Here are the top 10 trending virtual events in 2020 to boost your alumni community engagement online.
Pandemic or not, nothing stops advancement teams from coming up with the best ideas to engage alumni virtually and support them.
So, with the current state of things prompting schools and universities to digitally engage their constituents, one trend that’s picking up is virtual events.
Having observed over a hundred schools and universities host successful virtual alumni events in the past three months, here’s the list of the top 10 trending ones being adopted by advancement teams in the US.
While nothing replaces the feeling of reuniting with old friends at a class reunion, strict social distancing measures are leading to an increasing number of institutions adopting the virtual format to host their reunions.
Translating these large constituent gatherings into an online celebration is a great way to drive more attendance as constituents from all over the world, irrespective of their geographical location can join, granted they have a good internet connection. Whether it’s a short social mixer or a longer event spread over the weekend, effective planning is the key to hosting a successful virtual alumni event.
In lieu of social distancing measures, Brenau’s Office of constituents and Constituent Engagement hosted its Constituents Reunion Weekend online, bringing its community together to connect and catch up during these challenging times.
Commencement is a milestone in every student’s life and deserves to be celebrated with grandeur. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 crisis has led to many ceremonies being called off leaving students around the world in a state of despair.
If you’re concerned about your Class of 2020, use this opportunity to reach out to leaders in your alumni community and urge them to reach out to your young graduates. As an alma mater, this is the time for you to boost their morale and foster leadership skills needed to navigate the new world.
In a grand gesture, high school students, educators, and world leaders came forward for a television special Graduate Together: America Honors the High School Class of 2020 on May 16th, 2020, to honor those high school graduates whose graduation ceremonies and proms were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The show included a variety of commencement addresses, celebrity performances and inspirational speeches.
Another great virtual commencement ceremony that deserves a shoutout is by the University of Pittsburgh. The first-of-its-kind in the history of the university, degrees were awarded to nearly 8,000 undergraduate, master’s, professional and doctoral candidates. Students were emailed a “virtual” diploma immediately after the ceremony.
With everyone confined to their houses, forced to work from home, schools closed, and limitations on social interactions, physical fitness and well-being is getting deprioritized for a lot of people. Virtual runs/walkathon events are a great approach to bringing your alumni community together, driving more conversations and most important of all - creating an avenue for them to make time for their well being.
Virtual happy hours are the perfect approach to helping your alumni relieve stress and overcome the fear of isolation as they open up to their friends over drinks. Create a dedicated event page for collecting RSVPs and lay down all the details on this page. Ask your alumni to grab a beverage of their choice, join the meeting link, and drink away the night!
St. Thomas University School of Law created a dedicated event page for its first-ever Young constituents Virtual Happy Hour and promoted the event via social media.
It’s going to be a while before your alumni can go out to their favorite club or invite their friends over for a crazy dance party but don’t let that stop you from bringing the experience home to them. Host a virtual dance party to bring out those crazy moves.
Antioch College roped in their alumni DJs from across generations and got 400+ registrations to its Virtual Div Dance Party event in just 11 days! The college set up a dedicated event page on its alumni network, laying down all the details needed for alumni to be able to participate and extensively promoted the event via Facebook.
While many institutions are still in a dilemma of whether or not to make a fundraising ask during an ongoing global crisis, the recent #GivingTuesdayNow saw some super creative virtual giving campaigns.
As schools and universities face a desperate need to maintain their revenue streams especially in the face of a looming economic crisis, many institutions are opting for student emergency campaigns and online auctions.
The French American International School anticipated a need for an increase in financial aid for next year as it provides support to its students in the form of tuition, books, lunches, and to every family that needs help during these tough times.
Support your alumni community with vital resources required to deal with the coronavirus via a virtual webinar or a seminar. As the world deals with uncertainty, fear, and anxiety amidst this crisis, bring health experts, career coaches, and your university leadership to come together and disseminate helpful information.
In response to COVID-19, University of Washington’s Department of Global Health initiated a weekly virtual lecture series featuring UW researchers who are coronavirus and pandemic preparedness experts, covering topics from testing and response measures to vaccine development and social & economic impacts.
With the ongoing coronavirus lockdown, your alumni now have the time to catch up on that old classic that they never got to complete and even reconnect with their long-lost reading groups.
Create virtual book clubs and target interested audiences with invitations to join these exclusive communities where they can connect with like-minded peers and have fruitful conversations that stir every book lover’s soul. Share a reading schedule allowing members time to read the book, participate in the discussion, and allow them to choose if they want to participate in the next reading session.
William Peace University, a liberal arts college in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, launched a Virtual Book Club focused on professional development and career advancement for the university students and alumni. The group acts as a community that collectively sets and realizes career-related goals.
A virtual gaming night can be a great way to de-stress and relax with friends. Bring your alumni community together for a fun night of online poker, charades, or pictionary to inspire a healthy sense of competition amongst your alumni. You could even get some of your favorite staff members to make a special appearance to spruce up the night.
Here’s how Samueli Academy brought its alumni community together during COVID-19 with Social Distancing Gaming Night over Zoom.
With the rising stress and anxiety levels owing to COVID-19, now’s the best time for your school or university to start a virtual exercise or yoga program for your alumni. Organizing virtual exercise or yoga sessions for your alumni community during these tough times can help them deal with stress, depression, anxiety, fatigue, and motivate them to work towards their overall physical and mental well-being.
Get certified Yoga practitioners/trainers from your community to lead these sessions to help their peers become fitter and better.
William Peace University 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.
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As a remote working professional with years of experience in alumni relations & fundraising, Nita June, Director of Alumni Relations at The Association of Waldorf Schools (AWSNA) finds that working remotely offers flexibility and freedom that is refreshing and gratifying. She also feels that this same freedom can be challenging to manage successfully and that everyone has their own methods that work for them. Check out our Advancement from Home eBook to read what Nita and other advancement professionals are saying.
With schools and universities closed for a long time now, advancement staff members are gradually adapting to the new norm of working from home while effectively engaging alumni and donors via virtual events.
Backed by data from 200+ schools and universities who have hosted successful virtual events over the last two months, here’s a virtual event checklist for advancement teams.
With tons of creative virtual event ideas floating around the internet, the best way to figure out what’s best for you is to ask yourself these questions:
- How can you offer support to your audience during these testing times?
- How can you solve a particular pain point of your constituents with your event?
Based on what your audience will resonate with the most, get started with building your virtual event.
The French American International School anticipated a need for an increase in financial aid for next year as it provides support to its students in the form of tuition, books, lunches, and to every family that needs help during these tough times.
Once you’ve decided your virtual event theme, put together your event agenda and figure out what tools you need to execute your event.
You can set up a dedicated event page on your alumni website or create a Facebook event page to capture registrations. If you need additional software such as Zoom for video conversations with attendees, Trello for organizing your event, or Almabase or Blackbaud to send emails to your attendees, this is the right time to talk to the experts on each team.
Take a cue from Antioch College’s incredible success with its first Virtual Div Dance Party. The Alumni Association set up an event page on its alumni website and Facebook to capture registrations. In addition to this, Antioch College needed funds to be able to host the 6-hours long virtual event which had 400+ registrations. So, the college set up a virtual fundraiser and urged attendees to contribute. Read how Antioch College got 400+ attendees to its Virtual Div Dance Party in 11 days amidst the COVID-19 outbreak.
Your virtual event’s success is largely dependent on your marketing strategy. O, how do you build a solid marketing strategy? The answer is by following the basics - emails and social media.
Use past data including event attendance, Facebook engagement, donation history and email engagement to identify highly engaged constituents and retarget them with personalized emails for your virtual event.
Social media is a powerful tool when it comes to maximizing the reach of your virtual event. Create a hashtag, a series of posts, get your followers to join in and encourage them to share these posts with their network.
You’re done with the planning, you got people to register for your virtual event, and with that awesome tool you signed-up for, your event is going great. Now what?
Having a good measure of engagement is critical to report on the success of your virtual event while working remotely. Measure your event based on metrics like registrations, check-ins, email open and click rates, and social media impressions and reactions.
Another key metric that helps determine the success of your virtual events is post-event feedback. This is crucial in improving the quality of future events and boosting participation. It reveals what attendees, sponsors, and stakeholders loved about your event and what you can do to make it even better next time. There are various ways to collect high-quality feedback from your event attendees.
4 simple steps to host a successful virtual event while you’re working from home
Find the checklists to host successful virtual events for alumni. Create your virtual events while you are working from home and boost alumni engagement.
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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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Email marketing is crucial to the success of your online giving campaign. Does that sound like a used and abused fact to you?
While it may sound repetitive, it’s the gospel truth!
Advancement teams extensively use email marketing to promote their online giving campaigns but, what do they do differently to increase the sense of urgency?
Here’s a look at the 6 most effective email marketing hacks that can help you create a sense of urgency and drive more people to donate:
Segmenting your alumni into groups based on different parameters such as location, class year, interests, etc. and targeting them via personalized emails is a widely popular approach adopted by schools and universities worldwide.
Here’s how Centenary College of Louisiana personalizes emails for an affinity group - Women’s Basketball and asks group members to make a gift to support their cause.
Apart from sending generic emails inviting donations, leveraging your influencers helps create a personalized touch and acts as a strong incentive for your alumni to contribute. These influencers should be people who your alumni can relate to and would appreciate hearing from.
See how Scranton Preparatory School used the peer-to-peer approach via emails to increase its Giving Day donations by 546%. Read the full story here.
Creating more opportunities for class years to compete with one another and gamifying this approach can significantly boost your giving day donations. Ensure that there’s an incentive tied in with the challenge and lay down the rules clearly in your email.
Here’s how Calvert Hall College High School emails alumni about the inter-class challenge and lays down clear guidelines & incentives. This approach helped create a healthy competition between classes leading to the school increasing its Giving Day donations by twice as much in 3 years. Read the full story here.
With shorter campaigns where timing is crucial, adding a countdown timer or a goal meter in your email creates a sense of urgency. Also, consider sharing a story that your alumni would relate to and feel the urge to contribute towards.
See how North Shore Animal League America includes a countdown timer to appeal to its donors.
Whether it is a one-day or a week-long campaign, it’s always a best practice to keep your constituents informed of all that’s planned as a part of the campaign. Right from the campaign announcement down to thanking donors for their support, ensure that your audience is engaged throughout the campaign.
Here’s how Mercy High School announces its upcoming Giving campaign, complete with the information about the goal of the campaign and all relevant links.
Saying thank you never goes out of style. Sending donors a thoughtful thank you email is a great practice for not only expressing gratitude but more importantly, for building lasting relationships. A thank-you email goes a long way in retaining the same donors and getting them to contribute again.
Check out Scranton Preparatory School’s thoughtful ‘Thank You’ email to all alumni after the end of its #PrepDay campaign. Read the full story here.
6 email marketing ideas to drive participation towards your online giving campaigns
Find email marketing best practices to improve alumni engagement and boost fundraising for schools, colleges & universities.
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Online fundraising can be a deceptively tricky subject. While the term simply refers to the process of raising money online, making the most of this strategy requires a dynamic approach on the part of your school.
When it comes to engaging with alumni, in particular, it’s doubly important to have a robust online fundraising strategy in place.
For this reason, your team should take a look at how you fundraiser online right now and decide whether or not you’re getting all you can out of this strategy.In this article, we’ll help you begin this process by discussing:
1. How your alumni engagement strategy can benefit from online fundraising
2. Online fundraising trends you should be using
3. Ways to boost alumni giving through online fundraising
4. Fundraising software tools that can improve your alumni engagement.
Ready to master online fundraising and improve your alumni engagement tactics? Let’s dive in!
Making the most of your online fundraising capabilities should be your first priority when perfecting how you engage with alumni!
As a school, your institution's fundraising needs and limitations likely look very different from other nonprofit organizations. For one thing, your core donor base (your alumni) are often spread far and wide across the country.
This means that to connect with alumni supporters, you’ll have to go the extra mile to meet them where they are.
The best way to do this? By fundraising online, your team can easily reach geographically-diverse alumni. This starts with accepting donations online, but also allows your school to regularly interact with your supporters via email, social media and more!
When your school makes the effort to interact with supporters online, you avoid the trap of remaining “out of sight and out of mind” to these individuals.
Through frequent online interaction, alumni are more likely to donate on a regular basis, as well as more likely to encourage their friends and family to give to your institution.
In addition to strengthening ties between your school and your alumni, online fundraising has several other key benefits:
1. Low overhead cost: After your initial investment in online fundraising software, online fundraising proves to more than make up for its upfront cost. Since everything is virtual, your team can allocate less personnel to manage your online fundraising efforts, as well as save money on physical marketing materials.
2. Simple setup: Once you pick the right software, your team can easily set up your online fundraising tools with little stress. Many services offer consultation during the implementation process, or you might lean on your fundraising consultant during this time for their expertise.
3. Increased donor knowledge: Another reason why online fundraising tools are so effective is because they can provide unmatched insight into your supporters. With every interaction your school has with alumni online, you will collect important data that can inform your engagement tactics moving forward.
The bottom line: By investing time and energy into perfecting your school’s online fundraising strategy, you’ll have an easier time reaching alumni donors while saving money and effort. Even better, when you do connect with these donors, your interactions will be more streamlined and more informative than traditional methods allow.
With the right strategy, your school can benefit from powerful new trends in online fundraising that simply can’t be matched by traditional fundraising methods.
In this section, we’ll highlight tactics that make the most of online fundraising’s dynamic potential by going further than simply accepting donations.
First, we’ll go over social fundraising techniques like crowdfunding and peer-to-peer campaigns, and then we’ll show you how online fundraising can be paired with on-site events to help your school make the donation more accessible to your alumni supporters.
1. Crowdfunding. With the right crowdfunding software, your school can grow your donor base while raising money. Look for tools that allow you to easily brand donation pages, share campaigns across social media and email, and ones with team crowdfunding capabilities.
2. Peer-to-peer: Tapping into your alumni’s social network, donors can help your school reach more eyes online. By associating campaigns with your alumni fundraisers, potential supporters are more inclined to give since they’ll more closely associate your school with their friend, family member, or colleague.
1. Kiosks and card swipers: By investing in an on-site donation kiosk or card swiper, your team can accept donations from those who prefer to pay with a credit or debit card. Gifts are then transferred online to your bank account, so you never have to worry about depositing checks or keeping track of cash donations. You might use a kiosk or card swiper at events like walkathons, talent shows, charity auctions etc.
2. Live event streaming: Another dynamic way to raise money for your cause is to stream fundraising events online. Alumni who can’t make it will be able to participate in the festivities from their computer or mobile device, and because of your online donation tools, giving will be as easy as the click of a button.
The bottom line: As part of your fundraising strategy, your school shouldn’t discount tactics that marry the best parts of in-person fundraising methods with the functionality and ease-of-use that online fundraising provides.
Looking to optimize your online giving channels to boost alumni donations?
What’s so unique about online fundraising is that your team can truly customize the giving experience to make donation as seamless as possible for your alumni donors.
Check out some of these online fundraising best practices to maximize your alumni’s donor potential:
1. Offer simple donation forms: You don’t want to lose out on potential alumni gifts because your online donation form was too lengthy, confusing, or required too much effort to complete. Be sure to make your online donation forms as streamlined as possible and don’t require givers to register for an account to make a donation.
2. Encourage recurring giving: The quickest way to make sure you’re able to get the most out of your fundraising efforts? Prompt alumni to opt-into recurring giving when they make a donation. Give them the freedom to set the gift amount and the donation schedule so that they’re able to tailor the process to their preferences.
3. Match alumni gifts: With the right software, your school can increase your fundraising potential by receiving matched gifts from alumni who work for corporations that have a matching gift program in place. One convenient way to do this is to direct alumni to a matching gift database tool on your school’s website or to implement an automated matching gift software to streamline the process for your school’s team.
The bottom line: Offering online donation channels to your alumni donors will boost giving, but only if your school is able to make the most of these dynamic giving tools.
One of the most important parts of perfecting your school’s online fundraising strategy is picking the right online fundraising software to help you get the job done.
With all the options out there, it can be tricky to know what software to invest in and what kind of functionality you’ll need to stay on top of your online fundraising game.
Luckily, we’ve compiled a list of all the tools you need to look out for when picking your software!
Donation pages are the bread and butter of your online fundraising efforts. To make sure you reach the maximum number of alumni donors, your team should be sure to invest in online fundraising software that provides you with dynamic tools to customize your pages.
Invest in a software solution that allows you to:
1. Brand pages to your school with colors, logos, pictures, video, etc.
2. Integrate donation pages with social media to make them easily shareable
3. Customize donation pages with suggested giving amounts, recurring giving opt-ins, and more.
Having a successful communications strategy in place is the first step to boosting your alumni fundraising online. If your team isn’t able to get the word out to your supporters, your online fundraising efforts will falter.
When choosing which online fundraising software to invest in, keep an eye out for a solution that enables :
1. Automated constituent email that can be customized to your different alumni donor segments
2. Engagement tracking and analytics to help you learn all you can about what strategies work for your supporters
3. Social share buttons that enable your donors to easily broadcast to their social networks once they give
The vast majority of your alumni use their mobile devices as their primary way to access the internet. Don’t miss out on all of these potential alumni donors!
As part of your online fundraising strategy, your school should be sure to have functional mobile giving tools in place. These can include:
1. Donation pages that are optimized for mobile devices
2. Embedded donation pages across your various social media platforms
3. Text giving tools that allow donors to give simply by sending you a customizable keyword.
The bottom line: When choosing online fundraising software, your team should select a platform that offers dynamic tools to meet your alumni engagement needs at every level.
When it comes to alumni engagement, having a next-level online fundraising strategy in place is crucial With these tips in mind, there’s nothing stopping your school from making connections with alumni and raising more than ever before!
Online Fundraising: What You Need to Know to Engage Alumni
Are you ready to master online fundraising and improve your alumni engagement tactics? Take a deep dive into this blog post to get your process right.
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