affairs. Drive competition amongst alumni, students, and faculty members by setting challenges to unlock new milestones. To make it more engaging, conduct a poll with some challenges for alumni to choose from! Have a look at Calvert Hall College High School’s out-of-the-box challenge at their 5th Annual All Day Hall Day.
Ever since the pandemic forced forced furloughs and small alumni businesses to shut down, professional networking events such as job fairs and virtual conferences slowly became an integral part of alumni programming. After all, there is no better way to build strong relationships with your alumni than helping them power through when they need you the most.
Speaking of those hit the worst by the pandemic, one cannot overlook the Class of 2020, 2021, and 2022. These young graduates are looking at a potentially rough start to their careers even in 2024 as the economic situation and job market continues to prove hard to navigate. Your alumni network is a valuable source of opportunities for these new graduates looking for internships and jobs. Organizing virtual networking events can help facilitate job shadowing services, and serve as a major boost towards career development and discovery, helping students find their field of interest and get hands-on experience.
Social media has undeniably become the most powerful tool for communication, particularly in the last few years. A strong social media presence is not only advisable but almost necessary to keep your alumni engaged. While young alumni are turning towards more instant modes of communication, your regular mail in their inbox can go unnoticed. Start a trend to share a memorable moment from their college years with a hashtag on your handles, post a picture from their graduation days, the ideas are unlimited!
Here is an idea to try: Invite your alumni to write open letters of support to your current students. As your students feel fatigued with online classes, assignments, and exams, and struggle to find internships and jobs, letters from their favorite alumni can help put a much-needed smile on their faces.
While the pandemic brought along its own set of challenges, it also provided us with ample room for trying out new ideas. Traditionally, it would have been harder to implement these new ideas, especially with the pre-existing programs giving us fairly good results. But we have learned valuable lessons from both the pandemic and the post-pandemic situation, and as the alumni relations keeps evolving, the best time to experiment with your alumni programs is now.
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See how modern advancement teams bring alumni engagement and fundraising together.
These are both exciting and nervous times for Alumni Relations as schools and universities around the world go through a tremendous transformation in the way they approach, engage, and stay connected to their alumni. The pandemic almost makes it look like the world has hit the pause button but, for alumni relations professionals who have invested years in building meaningful relationships with their alumni, putting everything on hold is not an option.
Alumni Relations teams are going above and beyond to keep delivering value to their communities with incredibly creative digital engagement strategies. As we looked at the data based on strategies adopted by Alumni Relations teams in 2022 so far, we were able to put together some emerging trends. Watch our Alumni Relations Trends for 2022 webinar here.
While the future is still volatile and the long-term impact of the pandemic is highly debatable, here’s a closer look at the 5 emerging trends in Alumni Relations that are here to stay.
Events are at the heart of any alumni engagement program but COVID-19 completely transformed the way events are now being approached. As strict social distancing measures make it impossible to host in-person events, the pandemic paved the way for virtual events. A majority of institutions have already adopted this new format and hosted a slew of successful virtual events for their alumni.
While Alumni Relations teams may be embracing the shift to virtual events, most of these institutions are apprehensive about going fully virtual while planning their events calendar for this year. Some feel that virtual events can never substitute the feeling that alumni share at in-person events and also are apprehensive about security concerns such as Zoom bombing. However, this new world order is gradually prompting many teams to think differently and explore all options.
So, while Alumni Relations teams might not have shifted to virtual only, 2022 is definitely going to see a lot of them. And, as institutions continue to experiment, events strategy, going forward, will most likely be a combination of both virtual and in-person events - the best of both worlds.
As virtual engagement strategies open up new avenues, Alumni Relations teams are now able to tap into a wider network of alumni. A large part of traditional alumni engagement strategies involved trying to get alumni back to campus for reunions, homecomings, or chapter meetings. Going to campus for these occasions was only possible for alumni who lived in the vicinity or had enough resources to travel from afar to attend. This way, a large segment of alumni were left unengaged.
However, with the adoption of digital engagement methods such as emails, social media, online communities, and virtual events, Alumni Relations teams no longer face this challenge.
Institutions are now able to target alumni living miles away from their campus and invite them for a virtual reunion or homecoming. They can also easily stay connected to their younger alumni via social media, rally more support for their virtual events or giving campaigns, and build a loyal community online. Alumni relations teams will now see newer alumni that who never engaged in the past start to engage.
As a consequence of the pandemic, we saw countless fundraising campaigns getting postponed and cancelled but, on the other side, we also witnessed millions of people expressing their generosity on the global day of unity and giving - #GivingTuesdayNow. While most of the initial fundraising campaigns amidst the pandemic were student emergency campaigns or appeals that urged alumni to donate in kind, this seems to change as we move into 2022.
Sure, Alumni Relations teams will still be apprehensive about asking their alumni to donate money but, that doesn’t mean that fundraising will be halted altogether. Here are the 3 major changes in the way schools and universities will fundraise going forward:
1. As things slowly resume to normalcy, fundraising will pick up the pace with one major change - it is not going to be as aggressive as it used to be.
2. As millions of people face pay cuts and undergo furloughs due to the economic crisis at hand, institutions will prioritize cultivating relationships and providing value to its community over chasing short-term fundraising goals.
3. Schools and universities will continue to garner monetary support from their alumni but, the intent will change. In future, we will see institutions urging their communities to come forward in order to support their alma mater and help them raise money to power through the economic crisis.
With the approach to fundraising changing, the outcomes will too. The economic impact of COVID-19 will leave a devastating impact on the total dollars raised but, as institutions continue to ramp up engagement & value-add services, relationships will grow stronger. While these loyal supporters may not be able to contribute big, institutions will see a rise in participation and the number of volunteers.
In April 2020, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine launched a network of volunteers, staff, students and alumni, to devote small amounts of time to crowd-sourced work. The institution received overwhelming support from over 1200 volunteers.
Traditional ways of adding value to alumni included organizing local mixers, career networking events, and workshops on campus but social distancing measures have put an end to all of these in-person activities. As Alumni Relations teams strive to keep their alumni digitally engaged and informed, closed affinity groups and online communities play a critical role.
Many institutions are adopting creative strategies to drive participation amongst these close-knit affinity groups and encouraging alumni to get more deeply involved.
With recent reports showing over 21 million Americans as unemployed, industry-based affinity groups will see a massive spike with alumni counting on their peers to navigate the tough job market.
The pandemic has also wreaked havoc on mental-health systems as we witnessed a historic wave of mental health problems approaching. While the social distancing norms are creating a lot of mental health challenges, the dire situation of the economy is adding to that stress. Alumni Relations teams realize the immense need for alumni to connect virtually to get through these testing times, as a community.
Prior to COVID-19, a lot of institutions measured alumni engagement based on a set of parameters such as in-person event attendance or volunteer participation. With the pandemic forcing Alumni Relations teams to function completely virtually since the past 5 months, engagement metrics have changed.
As alumni outreach initiatives shift to the virtual format, Alumni Relations teams are rapidly evolving to measure the outcome of each of these initiatives accurately.
The institutions that previously reached out to their alumni once a month via a monthly newsletter, have now ramped up the frequency. Institutions that were inactive on social media now take to Facebook live to announce an upcoming virtual event or a giving campaign. Alumni Relations teams are adopting tons of creative ideas to get accustomed to the new normal. Here are some of the virtual engagement metrics that will no longer be ignored:
1. Virtual event attendance
2. Email opens & click-through rates
3. Social media impressions, likes, and shares
4. Volunteer participation measured via online requests
5. Digital donors
5 emerging Alumni Relations trends that are here to stay
Here are 5 emerging trends - reshaped event strategies, young alumni engagement, short-term fundraising, virtual engagement metrics, and on-demand alumni services.
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As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to disrupt alumni relations and fundraising, institutions around the world have found themselves in a tight spot as a consequence of canceled events, giving days, and other planned alumni engagement activities.
With this new world order settling in, advancement teams are looking for unique ways to engage their alumni digitally. While a lot of institutions have been engaging alumni digitally for a while now, in this blog post, we’ll be looking at some of the most creative engagement ideas that we’ve seen being implemented during COVID-19.
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With alumni confined to their houses and being forced to work from home, everyone’s missing out on those Friday night Happy Hours. But wait, who said social isolation’s equivalent to the end of Happy Hours?
Virtual happy hours are a great way to encourage social interactions among alumni during these difficult times. You can organize your next virtual happy hour as a 1-hour event open to limited registrations. Create a dedicated event page for collecting RSVPs and lay down all the details on this page. Ask alumni to grab a beverage of their choice and join the meeting link. To add structure to your virtual event, encourage your event attendees to share something about themselves during the event like a short introduction, some insight into how they’re dealing with the crisis, or what they’re doing to help those in need.
St. Thomas University School of Law created a dedicated event page for its first-ever Young Alumni Virtual Happy Hour and promoted the event via social media.
According to a recent survey by Goldman Sachs, 51% of America’s small-business owners said they could not weather more than three months of the current economic environment.
With small business owners struggling to stay afloat throughout this crisis, this is a good time to offer your support to your alumni who own small businesses by leveraging your alumni network.
Create a web page listing small businesses owned or operated by your alumni and promote it on all your official websites and various social media platforms.
Here's how Centenary College of Louisiana offered its support to alumni small business owners.
Since the educational fundraising landscape has evolved as an outcome of the coronavirus situation, the approach that institutions have been adopting for fundraising asks has also transformed. Since schools and universities need funds now more than ever to be able to support their students, but feel apprehensive about asking their alumni for monetary donations, a lot of them are choosing to opt for fundraising in kind.
Similar to other institutions, Nicholls State University also had to move its classes online. However, the university realized that many students did not have webcams at home which served as a major obstacle to conducting online tests and smooth functioning of classes.
With the ongoing coronavirus situation, raising funds for webcams wouldn’t have been possible and so, the university appealed to its alumni to help students out by donating webcams.
With everyone confined to their homes, forced to work from home, limitations on social interactions, and physical fitness taking a back seat, health and well-being of alumni has become a major concern for institutions across the globe.
Aid your alumni through this phase of social isolation and encourage them to make exercise a part of their routine by organizing a virtual race. A virtual race can have participants from any location within a predetermined time. Photos shared by alumni during their walk/run can further be shared with the alumni community via Facebook or alumni website, helping drive engagement and registrations.
The College of Idaho’s ongoing ‘2020 Coyote Dash [Virtual 5K] race’ is helping connect its alumni who are located miles away from one another during these testing times.
Read the complete success story here 👇
With COVID-19 leading to stress and anxiety as a result of social isolation and financial pressures, the mental health of alumni is a rising concern for all schools and universities. Many institutions are organizing virtual exercise or yoga sessions for their alumni to help them deal with stress, depression, anxiety, energy, fatigue, and motivate them to work towards their overall physical and mental well-being.
William Peace University, a liberal arts college in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, roped in its former Alumni Board President, Alli Leggett '01 to organize a virtual yoga session for alumni to join from the comfort of their home.
Alumni photos that capture happy moments is another great way to engage your alumni and get them to interact with one another. You can start a photo contest by encouraging your alumni to post their photos on your alumni website or alumni group on social media.
Bob Greene, Alumni Director at Serra High School started a ‘Picture Time’ contest via email, urging alumni to share pictures while they’re at home with their families or any picture that makes them feel happy.
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Social isolation during COVID-19 means that you can’t invite your alumni to your school or university for a fun game of soccer but, how about hosting a virtual event for alumni to engage in some healthy competition over online games?
Bring your alumni together for a fun night of online Charades, Monopoly, Pictionary or Cards against Humanity. Take it a notch higher with special appearances of some of their favorite staff members.
Encourage your alumni to show off their creative side by hosting a virtual coloring contest open to them and their families. Coloring is known to be great for mental, emotional, and intellectual health in adults and serves as a wonderful hobby that keeps children calm and entertained.
Chestnut Hill College organized a fun virtual coloring page contest for alumni and their families where campus photos and logos were converted into coloring pages using the Colorscape app. Take a look at the coloring pages here.
The college also took to social media to launch a contest by encouraging alumni to download coloring pages and participate by coloring and sharing it with the alumni community. The best submission will be chosen by the alumni community and receive a CHC prize pack.
8 creative ideas to boost alumni engagement & fundraising amidst COVID-19
Here's a look at the 8 unique and creative ideas that we've seen advancement teams implement to engage their alumni digitally during the COVID-19 crisis.
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Engaging alumni has been a critical part of your alumni programming but, the bigger question here is - how many of these initiatives are truly accessible to every single one of your alums?
Traditional alumni engagement initiatives include organizing local mixers, career networking events, and workshops on campus but 2020 has put an end to all of these in-person activities. While these initiatives will continue to be an integral part of your alumni program in the longer run, the one downside that has become evident in these past few months is that they’re not accessible to everyone.
If your programming involves quarterly class reunions on campus or Friday night happy hours at a nearby club, alumni who live far away are most likely to miss out. Also, some of your busier alumni might not have enough time to come to your in-person event and some may not see enough value in providing their services as a mentor. Various factors such as location, time, and the right value are crucial in defining how accessible your alumni programming is.
As advancement teams increasingly need to think out of the box in order to penetrate wider segments of alumni, institutions have found the perfect way to make their alumni programming more accessible to everyone - On-Demand Alumni Programs. On-demand alumni programs are services that any alum can access from anywhere, ideally anytime they want.
As 2020 throws one curveball after another, here’s a closer look at how your peers are fighting these challenges by implementing on-demand alumni programs.
Events have and will always be at the forefront of your alumni programming. However, the pandemic has completely transformed the way alumni events are now being hosted. An increasing number of institutions are choosing to include virtual events in their alumni programming owing to strict social distancing measures in place.
Virtual events allow more flexibility and that’s also a major reason behind this format seeing a huge traction over the last few months. As your alumni mostly stay confined to their homes, time and location are no longer a constraint when it comes to participation. Moreover, events like social mixers and happy hours hosted virtually are also helping institutions provide their alumni with some much-needed respite in the face of rising anxiety and stress due to isolation.
Career support networks offer incredible opportunities for alumni and students to interact with one another, increasing the chances of students landing job offers, internships, and finding the right mentors. For your alumni community, a career support network acts as a great source for professional networking opportunities and helps alumni make valuable connections to further accelerate their careers.
With unemployment an ever-looming problem on the horizon for students and alumni alike, career support networks have become even more relevant in 2020. As alumni and students count on their peers and alma mater respectively to navigate the tough job market, career support networks should be a mainstay feature to your alumni programming in 2020.
While traditional job fairs or in-person networking sessions are currently on hold due to the pandemic, institutions have switched to the virtual format to host these events.
Alumni business directories are a great way to empower businesses owned by your community members. These directories are perfect for showcasing your solidarity with budding entrepreneurs in your community and help uplift their efforts by leveraging the power of your alumni network. Not only do these networks help promote local alumni businesses, they’re also super helpful in building avenues for collaboration between alumni business owners.
According to data from Yelp, a platform used widely by local businesses to advertise their services in the US, nearly 66,000 businesses have folded since March 1. Researchers at Harvard believe that the rates of business closures across various markets are likely to be even higher. (Information source: The New York Times)
If the above data is to be believed, investing in an online alumni business directory for your alumni may no longer be an option but a necessity in 2020.
If your institution believes in providing value to alumni and foster lasting relationships, you have to find ways beyond the traditional. Continued learning programs are a great way to ensure that your alumni stay actively engaged with you long after they’ve left campus.
While you may already have monthly guest lecture programs or seminars where your notable alumni come to campus and share their experiences with invited community members, just imagine the impact of doing all of this virtually. If you share the same resources in an educational webinar, podcast, or video format and live-stream it, or just publish it on your alumni website, your alumni community will be able to access all this information anytime they want, at their own convenience. More importantly, they can always come back to these resources and even re-share them with their own networks, helping you tap into a wider network of alumni.
The best way to identify what learning resources your alumni find valuable is by asking them. You could start by conducting a short survey to gauge their interest in different topics ranging from professional to personal development.
Take inspiration from Fielding Graduate University’s Alumni Association that did a phenomenal job of providing on-demand learning resources to their alumni community in the form of webinars, virtual workshops, and learning guides amidst COVID-19. Head over to Fielding Graduate University’s alumni website to learn more.
From increasing meaningful engagement to facilitating professional development for your alumni and students, a mentoring program is a great addition to your alumni programming. While some of you might already have this in place, how much of this is truly accessible for every single one of your constituents?
Do you have a mentoring program where your alumni have to visit your campus to talk to students or answer their questions, even if it is for a couple of days in a year? What if this process could be completely moved online adding more flexibility? Digitizing your mentoring program means increased flexibility for both alumni and students as they get to avail the benefits of this program right from their homes at their own convenience.
Now that your alumni program is accessible and easy to engage for all your alumni, let’s look at some of the things you can do with it.
Alumni programs readily lend themselves to alumni engagement strategies. Your emails, newsletters, social media posts, and online communities all combine to keep your alumni engaged while providing a sense of community. What sets an accessible alumni program apart is its ability to provide personalized, two-way communication channels that make alumni feel valued and, therefore, willing to support.
💡Check out how Almabase empowers your alumni relations efforts
Alumni who are actively part of your program are more likely to have a personal connection and sense of loyalty. Nurturing these sentiments is a huge part of any institution’s fundraising strategy. An accessible alumni program should also help you nurture first-time donors and turn them into loyal supporters.
💡 Check out how we helped Boyd-Buchanan School turn alumni engagement into fundraising success.
Alumni programs provide a pool of well-nurtured contacts and probable volunteers for upcoming events such as your homecoming and reunions, among others. These programs become increasingly important for hosting affinity reunions or special events meant for a specific segment of alumni.
Your alumni should be able to easily see opportunities to help your next wave of graduates, either by providing mentorships or sharing career opportunities. A well-functioning and accessible alumni program reinforces a sense of lifetime partnership between your institution and your alumni to motivate both alumni and current students to get involved.
Alumni are not only stakeholders and supporters but can also be organic partners in shaping your educational programs. Your alumni program could either invite feedback or have a formal structure through, say, an **alumni advisory board** for specific departments or courses. Thesis assistance, curriculum enrichment, and extracurricular assistance are some other avenues through which your alumni program can become a valuable pool of educational partners.
An accessible and well-run alumni program naturally develops into a long-term partnership with a body of loyal supporters and advisors who share a common educational and philanthropic goal with you.
Today, there are a lot of tools and platforms out there that will help you build that partnership and nurture it. If you’re looking for a platform that integrates with your CRM, springboards your engagement, and streamlines your fundraising goals, why not give Almabase a try? 👇
5 ways to make your alumni program more accessible to all your alumni
Looking to make your alumni programming more accessible? Here are 5 ways to make alumni programs accessible in schools, colleges, and universities in the US
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