Alumni and donor teams are seeking the "what's next," but change is tough
Ryan Catherwood
Engagement strategist and consultant activating university networks. Co-host of the Alumless web series and podcast.
I spend a lot of time chatting with the leaders of engagement teams in advancement shops, and it’s clear that everyone is grappling with some tough questions. Their concerns reflect a dynamic, changing world that isn’t the same as it was two years ago. Although many more concerns are swirling around, I posit that there are big questions that reflect areas of consternation for alumni leaders that have broad implications for the strategies of the future.
Will we ever return to our pre-COVID staffing numbers and resource allotment, or are we changed forever? And therefore, if we are never getting back to pre-COVID resources, how should our strategies, programs, and goals be reconsidered so that our results can continue growing?
How should we interpret what we’ve learned about technology during COVID that works for our engagement strategies of the future all while we fall back to bread-and-butter in-person events?
How should we adjust our work engaging alumni to become more deeply connected to strategies for raising philanthropic dollars? But also, how can our alumni teams positively impact our university’s efforts to increase enrollment and retention?
So what is the pathway forward?
At the top of the engagement funnel, the most significant opportunity to continue on a growth trajectory is to focus on stimulating the most scalable participation activity.
No matter where they live or work, any alum or donor can provide advice and reflections in response to questions posed by members of the university community or our engagement teams. Their insights in the form of a comment, when shared, can propel a prospective student to apply and convince an enrolled student to stay. In addition, insights gleaned from the advice and reflections of alumni and donors can be used to develop personalized journeys through unique touchpoints within the philanthropy experience.
Whether it comes in the form of a statement on social media, a response to a blog post, an answer to a survey question, or advice provided through another technology solution like Protopia, the way to scale engagement is to ask alumni and donors questions in an on-going capacity.
I believe that the alumni and donor teams that purposefully and artfully develop infrastructure around stimulating a two-way conversation through questions and answers that bring together students, faculty, alumni, and donors will find themselves on a growth trajectory.
Through Q&A “flash engagement” approaches and micro–volunteerism, and not events, resource-strapped engagement teams can recalibrate and grow participation.
Utilize the Q&A approach for lead generation and activating unengaged alumni while providing a meaningful participation opportunity for donors.
Although alumni and donors are happy to offer advice and reflections in short bursts if they have time, that “ask” is decidedly different from one that proposes someone become a mentor or lead an affinity group as far as time commitment. However, those stakeholders that enjoyed answering questions represent a lead and a signal that they might be an excellent fit for a formal mentoring program or any other volunteer experience that’s more of a time commitment.
A strategy for growth that leads with a focus on Q&A provides a pathway for enhanced lead generation both for philanthropy and other engagement programs. When donors signal their interests through answers to questions, our engagement teams must be ready to reach out and propose “what’s next” to alumni and donors along their life-long journey with the university.
Driving alumni and donor engagement while enhancing connectivity with development requires shifting resources and rethinking traditional approaches.
The reality is those alumni leaders working with fewer resources, but increasing mandates to make an impact can’t operate in the same capacities moving forward. Regional chapter programs and affinity groups led by full volunteer boards will need to be slowly downsized and rebuilt to reflect a scaled-down version with representatives that can act periodically as event hosts but mainly are tasked with stimulating and guiding online discussions.
For most engagement teams, in-person events take up the most time, energy, and resources. More events are the historical go-to for 95% of advancement leaders working to grow alumni and donor engagement. Still, an event-driven strategy to drive scale is no longer the pathway to growth other than at the most well-off institutions that can build and maintain the number of volunteer boards it takes to create and maintain vibrant chapters and groups. For those schools looking to drive engagement but can’t support any more events or boards, tough decisions need to be made about scaling back and adopting new approaches.
For the last twenty years or longer, we've relied on “opt-in” methods to grow engagement programs, but we’ll need new strategies based on “opt-out” models to move forward effectively. In opt-out models, we assume all alumni want to help by answering questions and providing advice and reflections until they tell us otherwise. We also must embrace the answers that alumni and donors provide us, and use their thoughts as content in our social feeds, as messaging for students and to help accelerate the careers of recent grads.
What do you think? How should alumni and donor engagement programs evolve for the future?
Ryan is an engagement strategist and consultant with Chris Marshall Advancement Consulting and Network Catalyst with Protopia. Protopia provides an AI-powered, app-less solution for connecting students and alumni. Sign-up for the new Alumni Smoothie newsletter or check out the Alum-Less podcast and episodes on LinkedIn Live every-other-Friday at 11:30 a.m. ET.
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2 年I'd add to your strategy mix that scaling Q&A doesn't mean asking everybody the same questions. That's the equivalent of inviting all alumni to Homecoming. It's one thing to read "would you consider mentoring a student?" but quite another to read "would you consider mentoring a biology student whose research interests seem to align with your post-college path?"
30+ years of experience in Alumni Relations, Marketing & Communications, and DEIB. CASE Laureate
2 年Good read ... thx for sharing, Ryan
I do agree with a lot of this -we survey our alumni yearly and a lot of them do take the time to respond. From that we can then also see what do they want the most. And for us, that continues to be quality communications and publications. We track this engagement and have seen it soar over the past few years. More events is not the answer. Quality content through a variety of channels is - events, podcasts, articles, social media etc.
At the rink refereeing is my happy place!
2 年Spot on Ryan! Thank you for sharing your insight. Janet Kinard and I were having this conversation a little over a week ago, discovering that an approach may be not to abandon whatever platform your institution has aligned with in favour of another, because as we know someone made that decision and doing so can be a recipe for disaster, but offer to enhance it with scalable solutions starting with 1% (as I learned from Jason Shim) and projecting out the compounded impact of that. Maria L Gallo, EdD and I were also mulling these ideas following, dare I say it, an in-person UBC alumni event last week in Toronto. Some really promising stuff here Ryan!
Alumni Relations Director
2 年Great points Ryan! In many instances, the biggest challenge for lean shops is educating (and convincing!) university leaders that there are more effective ways to engage with alumni beside resource intense, traditional in-person events.