3 Unique Storytelling Techniques for Alumni Outreach

Your university’s brand is one of its greatest marketing assets and a key part of your alumni marketing strategy. For many alumni, the university they attend is a core part of their identity, and it’s common for alumni to remember their school’s colors, mascot, and theme song decades after graduation.

As such, universities looking to engage their alumni should leverage their brand to form a sense of community. When alumni then feel a sense of kinship with their former university, they’re more likely to donate, volunteer, and otherwise support you.

To help your university make strategic use of its brand, this guide will explore digital outreach strategies for higher education institutions.

1. Expand your brand beyond your logo and color palette.

Consider Nike’s branding. Beyond the memorable “swoop” logo, Nike’s brand is exemplified in its written messaging with the tagline “Just Do It” and its visual assets, which often depict the stories of everyday people pursuing greatness in their personal fitness journeys. Nike’s audience isn’t just professional athletes but the everyday athletes who aspire to something greater. The company built its brand on empowering and encouraging individuals to do just that with the aid of its products.

Nike is one of the most recognizable brands in the world, and it’s far from the only company to recognize that branding extends beyond logos and well-coordinated color palettes.

If your organization hasn’t refreshed its branding strategy in some time, it’s worthwhile to revisit your university’s current positioning and how you can further refine, expand, and elevate your brand. Address the following aspects of your brand:

• Visual Elements: This includes your logos, photo and video assets, color palette, and typography. Visuals are your strongest asset for evoking your audience’s emotions. When curating your visual brand, consider how you want alumni to feel when they receive your communications or visit your website. Nostalgic? Proud? Hopeful? Motivated?
• Messaging: What key phrases or topics do you want to be associated with your university’s brand? What is your brand personality when greeting alumni—formal and businesslike, or nostalgic and lighthearted?
• Channels: Consider how you will adapt your brand for various communication channels and platforms. These are minute differences that still pack the full power of your brand, such as using different abbreviated logos on social media posts.

When crafting any external outreach materials, consider how you will infuse your brand into them. This applies to everything from personalized emails that might include your logo in the heading to events with branded banners and posters.

For direct communication with individual supporters, such as email outreach, strive to create a personalized but branded experience. This means referencing specific details about that alumni’s engagement history while speaking to them with your university’s branded voice, whether it’s warm and friendly or formal and inspirational.

2. Conduct research to understand how your brand will perform.

Once you’ve refined your brand, research how it performs with your alumni audience by:

• Sharing surveys. Send out a preview of your organization’s updated branding to a sample of your university’s alumni audience. Attach a survey that asks respondents about their opinions on the changes, staying open to a diverse range of perspectives and responses.
• Conducting focus groups. Ask a few of your university’s most active alumni to participate in focus groups where they’re shown your brand and invited to share their opinions. Consider segmenting groups by different demographics, such as having a group full of recent graduates and a group of older alumni.
• Reviewing existing data. Review granular data from your previous alumni outreach campaigns, including those shared on your website, social networks, and via email. Which campaigns had the most positive responses? Which campaigns were largely unsuccessful? What made those campaigns unique, and how can they inform branding updates?

By conducting this research, you can understand what your alumni respond well to, whether it’s phrasing changes (such as leveraging a positive, upbeat tone) or content updates (such as highlighting workplace giving in fundraising appeals). With this knowledge, you can continue to develop and refine your branding strategy.

3. Highlight what makes your university and alumni unique.

When refreshing your branding for alumni outreach, highlight what makes your university and alumni unique.

Your alumni don’t feel a connection to your university simply because they attended it. It’s because of the experience they had while at your institution—the small, specific details that made up their time at your school and how they can help foster similar experiences for generations to come.

Consider how you can highlight that connection in your marketing materials, such as adding “throwback” images and stories from a memorable football season, hosting campaigns tied to the memory of beloved instructors, or even launching forward-thinking campaigns, such as one that highlights successful alumni and their careers after attending your institution.

To keep consistent records of your university’s marketing efforts, brand identity, and history, ensure you have software with cloud storage and extensive integration capabilities. For instance, universities that use tools like Salesforce Education Cloud can continually update and customize their technology as their school grows and evolves.

4. Tap into shared nostalgia.

Avoid considering your brand in isolation, and instead, think of what it means to your alumni specifically. Most alumni have or will develop a sense of nostalgia for your university, and you can tap into that feeling in your outreach strategy.

Associate your university’s brand with past positive experiences by:

• Sharing old campus photographs. Tell stories about past events accompanied by old photographs. Ensure your university keeps an archive of old promotional photos, and if it currently doesn’t, now is the time to start one. This not only helps with outreach but also preserves your university’s history.
• Incorporating past branding into new outreach materials. Give alumni a blast from the past by playing with old branding. For instance, on your university’s founding anniversary, you might create fundraising materials that showcase how your logo has evolved over the years.
• Connecting alumni with each other, not just your organization. Alumni are more likely to continue supporting your school if they are part of your greater alumni community. Encourage graduates to develop local alumni societies, offer excursions for former students and their friends and family, and host events that invite alumni back to campus.

Nostalgia is a powerful feeling, and the right branding strategy can leverage it to earn tangible support. When contacting alumni from specific graduating classes, reference campus events they’re likely to remember to transport them back to their time as students.

5. Connect your alumni brand to the future.

One of your university’s main marketing objectives is garnering support for future generations of students. Share this goal with your alumni to motivate them to help fund positive experiences similar to the ones they had.

For instance, you might invoke specific clubs or departments alumni were a part of, encouraging them to keep those organizations going far into the future. Use language like “Help secure the debate club’s future,” “Make an impact that lasts,” and “Keep our community going now and for years to come.”

As part of your marketing, you might even have current students get involved. Ask them to share their stories that explain how alumni contributions fund their current experiences. Then, have them sign messages with their name and future graduation year to emphasize your university’s commitment toward the future.

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Conclusion

Branding is one of your university’s strongest assets for inspiring support. Refine your brand identity by gathering alumni feedback, then create messages that invoke alumni’s past to encourage them to fund the future.

As a higher education professional, you know the value of engaging your alumni and fostering community post-graduation. It can be a challenge, however, not to let urgent fundraising needs skew all of your outreach toward asking for donations.

While you may think you need to prioritize donation appeals over other kinds of outreach to reach your goals, any fundraising consultant will tell you that relationships are the key to fundraising success. Engaging alumni beyond donations is how you build and sustain those crucial relationships and secure more stable funds over time. 

If your current engagement strategy needs attention, consider these four ideas to better connect with alumni and raise more in the long run:

1. Leverage multiple communication channels
2. Host a variety of events
3. Promote volunteer opportunities
4. Provide ongoing support for alumni

When your alumni feel connected to your university, they’ll be more likely to donate. Let’s dive into these strategies to learn how to foster that connection. 

1. Leverage multiple communication channels

To successfully engage your alumni, you first need to know where to reach them. Broaden your outreach efforts and get in front of more alumni by communicating across multiple relevant channels.

Create a multichannel marketing strategy that includes channels such as:

• Direct mail: If you’ve already seen direct mail’s effectiveness for donation appeals, start branching out. Handwritten thank-you notes and physical newsletters often make a greater impression than digital versions. 
• Social media: Social media is the perfect channel for quick announcements, engaging videos, and immediate interactions with alumni. It also provides space for alumni to connect with each other. Create Facebook groups for posting jobs, networking, and general peer-to-peer advice to encourage feelings of community.
• Email: Check metrics like email open rate and click-through rate to see how your current email strategy is performing. To increase engagement with your emails, send out surveys and personalized invitations to events or volunteer opportunities. 
• Newsletters: Alumni newsletters provide great opportunities to share major university-wide updates and celebrate the results of recent fundraising campaigns. Add an alumni recognition section to show your support for different alumni in every newsletter.

As you lay out your strategy and create content calendars, be sure to balance event announcements and fundraising appeals with more casual outreach. Share interesting blog posts, shout out faculty and students, and check in with individual alumni.

2. Host a variety of events

Any event provides a crucial opportunity to interact one-on-one with alumni. From class reunions to holiday parties to networking events, these gatherings allow your university to personally demonstrate what you’re doing with funding, how much you value your alumni, and the benefits of the lifelong community you offer them. 

When choosing alumni engagement events to host, strive for a balance that will interest as many alumni as possible. Host some events geared toward those fresh out of college and others more tailored to older alumni classes. Mix up your event formats, offering in-person, hybrid, and fully virtual attendance options. The more variety, the more chances you have to connect with each and every former student.

It can be tempting to put all of your focus on fundraising events, but make room for solely social events, too. For example, Meyer Partners’ year-end giving guide suggests hosting small events around the holidays to engage donors. These events aren’t focused purely on fundraising, but they do strengthen relationships and therefore increase the likelihood of future alumni giving.

3. Promote volunteer opportunities

Volunteering programs are highly engaging because they give alumni a chance to give back to their alma mater in ways other than donating funds. Develop a variety of volunteer opportunities alumni may like, such as mentoring recent grads in their job search or speaking at a prospective student event. 

To effectively promote these volunteer opportunities, use your donor data to segment alumni based on:

• Location: Consider segmenting alumni by city, state, or even time zone. These groups will help you determine those more likely to attend local in-person events and those you should promote virtual events to instead.
• Event preferences: Note the types of events alumni have attended in the past, then promote volunteer opportunities at similar events to each segment.
• Interests and fields of study: Former English majors may be interested in judging a student poetry competition, while those working in STEM fields would have more interest in volunteering at a science career fair. 
• Volunteering history: Create segments of one-time volunteers, active volunteers, those who’ve previously expressed interest, and those who have yet to volunteer with your university.

Then, tailor outreach to promote applicable opportunities to each group. In your outreach, consider also highlighting corporate volunteer grants. These are programs in which employers make donations on behalf of their employees for volunteering. Ask your volunteers to check if their employers offer these programs, as they could provide impactful funds for your university at no cost to your alumni.

4. Provide ongoing support for alumni

One of the best ways to engage alumni is to remind them of the value you can add to their lives. Just by being a part of your alumni community, they have access to a wealth of benefits they may not even know about. 

Show them the value of your community by emphasizing your university’s ongoing support for them. You can do so in a variety of ways, such as:

• Offering career services after graduation. Services like career counseling, exclusive job board access, and open career fairs are especially important for strengthening relationships with young alumni. 
• Celebrating individual alumni accomplishments. When alumni celebrate a major achievement, cheer them on with social media shoutouts, handwritten letters, and detailed highlights in your newsletter.
• Inviting them to academic events. Invitations to webinars, guest lectures, lunch and learns, and senior research showcases remind alumni of fond memories and facilitate lifelong learning.

These ideas work well as both general engagement and alumni appreciation strategies. Don’t limit these opportunities just to alumni donors. Make sure that every member of your community feels welcome to take advantage of these valuable opportunities.

You know your alumni are worth far more than their donations, so take the time to show them. You may be surprised that these outreach strategies not only improve your stewardship efforts but also help you find new donors in your alumni pool and inspire lifelong involvement with your university.

As a fundraising professional, you understand the importance of building relationships with your valuable donors. They’re the ones who provide the funding that make it possible to provide new opportunities for students and alumni. Therefore, building relationships with them secures support both now and in the future for these fundraising programs to continue taking place. 

Considering the disruptions that everyone experienced (and continues experiencing) during the COVID-19 pandemic and how the industry has evolved since then, your relationships with many donors might appear to be volatile or different. When everyone changed up their strategies to incorporate the latest trends in engagement, some strategic aspects undoubtedly fell through the cracks. 

We recommend taking your approach back to the basics of engagement and donor relationships this coming year. Revisit some tried-and-true ideas that have been proven time and time again to bolster relationships with your supporters. After all, these are the strategies that are most often forgotten when we embrace new methods and change up our approach to relationships. 

The tips we’re covering in this article are ones that you may have seen before. However, they’re immensely important to maintain throughout the hubbub and chaos of the year. Without further ado, let’s dive deeper into these important and timeless strategies to help take your donor relationships to the next level. 

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For students, alumni, and donors, it’s painfully obvious when you send out emails or other communications that do not employ segmentation or other personalization strategies. Everything from a “To whom it may concern” introduction to the lack of personal details in the message makes it clear that you sent the same message to everyone on your email list. 

Generic, impersonalized outreach is the easiest to ignore and causes the downfall of many marketing programs. See how institutions such as Gann Academy increased alumni email open rates by personalizing their email campaigns. 

When it comes to your donors, you should include the same personalization strategies for outreach. 

The easiest way to start making the most of personalization is to use the same approach as Gann Academy: start with your email campaigns. Use the information in your donor database to fill in some gaps and to show your supporters that the message you’re sending is customized just for them. You can do this by: 

- Using the donor’s preferred name in the introduction. 

- Including details about the supporters’ engagement history. 

- Approaching specific segments of donors with targeted messages. 

- Sending messages relevant to the interests of the donor. 

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When you have access to an effective donor database, a lot of this information can be automated to save you time and energy in sending these highly targeted messages. This effective donor database buyer’s guide explains that automation features, when used correctly, can make personalization more effective and efficient. 

Your database can be used to auto-populate details into message templates and ensure you reach the right audience segments in your communications to enhance donor engagement.

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Building relationships is impossible if it’s a one-sided effort. Your institution needs to not only work to communicate and show your donors that you care, you need to invite them to engage back with you by providing ample opportunities. 

Since COVID-19, engaging opportunities look a little different than they have in the past. To create engaging opportunities amidst of a pandemic, many institutions had to adhere to social distancing guidelines by coming up with new virtual event ideas. 

We’ve come up with a list of our favorite virtual fundraising ideas that any educational institution, nonprofit, or other organization can make use of. While you can find the full list here, we’ll highlight some of the options below: 

- Online Gala - This is a great opportunity to encourage your major donors to get dressed up and network with one another using virtual conferencing software.

- TED Talk Events - Encourage your donors while enforcing your emphasis on education by providing TED Talk-style events to spread knowledge about certain topics. 

- Online Classes - Provide online class opportunities for donors as well as students. These may not be full-fledged courses, but mini opportunities to sharpen skills. 

- Annual Giving Days - Giving days encourage a great number of people (especially alumni) to give on a very specific day, similar to #GivingTuesday. 

- Matching Gift Drives - This is a great way to encourage more donations and maximize impact. Promote corporate giving opportunities and remind supporters to check their eligibility for matched gifts. 

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When your donors get involved with all of the opportunities you offer, they strengthen their ties to your institution. This makes it all the more likely that they’ll continue supporting you in your upcoming fundraising events.

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A phone call is an often overlooked relationship-building strategy because it can be somewhat time-consuming. However, it’s a valuable tool and makes a huge difference, especially when it comes to new donors. 

For instance, consider the new donor cultivation timeline below. It shows that a thank-you call within 48 hours of a donation can dramatically improve your donor retention rates. Plus, it’s the first step to begin a strong relationship with your donors. This is because you establish a personal connection with the donor while showing your appreciation for their contribution.

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Phone calls are a great way to start a relationship with donors on the right foot. However, don’t forget to employ the strategy with your seasoned donors as well! Call them to maintain regular contact and to express your gratitude for their continued support in your fundraising initiatives. 

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You’ll notice that on the cultivation timeline from the previous section that the step after a “thank you phone call” is sending a “signed thank you letter.” While email is likely your primary method of communication with the donors, the power of a physical letter of appreciation should not be underestimated, especially when it’s hand-written. 

Handwritten notes are a classic way to show your donors that you will truly take the time out of your day for them. They want to feel like a priority for your organization, which is what a hand-written note should communicate. 

When you write these notes, there are specific elements that you should make sure to include, such as: 

- The preferred name of the donor. Just like in email communications, you should make sure to refer to the specific donor as you hand-write letters (be sure to double-check your spelling, too!)

- The activity they participated in. If your donor has just contributed funds, be sure to thank them for the specified amount. If they attended an event, thank them for their involvement and participation. 

- The president’s signature. Letters are generally better received when they come from the top office of your institution. Therefore, you should make sure the president of your institution’s signature is on each and every one of them.

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Just like phone calls, hand-written letters tend to be important strategies as you cultivate relationships with your new donors. However, don’t forget about the strategy for your veteran donors! 

Be sure both phone calls and hand-written letters are a part of both your cultivation and stewardship strategies to strengthen donor relations. 

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Don’t we all love stories? Your donors want to hear your inspiring story. They want to hear the reason behind all the great work that you do and the support that you provide to your community. Sharing these stories with your donors is a great way to show them what it is that their contributions support. 

One of the current trends in the higher education space is the use of images to communicate these types of narratives. This trend is important to keep in mind because there are so many different platforms on which you’ll be telling stories. For instance, consider the following examples: 

- Email - Whether it’s an email to a certain segment of your audience or a regular newsletter sent to many, include an image of an individual who attended your institution along with their story. This adds a face to the name and a personal touch to show the impact of donations. 

- Social media - Platforms like Instagram and Facebook are made for visual storytelling. Be sure to use an image that tugs at the heartstrings to gain the attention of your audience, then caption it with details about the story itself. If it’s a longer story, be sure to provide a link to where donors can read the rest of it. 

- Blog posts - Blogs are the perfect way to write long stories about individuals or about the progress of your institution. Showing images, faces, and specific names makes them even more powerful. 

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And it’s true! Be sure to leverage both text and image when you tell the story of your institution’s successes. ‍

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In the last section, we mentioned briefly that stories are a method of showing impact. Communicating impact is critical for donor engagement and continued support down the line. Think about it. If you give to an organization, you’re not contributing money for the sake of spending it. That would be silly! Rather, you’re donating to help accomplish a mission. 

Communicating the progress of this mission and the impact of specific donations is a great way to give your donors the warm and fuzzy feeling in the pit of their stomachs that was probably what drove them to contribute in the first place. You’re reinforcing the positive aspect of donating. 

Check out this nonprofit annual report guide that conveys the story of The Johnsons and how their impact was communicated to all contributors in an end-of-year report.

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Notice some key aspects of this example: 

- It shows a picture of The Johnsons

- The text uses a statistic showing the impact their contributions made

- The text is framed to put all of the emphasis on the Johnsons rather than on the efforts of the organization

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These aspects are some of the most important things to remember when you communicate the impact of specific donors. Generally, on annual reports such as this, it’s your major donors that you’ll highlight. However, you can still use these strategies in emails, letters, phone calls, and other methods of communication to show any supporter that they’ve made a difference. 

Building donor relationships is an incredibly important part of the fundraising strategy at your institution. Therefore, even as you explore all of the new and exciting ways to communicate and engage with them, don’t forget about the basics. Form a strong foundation for your donor relationships by using these tried-and-true strategies. Then, continue to cultivate and build these relationships to watch your fundraising soar!

About the author

Jay Love

Co-Founder and current Chief Relationship Officer at Bloomerang

He has served this sector for 33 years and is considered the most well-known senior statesman whose advice is sought constantly.

Prior to Bloomerang, he was the CEO and Co-Founder of eTapestry for 11 years, which at the time was the leading SaaS technology company serving the charity sector. Jay and his team grew the company to more than 10,000 nonprofit clients, charting a decade of record growth.

He is a graduate of Butler University with a B.S. in Business Administration. Over the years, he has given more than 2,500 speeches around the world for the charity sector and is often the voice of new technology for fundraisers.

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