Despite an increase in the amount of donations, the number of donors continues to decline, a worrying trend that just goes to show the importance of engaging and retaining donors. This brings us to the question of engaging and retaining supporters in a way that translates to financial support. Essentially, how do you bridge the gap between alumni engagement and actual donations?

Today, we’ll be looking at four schools that managed to provide this bridge and not only engage their alumni but also turn engagement into meaningful gifts.

Why Alumni Engagement Doesn't Always Lead to Giving: What Many Schools Miss

First, it’s essential to understand why the transition from engagement to giving often fails

1. Meaningful Alumni Participation on Giving Days

Giving Days are often the centerpiece of institutional fundraising, but many schools struggle to drive significant engagement. Traditional national participation rates remain low even after focused campaigns.

Overall, alumni giving participation has declined from 8.5% to around 7.8% in 2023.  While alumni may engage with Giving Day emails, social media content, or livestreams, most don’t convert into donors.And the broader context reveals why: solicitation fatigue is real. According to recent data, 72% of alumni report experiencing “solicitation fatigue,” and 68% feel they are asked for donations too frequently. This overexposure not only diminishes the effectiveness of Giving Days, but also reduces the likelihood of alumni giving at all.

Contributing factors include:

• Lack of segmentation: Without targeting audiences meaningfully, by grad year, affinity, or past involvement, the asks feel impersonal.
• No peer-driven momentum: Giving Days that lack class-based challenges or visible contributor signals rarely spark viral action.
• Lack of clear impact messaging: If alumni don’t see how their donation fits into a tangible outcome, it’s harder for them to commit.

Without these elements, Giving Days become missed opportunities, or just disconnected fundraising moments that fail to build on the genuine relationships alumni crave with their alma mater.

2. Disengaged Alumni Networks

A major driver of declining alumni giving is emotional disconnection. While institutions often assume that engagement ends at graduation, the data shows otherwise. According to Ruffalo Noel Levitz, alumni who feel a strong sense of connection to their alma mater are 23× more likely to give than those who don’t. Similarly, those who report being satisfied with their college experience are 4× more likely to donate.

This reinforces a crucial point: the seeds of generosity are sown long before an ask is made. Schools that cultivate meaningful relationships during and after college, through community, relevance, and shared purpose, see dramatically better outcomes. Conversely, younger alumni who feel alienated from institutional priorities or disconnected from impact areas are far less likely to give.

3. One-Size-Fits-All Communication

Despite access to better tools and data, most alumni offices continue to default to mass communication strategies such as newsletters, blanket appeals, and generic event invites that fail to reflect the diversity of alumni interests, experiences, and life stages. The result is predictable: 93% of alumni teams admit that the “benefits” they offer carry little or no perceived value. Although 81% of organizations track alumni satisfaction through Net Promoter Score (NPS), less than half do so consistently, which means negative feedback often goes unaddressed.

Perhaps most telling is this: the number of institutions with opt-out rates of 10% or higher (alumni actively asking not to be contacted) has grown 79% since 2015. That’s not disengagement; that’s alienation.

The takeaway is clear. Generic messaging could be actively harming your prospects by deteriorating trust over time. Without segmentation, relevance, and intentional feedback loops, even well-meaning communication strategies can push alumni further away.

Worse, a poorly timed or impersonal ask can make alumni feel like they’re only being contacted when the school needs money.

4. No Digital Path from Engagement to Donation

Social media engagement may look strong on the surface, but it rarely leads directly to action. Only 30% of social media followers ever convert into event attendees or donors. One major reason: the data sits in silos. Alumni data often lives in disconnected tools: email platforms, event apps, outdated spreadsheets, CRM systems, social media analytics. Without integration, advancement teams lack the full picture of an alum’s journey.

Even when engagement happens, it doesn’t inform the timing or content of fundraising asks. When alumni RSVP to a webinar, like a Facebook post, or update their contact info in a directory, those signals are often not integrated into the institution’s CRM or donor pipeline. Advancement teams miss the opportunity to respond with timely, context-aware outreach. That means schools are often “flying blind”, or missing chances to act on interest or, worse, sending irrelevant asks that erode trust. As a result, interest dissipates and potential donors quietly disengage.

The Real Problem: Engagement Without Progression

Each of these problems points to the same core issue: many schools still treat engagement as a separate function from fundraising. But in reality, engagement only gains value when it leads to action.

The schools you’ll read about next found a different path. They understood that successful advancement means treating alumni as more than donors-in-waiting: as long-term community members. And in doing so, they turned passive followers into active supporters who, in turn, became lifelong donors.

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Real Stories: How these 4 Schools Drove Donations With Better Alumni Engagement

These case studies show how personalized outreach, digital integration, and clear value exchange can transform alumni relations and fundraising outcomes.

Boyd-Buchanan School: Prioritizing Community Before Contribution

The Challenge: Boyd-Buchanan's advancement team inherited boxes of handwritten alumni notes with no digital system in place. With just two staff members, they faced a choice: spend months manually entering outdated data or build something entirely new.

The Strategy: They chose innovation over administration. Rather than chasing alumni with immediate fundraising appeals, Boyd-Buchanan committed to a relationship-first philosophy. Their core belief: meaningful connections must come before financial contributions.

How They Built Their Community:

• Digital-First Launch: Using Almabase, they created a modern alumni platform that captured engagement data automatically as alumni participated
• Organic Growth Tactics: Word-of-mouth referrals and social media campaigns drove platform adoption without expensive advertising
• Consistent Value Delivery: Weekly personalized emails featuring class-specific stories and school updates kept alumni genuinely interested in staying connected
• Seamless Event Experiences: Streamlined registration and communication systems made every alumni interaction feel effortless and professional
• The Trust-Building Approach: Their first alumni event  was a casual "Coffee and Donuts" gathering designed purely to reconnect graduates with their school community. This low-pressure environment built authentic enthusiasm that carried forward to their homecoming celebration later that year.

The Payoff: When Boyd-Buchanan finally launched their inaugural Giving Day, they weren't asking strangers for money, they were inviting an engaged community to support a cause they already cared about. The result was significantly higher participation rates and sustainable fundraising momentum that continues today.

Boyd-Buchanan proved that schools don't need extensive resources or donor databases to succeed. They need patience, authentic relationship-building, and technology that makes engagement natural rather than transactional.

🔍Check out the case study here.

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Archbishop Riordan High School: Gamification Drives 550% Growth

The Challenge: The school was stuck with outdated fundraising infrastructure. Their donation forms weren't mobile-optimized, they had no real-time campaign tracking, and they couldn't harness the power of peer networks during critical giving moments.

The Strategy: They transformed their Giving Day into a mobile-first, competition-driven experience. Class-year challenges turned alumni into enthusiastic fundraising ambassadors for their peers. Live leaderboards and real-time donation updates created infectious energy that spread throughout their alumni network.

The strategy worked because it met alumni where they actually were: on their phones and tablets, connected to their classmates, and ready to engage in real-time.

How They Transformed Their Campaign:

• Mobile-First Design: Working with Almabase, they rebuilt their entire donation experience for smartphones and tablets, where most alumni actually engage.‍
• Social Giving Integration: A simple, secure and seamless donation feature which took less than a minute to complete allowed donors to share their giving across their entire social media network, turning every donation into potential peer-to-peer recruitment.‍
• Real-Time Tracking: Live donation updates and measurable social influence data created infectious momentum throughout the campaign.

Riordan tapped into fundamental human psychology: competition, community pride, and instant gratification - while making the giving experience seamless across all devices.

🔍Check out the case study here.

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Merchant Taylors’ School: Aligning Engagement with Mission

Merchant Taylors' School demonstrates how institutions with limited resources can maximize impact by prioritizing meaningful engagement over immediate fundraising asks.

The Challenge: Merchant Taylors' School in the UK operated with just one staff member responsible for alumni relations, advancement, and events. With such limited capacity, they needed a strategy that would deliver maximum engagement without overwhelming their small team.

The Strategy: Rather than focusing solely on donation requests, Merchant Taylors' chose to build a comprehensive culture of alumni contribution that went far beyond financial giving. They recognized that alumni wanted to contribute their expertise and experience, not just their wallets.

How They Built Sustained Engagement:

• Mentorship Programs: Connected graduates directly with current students, giving alumni meaningful ways to share their professional expertise
• Volunteer Advisory Groups: Established structured opportunities for alumni to contribute to strategic school initiatives and decision-making
• Seamless Data Integration: Ensured every interaction was automatically captured in their CRM through platform integrations
• Value-First Approach: Positioned alumni as valued advisors and mentors rather than potential donors
• The Dual-Purpose Strategy: This approach accomplished two critical goals simultaneously: it reinforced to alumni that their expertise and voice still mattered to the institution, while providing the advancement office with rich engagement data to inform perfectly timed fundraising asks.

The results validated their patience-first approach:

• Annual donations tripled compared to their previous baseline
• Active alumni website users grew from 900 to 3,400
• 90% of contactable alumni engaged at least once in the first year

Merchant Taylors' earned the right to ask for financial support by first demonstrating genuine investment in their alumni's continued connection to the school community.

🔍Check out the case study here.

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Punahou School: Driving 7,000 Monthly Engagements Digitally

Punahou School's approach shows how institutions can overcome geographic barriers by creating digital infrastructure that transforms alumni from passive recipients into active community contributors.

The Challenge: Punahou School in Hawai'i faced a unique obstacle: maintaining meaningful connections with a large, geographically dispersed alumni network. With more than half their graduates living outside the islands, traditional engagement methods like reunions and local meetups couldn't provide the consistent touchpoints needed for sustained relationships.

The Strategy: Their solution was Ka 'Ohana Punahou (The Punahou Family)—a comprehensive digital ecosystem designed for year-round alumni engagement. They recognized that digital engagement needed to be an everyday experience, not a campaign-driven effort.

How They Built Always-On Community:

• Class-Year Groups: Organized alumni by graduation year to maintain peer connections across distances.
• Professional Networking Directories: Created searchable databases for career connections and business opportunities.
• Job Boards: Facilitated alumni-to-alumni professional opportunities and career support.
• Interactive Content: Encouraged ongoing participation rather than seasonal check-ins.
• The Community-First Approach: The key insight was treating alumni as active participants rather than passive recipients. Alumni were actively supporting each other, sharing opportunities, and building genuine community online.

The scale of engagement was remarkable:

• 7,000-8,000 alumni interact with the platform monthly
• Over 5,000 alumni profiles were updated in year one
• More than 15,000 messages exchanged through the directory
• 70% of contactable alumni engaged with the platform in the first year

Punahou created digital infrastructure that served real community needs. Alumni became active contributors, connectors, and mentors.

🔍Check out the case study here.

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What We Can Learn From These Schools

Although the four schools profiled in this article approached alumni engagement differently, varying in size, geography, and available resources, certain strategic patterns consistently emerged.

1.Segment Before You Solicit

Generic, one-size-fits-all outreach continues to be a widespread pitfall. Yet schools that segmented alumni by class year, past involvement, or affinity groups consistently saw stronger outcomes.

At Archbishop Riordan High School, real-time tracking was a defining feature of their 550% Giving Day revenue increase, demonstrating the motivational power of peer identity when coupled with competition and visibility.

Similarly, Almabase enabled Boyd-Buchanan to capture and act on fresh data from specific alumni segments, dramatically improving targeting and conversion.

2. Make Engagement the Path to Giving

These institutions didn’t treat giving as the first step in the relationship. Instead, they led with meaningful experiences such as mentorship, volunteerism, networking opportunities, and allowed financial contributions to follow organically.

Merchant Taylors’ School, for instance, focused first on time and talent by establishing mentorship hubs and advisory boards. Only after building community and trust did they see donations triple year over year.

3. Create Always-On, Digital-First Touchpoints

In a mobile-driven world like today, alumni engagement must be designed for accessibility and continuity. Punahou School’s digital alumni portal, Ka ‘Ohana Punahou, offered job boards, class communities, and directories that kept alumni engaged month after month. The result? Over 7,000 monthly users and a 70% content engagement rate in Year 1.

This kind of always-on infrastructure shifts engagement from event-driven spikes to sustained digital presence, which is an essential foundation for any modern fundraising pipeline.

Conclusion

These four schools prove that declining alumni engagement is a solvable challenge. The solution is to flood inboxes with more appeals or to create flashier campaigns. Instead, it requires a fundamental shift toward strategic relationship-building powered by the right digital infrastructure.

Each institution succeeded by understanding a core truth: sustainable fundraising flows naturally from sustained engagement. Whether it's Boyd-Buchanan's patient community-building, Archbishop Riordan's mobile-first competition, Merchant Taylors' value-driven volunteerism, or Punahou's always-on digital ecosystem, the common thread is clear: technology should amplify authentic relationships.

The advancement teams that thrive in today's landscape are those who can segment alumni meaningfully, create seamless digital experiences, and position giving as the logical next step in an already-valuable relationship.

FAQs on Alumni Engagement and Fundraising

1. What are the best alumni engagement strategies for schools?

The most effective strategies are those that go beyond communication and foster real, ongoing relationships. These include:

• Personalized outreach based on class year, geography, or past involvement.
• Peer-led challenges and campaigns, such as class-year competitions and leaderboard integration.
• Mentorship and volunteer opportunities that give alumni meaningful ways to contribute their time and expertise
• Digital community platforms for alumni to connect, support, and collaborate year-round.
• Digital storytelling that connects nostalgia with tangible impact, helping alumni see how their support makes a difference.

These strategies work because they create value for alumni first, before any fundraising ask is made.

2. What makes a Giving Day successful?

Successful Giving Days are built on more than just mass emails or nostalgia. High-performing campaigns often share four characteristics:

• Segmented outreach with relevant messages for different alumni cohorts.
• Mobile-first, personalized giving pages to reduce friction in the donation experience.
• Gamification, such as class-year competitions and leaderboards, to create momentum.
• Real-time updates and peer-to-peer engagement that make alumni feel part of something active and urgent.

Giving Days that are integrated into a broader strategy and not treated as one-off asks are far more likely to generate meaningful participation.

3. How do I convert alumni engagement into donations?

Conversion happens when engagement is continuous, meaningful, and measurable. The most successful institutions follow a clear progression:

• Start by offering value through volunteer roles, mentorship, networking events, and alumni recognition.
• Track engagement signals such as event attendance, portal logins, or directory updates.
• Tailor your fundraising asks based on those signals and the individual’s relationship with the institution.

As shown in the Merchant Taylors’ and Punahou case studies, when alumni feel their time, voice, and expertise are valued, they’re more likely to give, even without needing a hard sell.

Still have questions? Talk to an expert and get your own personalized demo! →

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About the author

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Kiran is an educator and pedagogy enthusiast, passionate about the transformative impact of education, kindness, and creativity on individuals and communities.

As an artist, she brings a unique perspective to her work and is committed to inspiring growth, empathy, and understanding

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