Almabase Hall of Fame - Nicholls University

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When you dig down to the fundamentals - the most significant challenge with alumni relations is the same for most of us.

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“How do I continuously engage all my alumni, yet remain personal, at scale, with a small team and limited resources?”

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Not easy. Certainly.

Over the last five years, we’ve been doing much research to try and address this.

What we’ve come to believe is that there isn’t a silver bullet that will solve this problem. What we’ve also come to realize is that alumni will not regularly engage amongst themselves without something external that drives them to do so.

This is precisely why social network groups (Facebook/LinkedIn) fall flat. Over time, the group and the content within it become stale. The content that does get added becomes irrelevant and fails to provide enough value to its members.  Since there isn’t anything of value to bring people back to the group, the group eventually dies out.

This is an age of specialized solutions for specific problems. It’s no different with alumni. They are most likely to listen when they’re receiving communication relevant to and targeted at them. If not, they tune it out.

So, what is the solution?
Like I’d said - there is no silver bullet to this problem. However, we are attempting to solve it - step by step.

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The first step: Groups v1.0

Our first step to address this was taken last year -- with v1.0 of the Groups module on Almabase. With this, we wanted to understand how effectively a group would engage when someone drove the engagement.

Of course, we understand how stretched alumni offices are. We needed to do this without adding additional load to you and your team.

So, we built groups 1.0 focused around ‘Group Admins’.This would help you break down your alumni into smaller chunks, and help you delegate this responsibility of engaging smaller communities to those who are possibly more attached to the community.

Like a class leader for a class, a football coach to former football players, or a chapter president for a regional group.

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We learned a few valuable lessons from this first step:

1. For the most part, Group admins, on their own are not always incentivized to drive engagement

2. Fresh, valuable content drives engagement - and the group admin(s) alone cannot generate enough content to keep a group from going stale.

3. Unlike social networks - the purpose of an alumni network is more specific. Members arrive with particular objectives in mind (attend an event, reconnect with classmates, career networking, seek advice, find a job, etc.) The frequency of interaction is much lesser - so it’s all the more critical that the content they interact with be very relevant to them.

4. Different kinds of groups have different requirements from their administrators - some might want to be deeply involved, and some just superficially.

5. The frequency of engagement is vital - too frequent, and your community tunes out. Too infrequent, and your loses relevance and becomes stale.

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The Challenge

We summarized this into three key challenges that we need to address, to be able to engage alumni:‍‍

Creation: Creating valuable content, frequently, without the burden for this falling on one or a few people.‍

Curation: Collating content such that each member of the community receives relevant content that is of value to them‍

Distribution: Distributing this curated content to appropriate people at a frequency with which they are comfortable.

Earlier, each of these three challenges fell on the shoulders of you and your office.

We want to build a solution that shifts most of this responsibility to the technology that powers almabase. It will automatically take care of Curation and Distribution while driving people to Create more content.

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What Next?

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Creation‍

We are building a ‘Feed.’ All users can now post, like, comment and react. Content creation is no longer a job for just admins. Everyone can contribute to communities that they care.

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Curation

‍The system will look across the groups that are relevant to each alum, and curate content that they are most likely to find value. For instance, if someone is part of the groups for ‘Class of 86’, ‘Law Alumni,’ ‘Alumni in San Francisco’ and ‘Baseball,’ the system will take care of curating the most relevant content from those groups and then send it to this person.

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Distribution

‍The feedback loop. We’ll be building an automated digest that is curated and personalized for each member based on what they choose to stay connected with. It will then be delivered at a frequency of their choice. All without you having to get involved. This will drive alumni back to the platform and hopefully urge them to create more content and close the loop.

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What does this mean for you?

1. Groups are going to become very central to all engagement on your alumni platform.

2. As it ties together all these different components for engagement, the product going forward would focus a lot on ‘groups.’

3. Increased peer to peer alumni engagement

4. A ‘feed’ within each group or module will allow users to post, like, comment, and interact with others in the community.

5. Distributed Fine grain control for group administrators

6. You’ll have much more control over the permissions of each group administrator. You can set different levels/combinations of permissions for each. E.g., if you want a group admin to be able to approve users, or update profile data of members - but just within that group.

7. Personalization gets more powerful

8. Customized email digests, notifications, segmentation based on engagement on the ‘Feed.’

9. ‘Chapters,’‘MyClass,’’ Sub-Colleges’ will get deprecated by November 2019

10. These discrete modules all going to be absorbed into groups. For those of you that use it, we’ll help you migrate to Groups.

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Timeline

We wanted to be upfront about this.

All of these are hard problems to solve and will take time to get them right?
However, we’ll get there.

Such an integrated system is something that has not been attempted before in the industry, but we’re finally at a time where we have the technology to pull it off.

We’re going to build this step by step, and we’d love to hear feedback along the way. Bear with us till we reach the final state, and I’m sure you’ll come to love the product. :)

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1. The first noticeable change on the product is going to be with events

2. You’ll now see a Feed within each of your events where alumni can post, like, comment, and interact with each other.

3. Events are always a gathering point for people to interact with. It’s currently the single most significant driver for online alumni engagement across our partners. Adding a feed within events first will give us a lot of great insights that we can take back to the drawing board before rolling it out to groups.

4. Within the next one-two months, you’ll see Feeds within Groups as well, as well as the first version of the notification system!

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Big changes ahead!
We’re excited. Hope you are too :)

The long-awaited upgrade to our giving module is finally out, and we've brought in some major upgrades.

To help ease things for you, we've put together a list of questions we often hear about our giving module.

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1. Moving from my current system is a hassle. How should I go about it?

We understand how complicated it gets to move a whole system that’s been in place for years.  To lessen the burden somewhat, try the giving module in a phased manner. Try it for a small campaign, or maybe even set it up just to drive a few donations to fund your alumni website itself. We’ve seen a few of our partners try this out successfully!

Think of this as an additional channel for revenue, rather than a replacement. Also, we’ll be there to help you all along, so feel free to reach out.

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2. I’m used to the existing process.I don’t have the time to learn something new. Why should I spend time on this?

Those of you already using Almabase will attest to how easy it is to use the tools we build if you spend 10 minutes to understand how it works. Akin to our other tools, we’ve built this to make it as easy as possible for you to manage your fundraising workflows.

As for shifting process - you don’t need to think about it until you’re comfortable with the new system. Try it out with something small, and see how it works for you.

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3. There is nothing wrong with my current system. Why should I try this?

We’ve heard this before. Be assured that what we’re providing to you now is the experience of a far better system. We’ve done our research over the last few years, and guarantee a better user experience, faster donations, and an integrated reporting system.

Also, we’d not recommend a full switch of systems till you’ve run some tests on the test mode that we’ve set up for you and feel confident about the new system. For those of you who already use Almabase, this comes at no additional cost. So feel free to try it out for your next campaign, and let us know what you think.

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4. We are happy with the funds we are raising. How do I benefit from this switch?

It’s wonderful to hear that you’re reaching your goals! The new giving module, however, goes beyond that to provide your donor with enriched user experience. It is our guarantee that this new giving module will make the giving experience for your donors, much more easier and faster than any system out there. What we’re focusing on is not just the amounts, but also on giving your constituents a pleasant, personal giving experience.

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5. We’re under a contract with a different vendor. Why should I switch?

Think of this as an additional channel for revenue. You don’t necessarily have to make a switch if you’re already using Almabase. Since the giving module is a part of the standard plan, you can use it even if you're already using another vendor for giving. More importantly, the giving module automatically maps payments to your constituent records on Almabase. This makes it easier than ever to get a 360-view of each constituents engagement history across emails, events and donations, and pull reports that consider all this information.

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6. What if it doesn’t sync with my current database?

We’ve built in powerful export-import capabilities to the new giving module. You’ll find it easier than ever to import gifts into your database using a mapping template and export file that we’ll provide. For those of you using Raiser’s Edge NXT, we’ll be building seamless sync with your database as soon as Blackbaud rolls out a few updates that let us do so.

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7. Giving is for all constituents - not just alumni, so why should I include it on my ‘alumni website’?

Almabase has the capability to store all your records. Using our ‘enlist’ feature, you can hide records from the public alumni directory, but still have access to them and all their data on the back-end. You can even send email campaigns to them using the Almabase communication center. In addition every event they sign up for, and every gift they make through the Almabase events or giving module will be automatically mapped to their record.

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8. We are a really small organization and this is not really relevant to us. Why should we do it?

We strongly believe that you’re never too small to start. Grassroots fundraising does wonders. If you already have a payment processor that you use (e.g. PayPal, Stripe, BBMS, Auth.net etc) then it takes you less than 5 minutes to set up a campaign. We’ve worked with alumni offices who ran a small campaign to fund the alumni website itself - you could try it too! If you need any help, let us know.

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9. We’re already using a lot of tools, why should I add another one?

This is one of the key reasons why we built Almabase - to be an integrated all-in-one tool for engaging your constituents. The giving module is heavily integrated into the Almabase ecosystem. In addition to constituent data, event attendance, and email and online engagement data - you’ll also have online gift data now to give you a more complete snapshot of each constituent than ever before.

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10. I’m not the key decision maker and would need to get others (finance, advancement, development, etc.) involved.

That is definitely understandable. We wouldn’t want you to miss out because of your tough schedule. If you see value in this and don’t have the time and energy to convince your colleagues, introduce us to them. We’ll be happy to work with them and set up a trial version that they can try out and then make an informed decision.

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11. What if there are security issues?

As with every other feature on Almabase, we make sure that every piece of sensitive information is encrypted using the best security protocols. In addition, we do not store any credit card details on our system.

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12. This looks good - but we’re not looking for this right now.

For those of you using Almabase, let us know whenever you’re considering this. As this is a fresh upgrade, we’re dedicating additional resources to work closely with you to help set this up. A few months down the line, might not be able to promise the same level of support to help you set up since this is built to be a self-served giving management tool.

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14. What does this cost?

Nothing, if you are already using Almabase, it comes as a part of Almabase’s standard plans and is included from the basic tier itself.

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15. What do I get out of moving to this?

Other than an enriched user experience for your donors, you’ll be able to measure how your alumni engagement efforts impact payments. You’ll also have fine-grain configurability and control over your giving channels - set up recurring gifts, configure giving forms, use company gift matching, and be able to sync all this with your external database.

As we continue our focus on user engagement, we are today laying the foundation for what we envision to be one of the primary drivers of engagement on your platform... Feeds!

Feeds have been around on Social Media for almost as long as they have existed — so it is by no means a new concept. Over the next few quarters, you will start to see your Almabase platform utilize feeds as the primary driver for engagement and user-generated content.

This is just the beginning and there is a long way to go. But we are excited to announce that Starting today, our first version of feeds will be available on all events on the new events module. Over time, users will be able to interact with the feed on other features such as Groups as well.

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Here are some of the key highlights to look out for :

1. User-generated content that other users can comment or like.

2. Admins can delete any post or comment at any time.

3. Users can report violations or abuse on any content created by other users.

4. Users can now share photos to the feed.

5. Only logged-in users can post content.

6. Administrators can hide the entire feed if required.