Alumni participation is vital to the success of any institution of higher education. Notable alumni can enhance the school’s reputation. Alumni networking drives insights and innovation. Your alumni are also the best candidates for mentorship and career guidance for your new students.
Of course, your alumni network is also an ideal source of funding, ensuring revenue through alumni engagement. This is especially relevant now, as decreasing FAFSA submissions and the resulting decline in tuition revenue place educational institutions under great financial stress.
This situation, coupled with the high cost of maintaining university or college infrastructure, means schools are more dependent on fundraisers and donations than ever before. Read on to learn how creating a strong, engaging alumni network can be the solution to your school’s financial woes.
The role of alumni in institutional success
Establishing an alumni community and managing it effectively is crucial for ensuring revenue through alumni engagement.
Lifelong community members
Create a robust alumni network to reach out to and engage alumni and you reap the benefits of lifelong community members. By encouraging constant participation and camaraderie, you ensure a consistent potential revenue stream, too.
As more alumni join the community, it takes on a life of its own as a thriving alumni network loyal to the institution that binds them. As a result, other influential groups they are now affiliated with can play a role in your school’s success.
Financial contributions
As the alumni network grows, this ensures a constant revenue stream through alumni membership fees. Make the effort to keep your alumni engaged and involved with their alma mater and you also have access to a list of potential donors for every fundraising campaign.
This is essential for schools that rely heavily on the proceeds of fundraising to provide better services to their students. And these alumni contributions are not the only source of revenue. Through their new contacts, alumni can also open doors to new corporate donors, and sponsors of scholarships.
Strategies for enhancing alumni engagement
If ensuring revenue through alumni engagement is your goal, you need to lay the foundation with the following strategies.
Personalized communication
The more personalized your alumni community communications are, the more engaged your alumni community will be. Take note of your community members’ interests, and use this knowledge to reach out to them and capture their attention.
Go a step further and create sub-groups to facilitate alumni involvement within your wider alumni community where they can communicate with like-minded individuals.
Regular events and reunions
Alumni engagement requires consistent involvement.
Set up alumni events like networking sessions and reunions. These don’t always have to be in-person events, nor do they need to be hosted in lavish settings. They just have to be regular so keep the school present in alumni’s thoughts.
A mix of formal in-person and virtual alumni events offers flexibility and convenience for alumni who have moved further afield.
Alumni volunteer programs
Often, alumni want to be involved in the school and student community’s continued success but do not know how best to help.
Establish volunteer programs where they can make a difference by donating their time and/or funds to important causes. Donors need motivation to keep donating.
Keep alumni informed about volunteering, fundraising, and sponsorship opportunities. This can be the catalyst for renewed interest in alumni giving.
Providing value to alumni
Providing alumni networks with value for their participation is vital to ensuring revenue through alumni engagement.
Career development opportunities
The world of work beckons after graduation, but some alumni find it more daunting than others. Help them to transition to their new role in society. Use your alumni network to keep alumni informed about professional development and career services within your university.
Lifelong learning
Your alumni’s learning journey does have to end when they graduate. Encourage this cycle of lifelong learning by offering a digital repository of academic journals, research papers, tutorials, and other learning resources.
Exclusive benefits
If you’re set on ensuring revenue through engagement, remember that you need to give to receive. Offer your alumni exclusive benefits like special events and memorabilia that strengthen the bond and make them want to stay involved with the alumni association.
Leveraging technology for engagement
The first step to ensuring revenue through alumni engagement is to use the right technology, like the Aluminate for Education alumni engagement software. Here are two methods of using technology to your advantage:
Alumni portals
An alumni portal is an online platform that allows graduates and former students to maintain and update their contact info, employment status, particulars, achievements, and communication preferences. But it also serves a deeper purpose: continued interaction and engagement.
Alumni engagement software like Aluminate for Education provides a customizable alumni portal that can be used to manage alumni data. And with the Social Data Sync feature, it’s even easier to keep your community data accurate.
This makes it a breeze for the university to remain in contact with its alumni. It also allows former students to stay in contact with fellow alumni. This is vital to the continued connection between students and their alma mater, regardless of future geographical distance.
Social media engagement
Social media platforms are an excellent choice for boosting engagement in these increasingly digital times. However, it’s crucial that you choose the right social media platform, one that caters specifically to the needs and interests of academic alumni.
Aluminate for Education is the world’s most customizable community platform. It is therefore an excellent tool for creating your very own alumni social network, similar to other social media platforms, but tailor-made to facilitate alumni interaction and increase their engagement.
You provide links to digital resources relevant to alumni like academic journals. Or advertise upcoming reunions and networking events. And, of course, you can use the platform’s digital dashboard to announce important fundraisers.
Measuring success
The key to ensuring revenue through alumni engagement is consistent monitoring of alumni engagement rates.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Your Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, are the quantifiable measurements that show how effective your engagement tactics are. They are the metrics that highlight how well your alumni engagement platforms are performing. Keep a watchful eye on these.
Look at which of your online social posts are getting the most attention, likes, and comments. What is clicked on the most, and how many of these are shared? Analyzing metrics like these will give you a better idea of what your alumni find most newsworthy, entertaining, and engaging.
Feedback mechanisms
Your feedback mechanisms are another rich source of alumni engagement potential. Encourage such feedback by allowing comments on social media posts, inviting participation in interactive activities, and crafting alumni-centric surveys.
Such feedback will give you deeper insights into how your alumni think and what drives their participation, This will enable you to engage them more thoroughly and give you more direction for your fundraising appeals.
Invest in Aluminate for Education to boost alumni engagement and revenue
Are you ready to ensure a consistent revenue stream through alumni engagement?
You’ll need a platform for managing alumni data, communicating with alumni, and encouraging their participation. The type of platform that can be customized to your specific needs, while offering the type of value that will encourage alumni donations.
Thanks to its customizable, user-friendly software catering to the academic world, Aluminate for Education offers the ideal platform for ensuring revenue through alumni engagement.
Request a demo and learn why so many leading institutions trust Aluminati for building alumni communities.
