8 Prerequisites for Successful Alumni Engagement
Mark W. Jones, J.D.
Consultant, Advisor and Strategist on Philanthropy and Leadership for Educational and Nonprofit Organizations
Without exception, every college and university claims to prepare its students for productive careers and meaningful lives, as well as encourage them to share their talents through civic engagement both during and after their school years. Each institution also points with pride to the successes of its alumni and their contributions to the greater world. We all claim them as our most important output and the yardstick by which we measure the effectiveness of our academic programs.
Why, then, do some of our institutions begin to treat our alumni as second-class citizens as soon as they graduate? And why do we fail to take advantage of the many resources those former students have to offer us?
Missed Opportunities: After three decades of professional and volunteer service in higher education advancement, I continue to be baffled by this contradiction. It is particularly puzzling in today’s environment, where new technologies offer us a multitude of effective techniques for reaching out to and engaging our former students. And during an era when all institutions are scrambling for resources, colleges and universities that do not invest in their alumni and do not invite them to be active partners in shaping their institutions' futures are squandering a priceless untapped resource—and are foolish indeed.
At a time when all institutions are scrambling for resources, colleges and universities that do not invest in their alumni and do not invite them to be partners in shaping their futures are squandering a priceless resource.
The relationship between a college or university and its alumni can and should be reciprocal and mutually beneficial: The institution should offer continuing services and benefits to its former students (in addition, of course, to the educational experience already received), while its alumni can provide their alma mater with a broad range of financial and in-kind support. The spectrum of services offered by universities to their alumni today can include: means by which they can keep in touch with other alumni (reunions, online communities, directories, job boards); opportunities to stay connected to former faculty or programs of special interest; continuing education programs; networking opportunities; and a stream of information about the institution (magazines, newsletters, social media bulletins). Alumni can help their universities with admissions efforts (recommending and interviewing prospective students); career counseling and networking (offering internships, mentoring, or permanent jobs); advocacy and lobbying; advising of programs and departments; and the contribution and solicitation of financial resources.
The First Move is Yours: It is the college or university, however, that must take the lead in developing a culture of alumni engagement. Few alumni will seize the initiative or feel empowered to unilaterally start programs to benefit their institution and/or other former students. Alumni must feel valued by their alma mater, welcomed by it, and supported when they do step forward. If alumni are to become actively involved, the college or university must help direct their energies by communicating to them its needs, priorities and the areas where it can benefit from alumni assistance.
[A] culture of alumni engagement requires both thoughtful planning and constant vigilance to provide alumni with tangible and symbolic assurances that they indeed matter and that they are central to the future well-being of their school.
An educational institution must also demonstrate its commitment to alumni engagement by means other than simply offering a better magazine, larger reunions, more e-mail, and an increased alumni giving goal. Alumni must be made to feel like insiders and be assured they are important members of the community—they must believe their opinions matter and that they have a meaningful stake in shaping and advancing their alma mater. If, for instance, alumni are not well represented on the governing board or they are not informed about critical events at the college, they can reasonably conclude they are outsiders and are not valued. Thus a culture of alumni engagement requires both thoughtful planning and constant vigilance to provide alumni with tangible and symbolic assurances that they do indeed matter and that they are central to the well-being and the future of their school.
An engaged alumni population that feels it has a major stake in the future of its university will be much more responsive and enthusiastic when the institution asks for help. Thus a university that wishes to increase its alumni giving totals and their participation rate may discover that its fundraising efforts will be received more enthusiastically if hoped-for donors have already seen, heard and felt efforts by the university to communicate with, engage and support them in ways beyond gift solicitations.
Eight Elements of Successful Alumni Engagement: I've participated in advancement programs at a variety of institutions, doing so as an employee, volunteer and consultant. I've been fortunate to observe alumni relations programs that are terrific models for how to effectively engage alumni in the life of an institution; I have also witnessed programs that were horribly misguided, treated alumni with condescension, or all but ignored them.
From my thirty years of experiencing the good, bad and ugly of alumni relations, I have identified eight elements that always seem to be in place at institutions that enjoy a rewarding, mutually beneficial partnership with their graduates:
1. Programs That Serve the Alumni: In order to “get,” institutions must be prepared to “give.” Colleges and universities should offer a portfolio of services and support that will be of value to their former students, including:
2. Programs That Empower Alumni to Serve the Institution: We’re all familiar with the alumni complaint that “we only hear from you when you want money.” While solicitations for the alumni annual fund will never go away, there are plenty of other things alumni can do to advance our institutions, and many former students would be delighted to help if only we asked (and they in turn might feel better about their alma mater if they received and accepted such an invitation). Options for enlisting alumni to and add value include:
Even if each of the foregoing opportunities are available, we cannot expect alumni to discover or seek them out on their own. We must announce their existence, communicate their value and invite alumni to participate in them. And when alumni do offer to participate, we must be prepared to follow-through on their interest, provide them with training and support, and express sincere gratitude for their efforts.
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Colleges and universities must seek regular feedback from alumni.... Knowing what they want and how they feel about the services currently offered will both serve them better and ensure we are getting the best return on our limited resources.
3. Asking and Measuring: Developing a good idea and just running the program isn’t enough. Colleges and universities must seek regular feedback from alumni audiences to measure the effectiveness of current efforts and better shape future programs. Formal market research can help determine what alumni program institutions should invest in. (Isn’t it far better to know what alumni really want than to fall back on the “Field of Dreams” strategy we have historically employed: Build it and hope they’ll come?) User surveys and focus groups should also be embedded in the planning and follow-up from any major initiatives you choose to undertake. Knowing what alumni want and how they feel about the services you are currently providing will both serve them better and ensure you are getting the best return on your limited resources.
4. A Sustained, Focused Effort: Whatever initiatives we undertake to engage our alumni, we must be prepared to allow those efforts to take root and flower. This requires careful planning, focusing on programs with the greatest potential impact, obtaining multi-year budget commitments, and staying the course even in the midst of staff turnover and administrative change. Too often exciting new ideas spring up, draw short-lived attention and then die off. Instead, we must have a plan, then focus on the basics and stay the course.
5. Participation in Governance: Alumni must be afforded an appropriate chance to participate in shaping the future of their institution. At many colleges and universities, this is not a problem; indeed, some institutions could benefit from an infusion of non-alumni trustees. At others, however, alumni are a minority on the governing board, which can contribute to making alumni feel marginalized. At some institutions there is little or no connection nor interactions between the alumni association and the board of trustees. A strong linkage between the alumni board and the governing board (such as shared members and formal communication channels) helps keep communication open and provides a symbolic statement about the importance of alumni.
6. Unfettered Channels for Two-Way Communication: Do your alumni feel they can contact leaders of your institution to share ideas or concerns? Do they know how to make that connection? Will they get a response if they try? If the answer to any of those questions is “no”, then you need to work at opening up your lines of communications. Your goal should be a dialogue, not a monologue. Provide e-mail contacts, social media and web links, reply cards, publish letters to the editor of your magazine. Or follow the examples offered by several recent new campus CEOs who early in their tenures asked all alumni via e-mail for feedback on a number of questions—and received plenty of meaningful responses.
7. Candor: All of us share information with our alumni. It's easy of course to brag about the winning hockey team, the latest Rhodes Scholar, the bulging class of talented freshman, the new science building, and all the other good news that comes our way. The more interesting question, however, is what we choose to do with not-so-good news: Are we forthright? Do we share the fact that there’s an operating deficit? That a faculty member’s been fired for embezzlement?
Candor builds trust, and trust is the foundation of a meaningful relationship with our alumni.
No one likes bad news, but if alumni sense we don’t trust them to respond rationally to bad news, will they trust us enough to believe our good news? Candor builds trust, and trust is the foundation of a meaningful relationship with our alumni.
Attempts to tightly control and limit the information that flows to our alumni—in the hope of shaping their opinions and influencing their subsequent actions—is wrongheaded in many ways. It's manipulative. It's spin. And it also betrays our commitment to the purpose of higher education. What does it say about us when we don't have faith in the intellectual abilities of our own alumni? If we can't trust our graduates to take a set of facts, analyze them, and make sound judgments, we have a far bigger problem than a potentially tepid response to the alumni annual fund.
If such high-minded statements don’t move you, then perhaps some cold, hard statistics will. Research conducted two decades ago by Stanford University’s Jerold Pearson confirmed that alumni overwhelmingly appreciate it when institutions publicly address their problems and challenges. In Pearson’s survey of Stanford Magazine readers, 91% responded that articles in the magazine “that might touch on things that could be considered unflattering to the university” would actually strengthen their connection with the university. Only 3% said such articles would undermine their connection. While Pearson’s research did not investigate how such candor affects alumni giving, it isn’t a great leap of logic to conclude that being forthright doesn’t hurt giving but instead is helpful.
Alumni engagement starts at the top. Institutions whose trustees and administrators fail to heed that lesson may be consigned to languish at the bottom.
8. Commitment at the Top: If alumni are to be a priority for our colleges and universities—and if alumni are to believe that we genuinely desire for them to be full partners in shaping our institutions’ futures—they need assurances from the top: from trustees, the president and senior administration. Assurances from the alumni director aren’t enough. And those assurances must come not only as words but also as substantive actions. Some of those actions are listed above: candor, two-way communication, participation in governance and sustained effort; it also demands a commitment from the institutional budget. along with a pledge from leadership to dedicate their own time to engage with alumni. And most important of all, in the case of institutions without a culture of alumni engagement, the only way it can ever begin to develop is with the full and public support of the president.
Alumni engagement does indeed start at the top. Institutions whose trustees and administrators fail to heed that lesson may be consigned to languish at the bottom.
Copyright © 2005, 2012, 2015 and 2024, Mark W. Jones. All rights reserved.
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An abridged version of this article was published in January 2006 by the Council of Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) in Currents magazine under the title, "It's the Alumni, Stupid!". An update of that abridged version was posted here on March 27, 2015 as "'It's STILL the Alumni, Stupid!' Seven Timeless Keys to Meaningful Alumni Engagement."