4 Smart Ways To Keep Alumni Engaged in Your School’s Work

As an alumni relations officer, you know alumni engagement involves more than just sending an annual newsletter. It requires innovative opportunities for meaningful interaction, participation, and contributions that fit into alumni’s current lives.

To spark creativity, we’ll explore smart strategies that build upon the basics of alumni management best practices. Each idea relies heavily on a strong higher education tech stack for staying organized and finding the insights you need to unlock the full potential of your alumni network. Experiment with these ideas to ensure your alumni remain active contributors to your institution.

Send eCards on special occasions

Send eCards for various occasions, such as:

• Holidays: Send festive wishes for major holidays and cultural events. Year-end holidays like Christmas and New Year’s Day are especially great for highlighting your school’s successes over the past year, sharing upcoming plans, and making year-end fundraising appeals.
• Personal Milestones: Celebrate alumni birthdays, graduation anniversaries, and other milestones with personalized eCards, showing that your organization values each alumni’s individual journey.
• Special Updates: Share significant school accomplishments, such as new programs, awards, or events, through eCards. This keeps alumni informed and makes them feel like they’re a part of your school’s progress.
• Gift acknowledgments: While a generic email might suffice, you can elevate your donation thank-yous by formatting them as eCards. After all, eCardWidget’s donor recognition guide explains that most donors churn when they’re not thanked or updated on how their donations were used. eCards elevate your appreciation strategy, ensuring alumni donors will remember that your school reached out to thank them for their gifts.

Maximize the impact of your eCards by ensuring they feature your school’s logo, colors, and engaging visuals like event photos or relevant graphics. For example, Youth For Understanding (YFU) designed this eCard:

YFU is an international educational nonprofit that facilitates cultural exchange programs. Students live with host families, attend school, and immerse themselves in another country’s culture. For its 70th anniversary, YFU created eCards like the one above, which reinforces the nonprofit’s brand by featuring its logo and graphics relevant to its programming.

Former participants could send these eCards with custom thank-you notes to those who made their experiences memorable.

Implement an effective CRM to manage alumni

An effective CRM system organizes alumni data, allowing your team to track interactions, monitor donation history, analyze event participation patterns, and track individuals’ professional achievements. This comprehensive view of your donors empowers you to implement personalized engagement strategies to strengthen connections with alumni.

Here are CRM features that streamline alumni management:

• Centralized Database: Your CRM stores alumni contact information, donation history, and interaction records in one accessible location. If you notice gaps in this data, you can use alumni data enhancement to fill it in. For instance, an employer append can fill in missing employment information, helping locate corporate giving opportunities.
• Segmentation and Personalized Communication: Group alumni based on their interests, engagement levels, giving history, and demographics to create personalized outreach.
• Automated Communication: Your system may have automated personalized communication features with triggers based on alumni interactions, donations, and event participation. This keeps alumni connected without requiring constant manual effort.
• Engagement Tracking: Your CRM can record alumni interactions, including event participation, volunteer activities, and donations. This provides you with each alumni’s complete engagement history, allowing you to build stronger relationships.

Stay on top of your CRM’s latest features to make the most of your system. For instance, Salesforce recently released features that can enhance alumni relationships. You can now check for duplicates before creating records, ensuring that your alumni records are unique and up-to-date. Additionally, you can require addresses on forms to guarantee that users provide this crucial information. You can even integrate your software with Google Maps to make it easier for alumni to input their addresses accurately.

Encourage participation in corporate giving programs

Corporate giving programs empower alumni to amplify their impact on your institution, often with added support from their employers. Many companies offer these programs to strengthen employee engagement and establish a reputation for being charitable.

Here’s a breakdown of key corporate giving programs:

• Matching Gift Programs: Many employers match the charitable donations their employees make. That means your alumni can double or triple the impact of each gift, making them more likely to keep donating.
• Volunteer Grants: Some companies offer grants to organizations where their employees volunteer. Alumni who contribute their time to your university can submit a form to secure this additional funding for your institution.
• Volunteer Time Off (VTO): VTO programs allow employees to take paid time off to volunteer. Encourage alumni to use this benefit to support your school. Double the Donation’s volunteer statistics page highlights that 60% of companies offer VTO, meaning many of your alumni likely qualify.
• Payroll Deductions: Alumni can set up automatic donations to your school directly from their paychecks. This convenient method ensures consistent support. 

To maximize participation, provide clear resources on how to engage with these programs. Also, share impact stories that highlight the difference made through corporate giving. For example, let’s say you use social media or have an alumni spotlight in your newsletter. You might showcase one alumnus whose employer doubled their contribution of $1,000, helping to surpass your fundraising goal for library renovations.

Offer diverse fundraising involvement opportunities

To inspire alumni to keep supporting your school, offer a variety of donation and fundraising opportunities that cater to different financial situations and preferences. By providing multiple ways to give, you can ensure that every alumnus feels empowered to contribute in a way that aligns with their giving capacity and interests.

Consider offering these opportunities:

• Encourage alumni to set up recurring monthly donations, allowing them to provide steady, ongoing support at a level that fits their budget.
• Offer options for alumni to leave a lasting impact through legacy or planned giving, such as bequests or endowments.
• Empower alumni to lead or participate in fundraising events, creating a sense of ownership and a deeper connection to your school.
• Participate in annual giving days, such as Giving Tuesday.
• Enable alumni to celebrate their special day by raising funds for their alma mater through birthday fundraising drives.

By providing diverse opportunities, you ensure that every alumnus can find a meaningful way to contribute to your organization’s success. Of course, you’re not limited to these options. Get inspired by asking alumni how they’d like to contribute via surveys and one-on-one conversations.