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Blackbaud recently announced that support for Raiser’s Edge NXT’s database view and related functionality will end on September 15, 2027, affecting several Blackbaud products. These include Blackbaud Online Express and Blackbaud NetCommunity (BBNC). For advancement teams that have spent years building forms, pages, workflows, and other processes around the platform, this means choosing and migrating to a new platform. The prospect can feel like a lot to take on, especially if it wasn't something you'd anticipated.

If you're looking for an alternative, Almabase can help you replace the functionality you currently rely on across these products. We've already covered why teams might be thinking of a move off BBNC and how the main alternatives compare. In this article, we’ll be focusing on what happens once you've made that decision: what the migration process looks like, what your team can expect along the way, and how Almabase approaches the move.

In case you’re evaluating how Almabase stacks up against BBNC, check out our comparison blog here.

There’s also another question that comes up around a platform migration: How much is this going to cost?
This question extends beyond the immediate, visible technical costs. In fact, the technical side of the move might just be the simplest to figure out. It’s the broader, more abstract elements like shifting scopes, changing requirements, or even figuring out the right set of requirements in the first place that could end up costing the most amount of money and time, if not approached thoughtfully.

That's why we want to walk you through the Assisted Fast Pass Migration process upfront: what happens at each stage, what your team is responsible for, what our migration team handles, and where costs may come into the picture. We hope to give you a clear idea of what the move to Almabase will look like before you get started, so there are fewer surprises along the way.

Why transparency matters during a migration

A migration project always begins with an agreed-upon plan. But it’s also very likely that, a few weeks in, you discover a form that needs some additional customization or a request that seemed straightforward seems to fall outside the original scope, on second thought. These are perfectly reasonable hiccups during the migration, but if work is already underway, it could seem harder to understand what you're paying for, and even harder to plan around the rest of the project.

Clear expectations are at the heart of our migration approach, starting with total transparency around what extra requirements cost. With Almabase’s Assisted Fast Pass Migration, each stage gives you a chance to understand what's being proposed, what falls within the standard migration, and where something would require additional work.

Basically, you shouldn't find out about an extra requirement after the work has already been done. Your approval and sign-off comes first. The five steps in the migration process are built around this intention. Let’s get into them.

1. Kickoff: Getting the project off on the right foot

The migration process starts with a kickoff between your team, a dedicated CSM, and an implementation specialist. This is where we get the groundwork in place. This is usually access to your current site, your branding assets, and the dates your team needs to work around.

Another important step here is understanding your calendar and priorities. Your Giving Day, reunion, fiscal year-end, or another major event may determine what needs to happen first and we would be building the migration calendar around it. So, the migration sequence might look a little different for each institution, as each gets to choose which product goes first.

The kickoff is also a chance to flag anything unusual about your current NetCommunity setup.

After years on a platform, it's normal for your setup to have accumulated a few workarounds, custom configurations, or integrations that made sense when they were created. We don't need to solve all of those questions in the first meeting, but we do need to know about them.

That way, we can account for them during the next stage: the inventory. 🤗

Your team mainly needs to provide:

• Key dates and deadlines
• Relevant branding assets
• Access to your existing NetCommunity site
• Any known custom configurations, integrations, or unusual workflows

From there, you can let us take on the heavy lifting.

Your dedicated CSM and implementation specialist work with you throughout the migration, while your team focuses on the decisions and approvals. A migration shouldn't require your advancement team to take on managing a project full time on top of everything else they’re already handling.

Your data doesn't have to wait for the build

Your data migration is handled alongside the rest of the process. Almabase's bi-directional TrueSync integration connects with Raiser's Edge NXT and supports two-way syncing for configured entities and fields, including constituent, event, and gift data.

Admins can also decide which fields update automatically and which should be reviewed before they're pushed or pulled between systems.

That means your team doesn't have to wait until every page and workflow decision has been finalized before thinking about what happens to your data. The data side of the transition can move forward alongside the rest of the migration, with real time decisions being made.

2. Discovery and inventory: weeks one and two

Once kickoff is complete, your implementation specialist carefully starts building a complete inventory of what's currently running on NetCommunity: pages, forms, events, programs, memberships, and other key components of your site.

This process is useful in its own right, especially when taken on by someone external. After years on a platform, it's easy for a site to accumulate things that no one thinks about anymore, simply because they’re too involved in the process. The inventory gives you one place to see what's actually there, anything you might’ve forgotten about, and to make decisions about what needs to move vs what can be left behind.

Probably the most effective part of this is that it's a shared inventory that you can review alongside your specialist. If something looks outdated, doesn't need to move, or needs a closer look, you can flag it before it moves to the new product.

The inventory can surface things like:

• Duplicate or unused event pages
• Old forms or pages that are still live
• Site elements that don't need to be carried into Almabase
• Custom fields and configurations that don’t make sense on the new platform

This idea is to document your NetCommunity site so well that both teams end up on the same picture of what exists and what needs to happen next. The Almabase team handles the actual inventory work, and all you need to do is review the inventory and flag anything that should be changed, removed, or investigated.

3. Sign-off: deciding what moves forward

At this stage, the migration project starts taking on a more defined shape as you decide what you need to bring into Almabase. You and your implementation specialist review the inventory, decide what carries forward, and establish what the finished version should look like.

For each item being migrated, the team, along with you, defines the acceptance criteria before the building begins. If your existing alumni directory has eight fields and three filters, for example, those requirements can be documented as part of the scope. By the end of this discussion, everyone has arrived at the same definition of what needs to be delivered.

This is also where you’ll be able to clearly separate standard migration work from anything that requires additional effort.

If something falls outside the standard scope, you'll know before the work begins:

• What the additional work involves
• What's included and what's excluded
• The estimated effort
• The associated cost

You won’t have to decipher this from the invoice later on, because the work only moves forward once you’ve signed off on the scope.

This is exactly why your input here matters most. The Almabase team handles the building, but it’s you and your team deciding what is important enough to carry forward and what “done” needs to look like, within the standard process or with additional effort layered on.

4. Build and launch: 30 days for each product

Our team takes up building only once you’ve greenlit the scope. Each product gets its own dedicated 30-day track, with the order of products taken up built around your events and fiscal calendar.

This is to accommodate your calendar: giving days, reunions, Homecoming, we’ll build that product first so you’re ready in time for go-live day. If your immediate priority is your broader alumni site, we might begin with building that instead. The point is, even at this pace, you’re not forced to adopt a one-size-fits-all solution. Your implementation team works with you to determine what needs to come first.

The build itself happens on your Almabase pages, so you can review as it gets built while also familiarizing yourself with the new platform.

The timeline typically looks like this:

• 30-day build track: Each product moves through its own focused build.
• Weekly working session: Your team meets with the implementation team to review progress, provide input, and make decisions.
• Training as you go: Your team gets hands-on experience with the platform during the build, rather than waiting until everything is finished to start learning it.
• First launch: The fastest migrations can have their first product live around 45 days from kickoff, depending on the scope and sequencing of your project.

Having the scope agreed upon shows up in smoothness at this point: you can expect fewer decisions to make from scratch during this stage. Your team knows what's being built, your implementation specialist knows what they're working toward, and everything can move as planned, on track.

5. Cutover: moving from NetCommunity to Almabase

As you get closer to launch, the focus shifts from building to making the transition itself as smooth as possible.

The most important part of that is making sure people can still find the things they've been using. Your team receives a redirect map that pairs each carried-forward NetCommunity URL with its new Almabase destination. You'll also want to review where those old links appear outside NetCommunity: your main institutional website, email templates, QR codes, printed materials, and any other places where an old URL may still be in circulation.

The redirect map gives you a clear list of what needs to change and no one has to discover old links one by one after launch.

Before each product goes live, your team gets to review it thoroughly and explicitly approve the launch.

The aim, with these five steps, is to get your Almabase programs ready before your NetCommunity access ends, so the transition remains smooth and doesn't become a last-minute scramble.

What happens when something doesn't fit the standard scope?

Not everything that comes up during a migration falls neatly into the original plan. But there's also an important conversation to be had: what counts as additional scope and what is a limitation in the platform itself?

If something requires work beyond the standard migration scope, that's identified and quoted before the work begins. You can then decide whether you want to take it on.

But if there’s a requirement you have that Almabase cannot support yet, we’ll be fully transparent with you. Essentially, you haven’t asked for too much, we’re just not there yet. Depending on what you need, the team can look at a workaround or determine how the functionality could be addressed after launch.

This conversation is also one of the reasons the earlier stages matter. The shared inventory, defined acceptance criteria, and upfront scoping give everyone a common reference point throughout the project.

That's really the principle behind the entire migration process. You're not expected to know every detail of what needs to happen before the project starts. The process itself is designed to show you those details early, give your team a chance to make the calls that matter, and keep the build moving while minimizing unexpected, last-minute surprises.

Ready to make the move?

A BBNC migration may not have been on your roadmap, but that also doesn't mean it has to become a project that takes over your team's calendar.

With a clear process, an agreed scope, and the right support, you can move the parts of NetCommunity that matter to your team and work for your institution without having to figure everything out as you go. The Almabase team handles the build and migration work, while your team stays in complete control of the decisions, priorities, and final approvals.

And because the scope and any additional costs are addressed before the work happens, you can go into the migration knowing what to expect.

If you're planning your move away from BBNC, let's talk about what it could look like for your institution.

Talk to the Almabase team about your BBNC migration →

A paddle raise (also called a fund-a-need) is a great and simple fundraising format for nonprofits. It is easy to host, fun, and similar enough to auctions that if you have experience in one, you can easily incorporate the other.

All this is to say that, with proper planning, it is one of the most effective ways to get donations for your nonprofit or a particular project.

In this blog, we’ll look at what makes a typical paddle raise work, its benefits, and the essential steps to start hosting one on your own.

What is a Paddle Raise?

A paddle raise, also often called fund-a-need, is a live, direct appeal during a fundraising event such as a gala where donors pledge a financial contribution to a nonprofit, charity, or a particular cause. This is usually done by raising paddles containing varying numbers or ‘levels’, or through bidding devices and software.

Unlike charity auctions though, there aren’t any items or art involved, and attendees will not be bidding on a piece. An ask is made, and donors willing to contribute that amount raise their paddles. Due to the simpler setup and direct contributions, paddle raises have high ROI and are generally considered to be very effective.

How does a Paddle Raise work?

Usually taking place at the peak of the fundraiser, a paddle raise takes around 10-20 minutes (it happens quite quickly). This is typically how it unfolds:

• A designated speaker or emcee gets the event rolling by showing a video or narrating a quick story that introduces and emphasizes the impact of your mission.
• The emcee announces the fundraising target for the night, or if there are multiple causes, the goals for each.
• Tiers of contributions are planned beforehand ($10k, $7.5k and so on), and the emcee starts with the highest tier and works their way down to the lower tiers. When they ask for contributions, attendees express their willingness by raising numbered paddles.
• Volunteers and staff keep track of all the pledges and note it down.
• After going through all the tiers, the pledges are processed, and the total amount raised is announced. Attendees are thanked for their contributions and the event draws to a close.

Now that we’ve gone through what a paddle raise is and how it usually plays out, let’s get to how you can run one of your own.

How to Run a Successful Paddle Raise (Step-by-Step)

While paddle raises are simple enough in concept, they do require proper planning and coordination to capture pledges accurately and create good energy overall.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Pick the right cause/project for your targets and set your targets

Paddle raises are a lot more effective if you can tie them to a specific initiative that makes donors feel like they’re making a meaningful impact. It could be an annual raise for cancer, providing education to underprivileged children, etc.

Set a tangible goal and be clear on where the money goes. Sharing this with your donors builds trust. The goal shouldn’t be so high that hitting it feels impossible. All in all, you want to set a realistic but fairly ambitious figure.

2. Decide the contribution levels or tiers

You should aim for 5-10 levels and make sure it’s inclusive of everyone’s giving capabilities. You can discuss with your pre-committed donors (more on that later) to decide amounts for the higher giving tiers (or conversely for lower giving tiers depending on the situation).

This is where having a regularly updated donor database helps greatly, as you can base your levels off of giving history and data.
A basic example would be to have $15k as the highest tier, followed by $10k, $5k, $2k and so on all the way to $50. Remember that you have to be inclusive, so don’t skimp out on small or micro-level contributions.

3. Pick your emcee or host

The emcee is critical in setting the stage and the energy before the raise begins. An enthusiastic crowd can make a massive difference in contributions. If possible, hire a professional emcee who has been on the mic for other charity events before. You know your donors best; use that knowledge to pick out a host that can connect with them and elevate the room accordingly..

Alternatively, if your organization has deep ties with the attendees, you could consider a leadership figure (directors, chair, etc.) for familiarity. Of course, they need to be a good orator as well.

4. Decide the schedule and script

Since a paddle raise is relatively short, decide when the paddle raise should take place during your fundraising event or gala. You should aim to host the raise during the peak of the fundraiser, when everyone is energetic and receptive to instructions from you or your host.

Come up with a script, including your opening statement, tier announcements, anecdotes, and expressing gratitude at the end. Have alternative scripts ready for different scenarios since you can’t always predict if you’ll hit your target, overshoot it, or come close.

5. Pick the right tools for your event

You can choose to host your paddle raise with either physical paddles or through bidding software, though incorporating the former is heavily recommended.

You’ll need to assign numbers to each attendee and give them a paddle with the corresponding number. When a certain giving tier is called out, they can choose to pledge that amount by raising the paddle while volunteers keep track of it.

If you’re opting for a digital process, look for mobile-friendly bidding platforms. There are some other options as well like scanning QR codes to pledge. However, keep  your attendees’ preferences in mind and try to find a balance between their experience and your team’s feature set. This is important, since  the bidding and giving data will need to be synced to your CRM.

6. Running the paddle raise itself

When opening your event, it helps to set the energy high. Start with the mission statement and targets you set earlier. Here’s where the emcee does the heavy lifting. Videos and stories with emotional angles work really well at establishing a connection with your donors and creating empathy for your cause. If you have first time donors in the mix, a quick explanation of how the paddle raise works would also be helpful.

Make sure your volunteers are in place to clearly record everything. The emcee announces the levels in succession, starting with the highest one and working their way down.
Seeing major contributions right at the start might encourage the others to go beyond what they had originally planned. Make sure that the emcee acknowledges and celebrates pledges briefly for each tier before moving on to the next one.

How your staff records the pledges is up to you. You can use an app, spreadsheets, or simply pen and paper. Choose whichever would be the most convenient and accurate for your team.

7. Gratitude and stewardship

After going through all the levels, tally the total amount raised and announce it as the event draws to a close. Celebrate the impact everyone has created on the day. Tying the money raised to a tangible outcome (for example, 50 scholarships granted for struggling children, or feeding 100 people) creates even more positivity and really drives home a sense of accomplishment and giving.

After your fundraising event, follow up with your attendees to collect the pledged amounts, preferably within a day. Include key details like their paddle number, amount they pledged, and multiple payment options. Thank all the participants, regardless of whether they donated or not.

A Few Tips to Enhance Your Paddle Raise

Here are a few extra things to ensure you get the most out of your paddle raise(s):

• Pre-committing a handful of donors: Reach out to some of your long time supporters, and ask for an early commitment to a particular level, especially the higher ones. Hesitation in the opening rounds of the raise can affect the overall contributions negatively. When attendees see paddles being raised immediately even at higher tiers, it gives them confidence to donate more.
• Host it at the right time: If your paddle raise is part of a larger fundraising event (as is most common), avoid doing it right after a meal break when attendees are a bit languid, or at the very end of the event when a lot of them have left already.
• Celebrate milestones during the raise: Every time you get significantly closer to hitting the day’s target, celebrate it. For example, if your goal is to raise $30000, then announce and celebrate when the contributions reach $5000, $15000, maybe hit a gong at $25000, and so on. Also, make sure to recognize all contributions, big or small, with equal excitement.

Almabase - A Powerful Tool for Hosting Your Paddle Raise

At its core, a paddle raise is fairly simple. But behind that simplicity is a lot of manual tracking like volunteers noting down pledges, someone tallying totals, and follow-up calls or emails to actually collect what was pledged. This is usually where a platform like Almabase can take some of that load off your team.

Instead of clipboards and spreadsheets, Almabase gives you a real-time dashboard of the event as it unfolds, so pledges don't need to be re-entered after the fact. Since collecting payment is often the trickiest part, you can also capture a guest's card at registration and charge pledges automatically once the raise wraps, rather than chasing donors down individually.

A couple of other things worth mentioning: contributions can be routed straight to the fund or project they were raised for, and everything syncs directly with your CRM so your donor records stay accurate without extra data entry.

None of this replaces a great emcee or an emotionally engaged room, but it does mean less time spent staring at numbers, and more time celebrating what you raised. 
Request a personalized demo to see how this would look for you!

Modern donors expect deeply relevant, personalized communications, especially when it’s alumni hearing from their alma mater. Generic messages won’t cut it, but it can also be difficult to make your appeals stand out when you’re making the same ask every year. To develop annual fund appeal letters that drive revenue and deepen relationships, you need a strategic approach.

Annual fund appeals succeed when they have refined messaging, emotional resonance, and enough variation to win donors’ support outside of flashier, major campaigns. In this post, we’ll explore a few key ways to elevate your university’s next ask.

1. Center Authentic Student Storytelling

Donors give to people, not institutions, making personal narratives one of the most effective fundraising and marketing strategies you can use. By shifting the focus from university-wide achievements to the tangible success of individual students, you foster a direct emotional connection with your audience and demonstrate the real, lasting impact of their donations.

Instead of relying on generic asks for annual fund appeal letters, incorporate the stories of individual students and the scholarships and programs that empower them to thrive. For instance, you might share how a first-generation nursing student used a grant to complete their clinical rotations, or include a quote from a scholarship recipient about how attending your university made their dreams a reality.

No matter how you incorporate storytelling into your appeals, Meyer Partners recommends using the three R's of storytelling to make them as impactful and ethical as possible:

• Resonance: Every story should include real, humanizing details that resonate with donors. Let students tell their stories in their own words, and pair testimonials with photos whenever possible.
• Relevance: Make sure the donor can clearly understand their role in the story. Use donor-centric language that appeals directly to supporters’ values, inspiring them to become the changemakers who support the next generation of students.
• Respect: Respect both your readers and your storytellers by maintaining authenticity. Be direct and honest about what donations can achieve, and always focus on positive emotions like empowerment rather than guilt or scare tactics.

Incorporate these stories into multiple elements of your annual fund campaign to ensure maximum visibility and consistency. For example, you might include quotes from a student in your direct mail appeals, then post a selfie video of the same student telling their story on social media.

2. Highlight Impactful Giving Opportunities

To maximize revenue and increase average gift sizes, ask for more than standard, one-time cash gifts in your annual appeal letters. Offer additional giving options that provide greater flexibility and can increase donors’ long-term impact. These opportunities are often more compelling, especially for young alumni looking for accessible options and for high-capacity donors looking to make the most of their donations.

Specifically, use your annual appeals to highlight opportunities like:

Matching Gifts

The easiest way to make supporters’ donations go further is to double them. Typically, donors can double the impact of their gifts at no extra cost in one of two ways:

1. Your university offers a matching donation challenge. Organizations often partner with a major donor who commits to matching every dollar donated within a set timeframe, up to a certain amount. These challenges motivate individual donors to give urgently so they don’t miss out on the match.
2. Donors request corporate matching gifts from their employers. At any time, donors who work for participating companies can independently request matching donations from their workplaces. If the request meets the employer’s guidelines (e.g., a donation between $10 and $100 to a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit), they’ll match their employee’s gift.

Either way, donation matching is a powerful motivator, especially during year-end giving season. Feature matching gifts prominently in your annual fund appeals, explaining how to participate and why these donations are so impactful.

Recurring Giving

Imagine you’re a recent graduate just starting your career and trying to pay off student loans. You wouldn’t want to donate $1,000 to the university you left last year, but it might be feasible to give $20 a month. In this case, you’re much more likely to respond to an appeal that highlights recurring giving.

Recurring gifts offer a more manageable opportunity to support your university while deepening donor relationships. In your annual fund appeal letters, include the option to give monthly and provide several accessible donation tiers.

Legacy Giving

Plant the seed for long-term support by introducing planned giving and bequest options in your annual appeals, too. These avenues empower alumni to leave a lasting mark on your institution without requiring an immediate, large-scale donation.

Even if most donors aren’t ready to commit to a legacy gift right now, just including information about planned giving in your appeal can get them thinking about it. Include links in emails and QR codes in direct mail letters so supporters can easily learn more on your university’s website or request a meeting with your major gifts officer. Note each donor who shows interest in the program so you can cultivate the relationship over time.

3. Leverage Donor Data for Highly Personalized Appeals

The best fundraising strategies reflect the unique relationship each supporter has with your university. Highly personalized appeals show each donor that you value them as an individual and respect their unique contributions.

Use your donor and alumni data to tailor your asks as much as possible. Go beyond addressing recipients by their preferred names—reference their specific past involvement, giving history, and personal connections to the university. Acknowledging that an alumnus was on the debate team or that a donor consistently supports the engineering department validates their identity and gives them clear, specific reasons to give again.

Segment your donor lists in several ways to maximize relevancy, and regularly audit your donor database to ensure all contact information and engagement records are accurate before sending appeals.

If you aren’t sure how to best segment your audience, hone in on the highest-value potential donors, or match supporters with the right requests, consider professional donor analytics services. Experienced fundraising consultants who specialize in data analysis can help you optimize your strategy for this year’s annual fund appeal and well into the future.

An effective annual fund approach relies on deep personalization, authentic narratives, and a variety of flexible giving options tailored to your audience. Upgrading the underlying strategy of your communications with these tips will help you build stronger relationships with alumni and secure the financial future of your core programs.

LinkedIn continues to stay relevant for alumni outreach in 2026 as it is one of the most comprehensive self-updating directories from an advancement standpoint. Over 50% of LinkedIn’s user base holds a higher-education degree, and ~53% of US college graduates are active on the platform.

That means your alumni not only present but also likely engaging with a variety of content. But as far as reaching out to them goes, being present on LinkedIn and being reachable are two different things, and the wrong outreach strategy can disinterest or even alienate alumni.

In this blog, we’ll go through whether LinkedIn is worth your time for alumni outreach and how you can get your alumni’s attention effectively.

Is LinkedIn outreach worth the investment?

Let’s start with understanding why LinkedIn is different from the other channels

LinkedIn InMail gets a 10–25% response rate while cold email, by comparison, sits at 1–5%. The platform’s natural context is also a big factor here because when an alum receives an InMail from their alma mater, it’s in a different environment to when they’re sorting through personal emails and family messages. They log on to LinkedIn with a certain mindset, which makes them more open to professional conversations.

LinkedIn also gives outreach teams more context about who they’re reaching before they begin the process such as:

• Where an alum works currently
• What they’ve recently posted
• What groups and communities they’re in
• Who the common connections are

That’s a lot of helpful material to tailor the first message that will hopefully be the start of a donor’s journey. Combine all of this with the social media nature of the platform and you get a channel that has a lot of potential if you approach it right.

LinkedIn Alumni Outreach Strategies

Now that we’ve established that LinkedIn is at least worth a look, let’s set your team up for success so that your messages don’t go ignored.

1. Build an Active Presence Before You Send a Message

Advancement teams (and most teams in any field, to be fair) tend to treat LinkedIn outreach the same way they’d treat a cold email campaign. They find the person, write the message, hit send, and hope for the best.

But LinkedIn is, at it’s core,  a social network. Your alumni notice who’s following you, who’s commenting on your posts, and whether your institution has a solid presence on the platform. If your university’s LinkedIn page hasn’t posted in months and the last post was a stock photo of a campus building, it hurts your cause already.

Before you start an outreach campaign, make sure you tick all these boxes::

1. First, make sure your institution’s LinkedIn page is active. Posting once per weekday helps you reach 60% of your followers in a month. You should be aiming for consistent presence over viral content.
2. Secondly, look for mutual connections, a shared connection increases reply rates by 27%. If a colleague or another alum is already connected,
3. Thirdly, follow the alum you plan to message and leave a genuine comment on something they’ve posted. If possible, build and nurture your online relationship with them. You should be looking to gain a follow-back. This can be crucial since alumni who already follow your institution are 81% more likely to respond to your InMail.

2. Build a Segmented List

Use your CRM along with LinkedIn's alumni search tool to understand who you will be sending your messages to. Many alumni engagement tools also allow you to better find, segment, and automate outreach to the right people.

The segmentation itself will be crucial as personalization is a big part of making your message stand out (as we will explain later), so take your time and make sure all your segments and alumni information is updated, synced, and ready to go.

3. Get the Subject Line Right

LinkedIn InMail by default gives you a 200-character subject line limit. When an alum receives your InMail as a notification, they see roughly 25 to 40 characters before the preview cuts off.

For this reason, short, specific, and personalized subject lines can work really well. For example: “A quick question from [University]” or “Connecting with [Name] re: mentorship”.

What won’t work on the other hand, is anything that sounds like a mass email campaign. Something like “Exciting news from the alumni office!” might feel generic or may confuse recipients.

4. Keep the Message Short and Simple

LinkedIn’s own data shows that InMails under 400 characters get higher response rates. Many institutions sometimes write messages much longer than this and have their messages scrolled past.

For your first message, your alums only need enough to understand what you’re asking and if it's worth their time. If you have more context to give and more reasons to say why this outreach matters, that can follow later.

Write a ~300-character message that asks one clear question. The message can address the basics such as who you are, why you’re reaching out, and your one specific question.

5. Personalize Beyond the Name

Alumni can tell if a message was written for them or if someone just replaced a mail merge field, so you’ll want to go further than just swapping people’s first names. Here’s a few things that might help with personalization:

• Spend a couple of minutes on the alum’s profile; personalized InMails increase acceptance rates by about 40%, according to LinkedIn data. Mention a recent post they made, a project they were publicly credited for, a career transition they just went through, or a shared connection.
• Find a good natural connection between what you discover about them and what you’re reaching out about. If you’re inviting them to a career mentorship panel and they’ve been posting about early-career development, mention that. If you’re reaching out around their 10-year graduation anniversary, you definitely want to acknowledge it.
• Avoid mentioning generic and obvious things like “I see you graduated from [University].” Good personalization shows you’ve paid attention to their life after graduation and you have a brief window that you want to make the most out of, especially for less-engaged alumni.

6. Templates for Common Outreach Scenarios

Here are some templates that you could borrow and build on to personalize your next outreach message on LinkedIn:

General reconnect: ‍

"Hi [Name], congrats on the move to [Company]. I'm on the alumni relations team at [University]. We're putting together a small group of alumni at your career stage to get some honest input on our programs. Would a 15-minute call work?"

Mentorship opportunity: ‍

"Hi [Name], I work in alumni relations at [University]. Saw your recent post on [topic] and thought you'd be a great fit for our mentorship program. We're matching alumni with students in [field]. Would you have 30 minutes to hear more?"

Upcoming event: ‍

"Hi [Name], I'm with alumni relations at [University]. We're hosting a small dinner for [City] alumni on [date] and wanted to make sure you were on the list. Can I send you the details?"

Giving day: ‍

"Hi [Name], [University]'s giving day is [date]. This year all gifts are going toward [initiative]. Wanted to reach out personally before things kick off. Can I send you a bit more context on what it supports?"

What each of these has in common is one clear ask and customization that shows the sender did their homework before reaching out.

7. Time Your Outreach Well

LinkedIn data shows that Friday and Saturday see 4% and 8% fewer than average responses, respectively. Your alumni may want to relax and disconnect from the professional world on the weekends, so Monday through Thursday is a good window. However, depending on your event calendar, and past alumni engagement data, this can vary a bit so do double check!

Going back to the mentioned window, Sprout Social's analysis of nearly 2 billion engagements across major social platforms points to Tuesday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., as LinkedIn's peak activity window. That's when professionals are most actively checking and responding on the platform, so it's your best shot at being seen before your message gets buried.

8. What to Do When Alumni Reply

Your next message after an alum replies sets the tone for the entire conversation that follows and the subsequent relationship. So here’s a few things to keep in mind:

• Reply quickly, ideally within a few hours of seeing their response.
• Thank them by name and reference something specific from their reply.
• Remember that this is a conversation on a social platform.

The goal should be to establish that your team and, by extension, your institution has a real interest in keeping in touch with them after graduation. For this reason, you’ll want to:

• Find out what they’re working on.
• Ask follow-up questions.
• Make it clear that there is no immediate ask attached.

💡This doubles as an opportunity to get updated information in case their profile information hasn’t been updated in a while.

Alumni who are connected to their institution are 23 times more likely to donate than those who aren’t. That connection, however, has to be built through consistent, genuine interaction over time. So, when it’s time to make an ask, it’s coming from the context of the conversation.

Build a LinkedIn Alumni Community (and not just another contact list)

At the end of the day, one-on-one outreach can only take you so far. Advancement and alumni relations teams that are able to keep alumni engaged are also building environments where alumni feel like they want to stay engaged.

If we are sticking to the platform at hand, LinkedIn Groups are a great way to do this. You can organize alumni groups around:

• Your institution
• Graduation cohorts
• Academic departments
• Regional chapters
• Donor groups
• Matching gift opportunities

…and much much more

AdvancementForm looked at what the institutions running active alumni groups have in common. Here are the main takeaways:

• Stay active every day: Keith Hannon of Cornell University shared that two-thirds of alumni relations professionals running thriving LinkedIn communities log in daily. That includes posting, answering questions, responding to comments, and engaging with what other members are sharing.
• Give alumni the spotlight: Spotlighting a graduate's career achievement or resharing something they wrote brings their audience into your content. Even the simple act of tagging alumni where needed will ensure that their network is notified as well. 
• Share career resources such as job postings, industry reads/insights, career advice for alumni at different stages and make sure they are updated frequently. This is the content that consistently performs well as it provides a clear reason to engage.
• Mix up your content formats: Posts with images get a 98% higher comment rate than those without, and posts with YouTube videos (that play directly in the feed) get a 75% higher share rate. Varying your formats will keep the feed from feeling like a broadcast channel.
• Ask alumni to help current students: Academic Impressions flags this as an especially meaningful way to engage alumni because it gives them an opportunity to give back give back, even without a financial element. Posting something like "What do you wish someone told you in your first year in [industry]?" gets replies from alumni who would otherwise never comment on, say, an event announcement.
• Run polls: Lebanon Valley College asked their alumni "What career field are you currently in or looking to enter?" and it sparked a lively, ongoing discussion among their alumni.  Polls can be a great icebreaker and contextualizing them to recent events, career stages, or other segmented needs is even better!
• Add in the nostalgia angle: Questions and posts about campus memories or institutional history give alumni interactive content that serves as a break on their feed from the usual LinkedIn content while also reminding them of why they feel connected to their school.

Finally, if you're thinking about content ratios, keep it weighted toward value-first content, career resources, alumni recognition, and conversation, with campaigns and event promotion playing a supporting role, not leading the feed.

Measure Your Progress and Know Your Blind Spots

You need to know whether your efforts are paying off. So, if you’re running structured outreach campaign on LinkedIn, here are the metrics which will help you track what's working:

• Connection acceptance rate:  You generally want to aim for ~20% or above. If you're below that, check whether you're warming up contacts before sending requests and whether your institution's page looks active and credible.
• InMail response rate: With personalized, well-targeted outreach, this should sit between 10–25%. Single-digit numbers are an indication to look at your message length, your subject line preview, and how specific your personalization is.
• Conversation-to-action rate: This tracks what percentage of replies converts into whatever your goal is, whether that’s an event registration, a scheduled call, or a gift.

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) tracks alumni engagement across four modes: philanthropic, volunteer, experiential, and communications.

LinkedIn activity can feed into your experiential and communications metrics. If you’re not tracking LinkedIn engagement as part of your overall alumni engagement scorecard, you should consider starting now.

A few common blind spots that can be avoided include: 

• Reaching out only when there's an ask: If alumni only hear from you around giving day or annual fund season, the outreach feels transactional. Only 27% of alumni who donate give to their alma mater. The most common reason others don't give is because they don't feel connected enough to make it a priority.
• Writing LinkedIn messages like emails: Avoid long messages, formal language, attached PDFs when LinkedIn is conversational. Keep messages short, and the tone conversational.Save the documents for follow-up conversations.
• Ignoring alumni who engage with your posts: When an alum comments on something your institution shared, respond to them, thank them by name, and if appropriate, send a connection request with a brief personal note referencing what they said.
• Not knowing what comes next when someone replies: Replying to a message without a clear next step might waste the opening you had spent time and effort on. Know what you’re trying to accomplish before you send the first message so that when someone replies, you’re ready to take the conversation forward.

Final Thoughts

We hope we’ve been able to give you and your team plenty of things to keep in mind. While LinkedIn outreach may seem like a simple game of numbers at first glance, any outreach campaigns involving social media rarely tend to be so predictable and you definitely want to keep that in mind.

To wrap things up, keep personalization (and segmentation by extension) at the heart of your strategy, have a consistent presence on LinkedIn just as you probably do with Facebook or Instagram, and make sure you are thinking about how to take the conversation forward many weeks ahead of time so that alumni feel appreciated after reacting to your outreach.

If you are looking for an alumni engagement platform to help you plan, execute, and measure your alumni  outreach and engagement strategy, Almabase is built just for that so feel free to book a personalized demo with us!

A sponsorship can be a good deal for everyone involved and remain a one-time arrangement. The organization gets the support it needs, the sponsor gets the benefits it signed up for, and the relationship ends when the event or campaign is over. The real challenge is taking that first successful sponsorship and giving the relationship a reason to continue.

But turning this potential into a lasting relationship takes a fair bit of deliberate work.

In this article, we will look at what attracts and dissuades sponsors, the common mistakes that can quietly turn a promising relationship into a one-off, and practical ways to build on a successful sponsorship and create more opportunities together. The aim is to help you look at sponsorships with a longer view and make better choices about which relationships are worth taking further.

What attracts or dissuades sponsorships?

A sponsorship may start with a simple exchange, but whether that relationship goes any further often depends on what the sponsor sees in it beyond that first commitment. For Momentum's 2025 research found that 91% of companies considered brand and mission alignment important when choosing a nonprofit partner, while 85% looked for community or social impact and tangible program outcomes.

Those factors can bring in a sponsor, but they are not enough on their own to keep the relationship going. The experience of working with the organization matters too. 70% of companies said they had ended a nonprofit partnership because the organization failed to deliver on its promises, while 52% pointed to insufficient support or stewardship. So there are two sides to the equation. Understanding both is a useful starting point when you're trying to turn a one-time sponsorship into something longer term.

5 ways to build long-term sponsor partnerships

Getting a sponsor to say yes once is one thing. Giving them a reason to keep saying yes is where the real work begins. That means thinking beyond the original event and being deliberate about what happens next. A few ways to approach that are:

1. Find the right fit before you build the relationship

Not every company that is willing to sponsor your event is necessarily a good long-term partner. Before you start pitching, spend some time understanding what a company already cares about. Look at its CSR priorities, community programs, employee engagement efforts, giving history, and the causes it has supported in the past. Then look at where those interests overlap with your own work. You can ask questions like:

• Does the company already support the kind of work you do?
• Who has it worked with, and what kinds of programs has it supported?
• Does it have volunteering, matching, mentoring, or workplace giving programs that could connect with your work?
• Is the company trying to reach or support a community that your institution already serves?
• Is there a natural path from an event sponsorship to a program, initiative, or multi-year partnership?

That research can save you from chasing one-off sponsorships that go nowhere. Five companies with a genuine reason to keep working with you are worth more than fifteen that only see your event as a one-time opportunity. And when you approach a potential sponsor, you have something much more useful to talk about than a sponsorship package. You can show why the partnership makes sense for both sides and where it could go over time.

2. Define shared goals and ROI

Once you have a sponsor that looks like a good fit, the next step is to be clear about what the partnership should achieve. This is also where it helps to stop thinking of sponsorship as a fixed package that gets renewed every year. Set clear goals for the sponsorship and agree on how you will measure them. At the same time, give the company a clear path forward rather than making every year a new negotiation.

You could:

• Set measurable targets- agree on metrics that matter such as funds raised, registrations, event reach, employee participation, leads generated, program outcomes, community impact, and people reached through a sponsored program.
• Create clear sponsorship levels- offer different levels of investment and benefits, with enough difference between them to give sponsors a reason to move up.
• Build in progression- think about what a sponsor could move into after the first year, whether that means a higher sponsorship tier, another event, or support for a larger program.
• Review the impact together- after the event or campaign, show sponsors what their investment delivered and where the partnership could improve.
• Think in multi-year terms- if a sponsor is a strong fit, discuss what a two- or three-year relationship could support instead of waiting for the next annual renewal.

3. Move from visibility to ownership

A sponsor doesn't have to remain a silent partner once the cheque is signed. Look for ways to involve them in the work itself. Their employees may be able to volunteer, mentor students, share professional expertise, support a community initiative, or take part in a program connected to the cause they are funding.

This also gives you a chance to build a relationship around what the sponsor cares about, rather than around what you can put their logo on. The more involved they become, the easier it is for both sides to see the partnership as something they are building together.

Say your university’s annual homecoming is being sponsored by a software company. Instead of stopping at the traditional give and take, you invite them to run a coding workshop for students during the semester. This opens the door to something the sponsor can actively contribute to, rather than ending with event branding, and now their support has real, measurable alignment with their business.

4. Keep the communication going year-round

The relationship should not go quiet as soon as the event is over. There are plenty of ways to stay connected without turning every interaction into another sponsorship ask.

Thank sponsors and recognize their contribution after an event. Share stories about what their support made possible. Invite them to a sponsored program day, introduce them through a sponsor spotlight series, or involve their employees in something that fits their interests. Use email, calls, events, social media, and other channels where they make sense. The idea is to give sponsors reasons to hear from you throughout the year, not just when the next sponsorship package is ready.

5. Leverage technology to provide a seamless sponsorship experience

Managing year-round relationships with multiple corporate sponsors requires organization and consistency that’s impossible to maintain with spreadsheets and good intentions alone. A sophisticated nonprofit CRM can become your best friend with sponsor relationship management. When choosing a system, look for features that help you:

• Centralize sponsor data- keep contacts, company details, sponsorship history, agreements, payments, benefits, and event information together.
• Simplify sponsor onboarding- let sponsors choose a package, sign agreements, make payments, and submit logos, guest details, and other information themselves.
• Keep communication organized- have sponsor information and activity in one place so different members of your team can see what has already been discussed and follow up appropriately.
• Connect sponsorships with events- manage sponsor registrations, guests, event details, and other event requirements alongside the sponsorship itself.
• Use past data when planning the next sponsorship- see what a sponsor supported, how much they contributed, which benefits they used, and how the relationship has developed before approaching them again.
• Integration with your existing CRM- make sure sponsor activity can flow into the wider constituent record instead of creating another isolated database.

What can keep a sponsorship one-off?

Even when a sponsorship has gone well, there are a few things that can keep the relationship from moving forward. Some are easy to overlook because they don't affect the event itself. They show up later, when you're trying to pick the relationship back up or work out what comes next.

• Starting over with every new sponsorship- you already have a history with the sponsor, so use it. Look back at what worked, what they responded to, and what you learned from the first engagement rather than treating the next sponsorship as a completely new conversation.
• Relying on one contact- if only one person has been handling the relationship, make sure you know who else at the company has a reason to be involved. If that person changes roles or leaves, you don't want the relationship to disappear with them.
• Letting communication drop between sponsorships- you don't need to be in touch constantly, but there should be some connection between one sponsorship and the next. A relevant update, a result from the event, or an opportunity that fits the sponsor can keep the relationship from going cold.
• Keeping the relationship one-dimensional- a sponsor doesn't always have to contribute money in exchange for event benefits. Depending on the organization and the sponsor, the relationship could also include volunteering, mentoring, scholarships, internships, community programs, employee engagement, or other forms of support.
• Waiting for the sponsor to suggest what comes next- sponsors may not know everything your organization has to offer. If you see an opportunity that fits their interests, bring it to them. You don't have to wait for the next sponsorship request to start that conversation.
• Offering too little room to grow- if the only option is another one-year sponsorship at the same level, you may miss the chance to build something longer term. Consider multi-year commitments, varying levels of involvement, or a combination of sponsorships and other initiatives.
• Making the relationship difficult to manage- As the number of sponsors, benefits, contacts, payments, agreements, and commitments grows, keeping track of everything becomes part of the relationship too. If information is scattered or benefits are missed, a partnership that was worth continuing can become frustrating to manage.

How can Almabase help

Once you have several sponsors, there is a lot to keep track of. Sponsorship levels, benefits, payments, invoices, guest names, logos, and other materials can quickly end up across different spreadsheets and email threads. It becomes harder to know what is still pending, and easy for something to slip through.

This is where Almabase's Sponsorship Management can take some of that work off your plate. Sponsors can choose their tier, accept the terms, pay, and submit guest details and other collateral through a self-service portal. Once a sponsor signs up, you have their sponsorship details, payment status, and pending information in one place. Invoices can also be generated automatically based on the sponsorship they selected. The system also syncs sponsorship and guest information with Raiser’s Edge NXT.

Essentia Health Foundation saw this difference firsthand. Before Almabase, sponsor commitments, invoices, logos, and guest information were handled manually, with weeks spent on follow-ups. After moving to Almabase, the foundation managed 25+ sponsors across $1,000–$40,000 tiers through one system. At the same time guest information flowed into Raiser’s Edge NXT as named constituent records and  sponsorship and event operations themselves were handled through a much more structured process. That also meant 90% of event revenue came from sponsorships, with $200,000 raised at the Essentially Yours gala.

That is the kind of operational foundation you need when sponsorships become long-term commitments. You can keep the process organized, protect the revenue you've committed to, and have reliable sponsor and guest data to work with post-event.

Looking ahead

There is no formula for turning every sponsor into a long-term partner. Not every sponsor is going to be the right partner, and that is worth figuring out before you invest too much time in the relationship. The best partnerships are usually built by staying curious about what the other side needs and being willing to suggest something that wasn't part of the original plan. You don't have to wait for renewal season or for a sponsor to come to you with the next idea.

We hope this article gave you a few useful ideas for approaching sponsorships with a longer view, whether you're building your first partnerships or deciding which existing ones are worth developing further. Want to see how Almabase can help you manage those sponsorships as they grow? Book a personalized demo of Almabase’s Sponsorship Management and see the platform in action.

iModules, now known as Anthology Encompass, was built during a simpler era of advancement events. For a straightforward RSVP to payment experience, it still holds up pretty well.

But this is only a small subset of events we’re talking about, and major advancement events have grown to take on much more now. For instance, Homecoming weekends span multiple days and reunions come with class-specific gatherings, receptions, tours, and donor events. Giving is increasingly being built into the event experience itself.

As events have become more layered, some institutions might find that iModules' underlying model hasn't quite evolved at the same pace.

In this article, we’ll be walking you through the process of what migrating from iModules to a new platform might look like for you, with some key considerations to keep in mind.

Top 5 iModules Alternatives

If your team is evaluating alternatives for iModules, here’s a quick comparison of the top 5 alternatives:

For a more in-depth look, read the full blog here.

iModules migration checklist

Once you've settled on a shortlist, the next step is building your own migration plan. Breaking it into three phases: before, during, and after the switch, keeps the process manageable and gives you a clear way to measure how well the move worked and what can be done better.

Before Migration

1. Think about the sub-events you're running

Before you migrate, take stock of the events your team is managing. Some of the biggest ones on your calendar may look like a single event on paper, but involve several separate experiences underneath.

Take your last Homecoming weekend, for example, with a tailgate, class dinner, and an alumni reception. On the team’s end, its registrations, capacities, guest lists, logistics: several moving parts that all need to work together.

Therefore, before you start talking to vendors, map out your exact requirements:

• Separate events or pages: How many registrations make up one larger event?
• Capacities: Are limits managed separately for different gatherings?
• Tickets: Do different activities have their own tickets and pricing?

This gives you a much clearer picture of what your current event setup involves, and what you'll need to account for during migration. It also helps vendors understand your requirements more exactly.

Checklist item: Map the sub-events behind your biggest recurring events before you start planning the migration.

2. Map Out Your Event-Day Check-In Process Today

Your attendees register weeks or months earlier, but check-in is where your new system gets put to the test in real time, as they arrive at the venue. Event check-in might not seem like an important enough item to go over during a migration, but as your first touchpoint with attendees on event day, it requires attention.

Consider every aspect of the check-in process, and how your team handles these:

• How attendees are identified: Name search, printed lists, QR codes, ID numbers, or something else?
• Who is checking people in: Advancement staff, volunteers, event staff, or a mix?
• How guests are handled: Can staff quickly find an attendee's guests and mark them as arrived?
• How attendance is recorded: Where does the check-in data go, and how does it make its way back into your broader event or reporting?
• What happens at the busy periods: How does the process hold up when a large group arrives at once?

This gives you a practical checklist for evaluating the replacement platform. Do keep an eye out for any manual processes above that can be automated with the new platform.

Checklist item: Document your current check-in workflow and use it as a test script for the new platform.

3. Check How Registration Extras Are Handled

List every side form, spreadsheet, or manual workaround your team uses alongside an iModules registration. Since iModules doesn’t natively handle add-on preferences, it might be necessary for you to document how your team handles those extras, like:

• Meal choices and dietary requirements
• T-shirt or other merchandise sizes
• Guest information
• Additional activities or add-ons
• Special requests or accessibility needs
• Any information collected through a separate form after registration

For each one, note where the information goes, who manages it and how, and what happens to it after the event. This is the kind of upgrade that you can bring to your team’s experience with a new platform, so it would be worth asking how the new platform handles these add-on preferences and experiences. You could be saving hours of time for your team.

Once you’ve documented these, involve your team to decide which of these workflows you want to bring into the new registration experience and which ones you can retire altogether. Make sure these workflows are baked into the migration requirements you share with the vendors you’re considering.

Checklist item: Create an inventory of every form, spreadsheet, and workaround connected to your event registrations, and mark which ones need to be rebuilt.

4. Pull Your Last Year of Event Reports Before You Migrate

Before you migrate, look at the reports your team relies on to make important decisions and inform strategy. Pick a few questions you regularly need to answer about your events and trace them back to the data behind them.

Document the most critical questions answered by this data:

1. How many alumni attended our events over the past year?
2. Which events are attracting the most engagement?
3. Which alumni segments are participating?
4. Who has attended multiple events or programmes?
5. How does event participation connect with other forms of engagement?

For each one, document where the data comes from and what it takes to get to the answer. If the process involves exporting several reports, combining spreadsheets, cleaning up data, or pulling information from another system, capture those steps too.

This documentation becomes useful for test cases when you're evaluating a new platform. But perhaps more importantly, it highlights points that could be automated using the new platform.

Checklist item: Save a few of your most-used event reports and the steps behind them. Use these as test-cases to test out your new platform.

5. Document Your Current CRM Sync Process, Step by Step

Your event platform and CRM are likely doing a lot of work together, so map out how that relationship works today before you start planning the migration. This’ll help you find places where that relationship could work even better.

Think back to the last three to five events and note:

• What data moves into your CRM automatically vs what has to be imported manually?
• Which fields need to be checked or cleaned up and how duplicates are handled?
• How long does reconciliation take after the event?

This gives you a baseline for the new integration and helps your implementation team understand which workflows need to carry over and which can be changed or retired.

A very important consideration at this point is how the new platform will handle these workflows. For example, Almabase's TrueSync integration with Raiser's Edge NXT lets teams set field-level sync rules, choose which updates are pushed automatically, and review potential conflicts before they make their way into the CRM.

Checklist item: Document your current CRM sync and reconciliation process to identify carry overs, changes and retiring processes.

During Migration

Now that the pre-migration steps are covered, let’s move on to things you can look out for during the migration process.

1. Pick Your Cutover Date Around Your Calendar

Your chosen platform will be able to give you an implementation timeline for when the new platform is ready. But it should be your event calendar that tells you when you’re ready for the switch.

A period of lull between two major events or between the registration for an event and the event itself are windows where your team will have the bandwidth to account for the many steps involved in the migration and oversee them adequately. This way, they have enough time to get used to the new platform by the time event day rolls in.

Checklist item: Choose a cutover date that falls well clear of your busiest event and registration periods.

2. Set a Freeze Date on the Outgoing Platform

Once the final exports are ready, you can decide with your team when operations on the outgoing platform need to stop. These operations include new registrations, edits to existing records, and any other updates that should be found on the new platform.

Give everyone who uses the older platform a clear freeze date and clearly lay down what it means for their day-to-day work. If changes are made after the final export, they could result in mismatched records.

Checklist item: Set a clear freeze date and make sure everyone working with the outgoing platform knows what needs to change.

3. Keep One Shared Issue Log With Your Vendor

There will be open questions, decisions, data issues, and small things that need fixing throughout the migration. Keeping those across email threads makes it harder for everyone to be on the same page.

A shared issue log gives your team and your implementation partner one place to track:

• What's open
• Who owns it
• Current status
• Whether it's blocking the next step

It also functions as a reference document as questions get answered and processes on the new platform start emerging.

Checklist item: Keep one shared issue log with your implementation team and use it to track every open item.

4. Account for Delays

Some hiccups along the way are to be expected in the migration process. While most of these issues could be solved in a timely manner, some issues might need to be addressed more thoroughly, such as:

• A major data mismatch that hasn't been fully reconciled
• A critical workflow that hasn't translated cleanly to the new platform
• Anything that would create unnecessary complications if pushed forward as-is

Sit down with your team and think of scenarios that would warrant a delay in the go-live date if it means handling these issues before they snowball into much bigger ones. It is also best to communicate this with your vendor.

Checklist item: Agree on what would delay go-live.

5. Keep Read-Only Access to the Old Platform After Cutover

Your first few weeks on the new platform will very likely come with a few questions that require looking back at the old system.

Make arrangements for read-only access for a couple of months as something of a fallback. You may not need it every day, but having the old system available gives your team a useful point of reference while they settle in with the new platform.

Checklist item: Arrange for read-only access to iModules for at least 30 days after cutover.

Post-migration

This phase is for your team to settle in and flag any workflows or functionalities that aren’t working as anticipated. It’s also a good time to identify training gaps.

1. Track What Has Changed

Once the new platform is live, give your team some time to see which changes are sticking. Some improvements will be obvious quickly, while others will only show up after a few events and reporting cycles.

Look at the workarounds you identified during the planning stage. Try and identify:

• Which ones have disappeared?
• Which ones are still being used?
• What has improved and how many hours are saved?

Checklist item: Track which manual workarounds have disappeared, which remain, and why.

2. Re-run Your Key Reports

Revisit the reports and questions you documented before migration. Run them again in the new platform and compare the results with your old baseline.

Pay attention to both the answer and the effort involved. The data should be complete and accurate, and your team should need to spend less time pulling it together.

Checklist item: Re-run your key reports and compare the results and effort with your pre-migration baseline.

3. Check In With Your Team

As they get familiar with the new platform, your team will notice things that don't show up in the plan. Talk to them about what's working, what's slowing them down, and where they're still falling back on old processes.

A quick check-in at 30 and 60 days gives you two useful points to catch these issues while the experience is still fresh. It also reveals areas where training might be required to better utilize the new platform’s capabilities.

Checklist item: Schedule 30- and 60-day team check-ins to refine workflows and identify training opportunities.

Here’s your migration checklist at a glance:

Common Pitfalls to Avoid When Migrating to a New Platform

The technical side of an iModules migration is only one part of the move. The other arguably equally important part is making sure your team doesn't carry old processes and assumptions into the new system. A few things are especially easy to overlook.

1. Assuming every workaround needs to come with you

The side forms, manual exports and paper check-in processes your team’s perfected to a ‘T’ exist because of familiarity with the older platform. This could look like:

• Rebuilding a side form that could now live within event registration
• Keeping manual spreadsheets for information the new platform can capture directly
• Recreating manual reporting processes that the new platform can handle natively

To avoid this, take the workaround inventory you created during migration planning and review each item against the capabilities of the new platform. Mark each one as migrate, redesign, or retire. Build and test only the workflows that still have a place in your new setup. A migration is a good opportunity to retire tedious processes that have become part of the routine simply because they were necessary before.

2. Assuming data migration is a one-time export

Before importing anything into the new platform, make sure you've agreed on what needs to move, what can be cleaned up, and what should be left behind. This is one of many steps you’ll have to take to maintain data hygiene across the two platforms.
Data migration issues could show up in various ways:

• Missing contact information caused by incorrect field mapping
• Duplicate constituent records that weren't matched correctly
• Incomplete event participation or registration history

To avoid this, build validation into the migration itself. Pull a representative sample of records and check them end to end, then reconcile your export and import counts, before the go-live date. Pay particular attention to constituent matching, duplicate records, historical event participation, registration details, and any fields that are handled differently across systems.

3. Skipping the parallel run

A new workflow can look perfectly straightforward in a demo and still behave differently when a few hundred real attendees are registering or checking in. Where possible, run a live event through both systems before you fully switch over. It gives your team a chance to catch gaps while the old process is still available as a fallback.

4. Underestimating training requirements

A new platform changes how your team works in big ways and small, especially when it introduces workflows that didn't exist in iModules. Training that only covers where to find familiar features can leave teams unprepared for the day-to-day work that follows.

To avoid this, build training around real workflows. Have the people who will actually manage events, check-ins, reporting, and CRM data work through representative scenarios themselves. Record those workflows as internal guides so new or occasional users have something to refer back to.

What the First Few Weeks Usually Look Like

The first few weeks after a migration usually involve a mix of small adjustments and quick wins. An immediate change teams notice is having to spend less time on manual workarounds once new workflows settle in.

The bigger changes, like reporting or event-day processes, take a little longer to become apparent.

Giving your team room to ask questions, refine workflows, and build familiarity early on will make the transition considerably smoother.

If You're Considering Almabase Specifically

The checklist above is useful whichever platform you choose. If Almabase is on your shortlist, you can take those same migration questions and use them to see how the workflows would translate.

• Multi-part events: Map your current event structure to Almabase's sub-events, with individual activities organised under a single event and registration flow.
  
• Event-day check-in: Test your current check-in process against Almabase's QR-code scanning and self-check-in kiosks.
  
• Registration preferences: See how meal preferences, dietary requirements, merchandise, and other details could be handled through multiple ticketing options.
  
• Event reporting: Recreate some of your existing reports and streamline others in Engagement Studio and see how cross-event engagement, including outside activities with tracked programmes come together.
  
• CRM sync: If you're using Raiser's Edge NXT, you can test the migration against TrueSync's configurable field-level sync rules and its native RE NXT integration.
  
• Between-event engagement: If you're looking to expand beyond event-based engagement, check if Almabase’s searchable alumni directory, mentor matching, and affinity groups could fit into the new experience you want to provide your community.

The advantage of doing this exercise before you choose a platform is that you'll already have a set of workflows to test. If you choose Almabase, these areas give you a starting point for your parallel run. If you choose another platform, you can take the same checklist into those conversations and ask the same questions.

Closing Thoughts

As you compare different platforms, take the time to understand which parts of your current setup work well, which ones create unnecessary work, and which workarounds your team is ready to leave behind. This exercise here helps with just that.

With this migration plan, your team should be able to tell you what they need from the new platform, and also make it very clear what they don't want to carry forward. Those are just as important to define as the features you're looking for. It will also help your implementation team and your vendor’s team be on the same page throughout the process.

Go into vendor conversations with both lists in hand: what you want to build, and what you want to stop doing. That's what gives you a much clearer benchmark for deciding whether a new platform will improve the way your team works and whether any additional spend was worth the time saved.

Alumni are not just your school’s most valuable donors; they’re often managers, executives, and other decision-makers within corporate ecosystems. When an alumnus succeeds in their career, their institution gains a direct connection to a company's philanthropic, human resources, and CSR budgets.

Exploring the bridge between alumni engagement and corporate partnerships allows institutions to create an organic pipeline for major gifts, employee-led philanthropy programs, event sponsorships, and more. Building this bridge turns routine alumni relations into a primary engine for corporate development.

In this guide, we’ll outline practical steps to analyze supporter employment data, engage corporate decision-makers, and streamline sponsorship opportunities.

The value of corporate sponsorships for higher education

Higher education advancement offices are facing growing pressure to diversify revenue beyond traditional giving in order to support institutional expansion, provide scholarships to students in need, fund research initiatives, and more. Therefore, advancement leaders need high-yield strategies that deliver sustainable capital. One of the best solutions involves targeting corporate sponsors.

A high-yield corporate development strategy with several distinct advantages:

High-yield return on investment: Corporate sponsorships consistently rank among the most effective channels for corporate fundraising. According to Double the Donation’s research, over 60 percent of organizations report that sponsorships deliver a higher return on investment than other corporate giving methods.

Diversified revenue streams: Sponsorship dollars provide vital non-tuition revenue that can support campus infrastructure, fund academic research, lower student costs, and sponsor major institutional events.

Access to cutting-edge technology and in-kind resources: Corporate partnerships frequently extend beyond direct cash grants to include valuable in-kind donations. Companies often provide state-of-the-art laboratory equipment, software licenses, or specialized facilities that modernize the learning environment.

Direct talent pipeline development: Corporate sponsors view higher education partnerships as a strategic investment in their future workforce. By sponsoring academic programs, hackathons, or career centers, companies gain access to qualified, diverse talent, while universities boost graduate employment outcomes.

Multiplied workplace giving opportunities: Active corporate sponsorships naturally open the door to employee-directed workplace giving programs. When a business sponsors a university event, its employees are far more likely to participate in matching gift initiatives, submit volunteer grant requests, or participate in service days on campus.

Mapping your network to identify corporate connections

Uncovering corporate funding begins with understanding where your existing alumni network works. Most higher education databases contain vast amounts of contact information, but advancement teams often lack actionable employer insights. Without clear visibility into where graduates are employed, institutions miss high-value sponsorship opportunities that are hidden right within their existing records.

Key strategies for discovering potential corporate partners include:

• Analyzing alumni employment data: Conduct regular employment enrichment updates to locate concentrations of alumni at major regional or national companies. Identifying companies where sizable groups of alumni work gives corporate relations officers a clear starting point for institutional partnerships.
• Tracking workplace giving trends: Monitor which employers frequently match gifts or issue volunteer grants to your institution. Companies with high employee participation in workplace giving are already predisposed to support your school's mission.
• Identifying leadership intersections: Identify alumni who hold executive positions, manage CSR budgets, or serve on corporate foundation boards. These individuals possess both the internal influence and the budget authority to direct corporate dollars back to their alma mater.

Leveraging structured donor records enables advancement teams to target businesses with built-in institutional affinity. Rather than pitching local or national companies cold, advancement teams can approach organizations where alumni are already proving the value of a degree from your institution every day.

Empowering alumni champions to advocate for sponsorships

Pitching a corporation cold often results in slower response times, whereas leveraging an internal alumni advocate opens doors immediately. Cold emails to corporate community relations desks frequently get lost in administrative queues. Conversely, when a senior executive or dedicated employee brings a higher education partnership proposal directly to their HR or CSR department, the request receives immediate attention.

Practical steps for cultivating alumni-led corporate outreach include:

• Coach internal advocates: Provide former students with pitch decks, one-pagers, or impact summaries to share with their HR or CSR departments. Equipping alumni with professional assets removes friction and gives them the confidence to pitch their alma mater internally.
• Focus on mutual value: Align institutional funding needs with prospective companies’ philanthropic pillars, such as STEM education, economic mobility, or workforce diversity. Corporate partnerships succeed when the company sees a clear return on investment, such as recruiting top-tier student talent or fulfilling regional CSR metrics.
• Leverage corporate volunteer days: Invite alumni-led employee groups to participate in on-campus service projects, Advisory Board participation, or student mentoring events. This is a great way to build a foundation for broader partnership, too!

Empowering alumni to champion sponsorship opportunities on behalf of their alma mater transforms routine giving appeals into high-value partnerships. When alumni serve as brand ambassadors inside their organizations, institutions gain credible internal advocates who can champion corporate sponsorship requests through complex approval processes.

Streamlining sponsorship outreach with integrated technology

Managing separate spreadsheets for alumni relations, major gifts, and corporate sponsorships leads to missed funding opportunities. When alumni records live in one silo and corporate partner leads live in another, corporate relations officers lose sight of critical connections.

Integrated technology unifies supporter employment data, giving history, and corporate matching eligibility into a single actionable dashboard.

Advantages of unifying advancement technology include:

• Maintain clean, up-to-date employer data: Enrich your advancement database regularly to automatically track alumni job changes, promotions, and corporate movements.
• Track corporate engagement pipelines: Monitor corporate funding streams from initial alumni contact to final grant disbursement within your primary CRM.
• Automate the identification of match-eligible alumni donors: Surface corporate giving opportunities directly on giving forms without requiring manual research from advancement staff.

The use of integrated software ensures your advancement team spends less time on manual data entry and more time building relationships. And the good news is that Almabase partners with Double the Donation, the leading provider of corporate fundraising tools! When enabled in your fundraising tech stack, automation handles the administrative aspects of identifying your institution’s best corporate giving prospects and frees up corporate relations officers to focus on high-value partnerships.

Final Thoughts & Next Steps

Transforming alumni connections into long-term corporate sponsorships requires a deliberate strategy rooted in data, advocacy, and automation. In other words, higher education advancement offices can no longer afford to treat alumni relations and corporate development as separate operational silos.

By identifying where alumni work, empowering them to act as internal champions, and capturing every available corporate dollar, institutions build sustainable partner engagement pipelines. These integrated efforts create a continuous cycle where alumni success directly fuels institutional growth.

Take the first step today by auditing your alumni database to uncover hidden corporate partnerships waiting within your network.

A Homecoming or reunion weekend is many events parading as one big event, much like three people in a trenchcoat. It's a reunion dinner balancing on a tailgate, with an alumni panel and a student showcase perfectly slotted in before the reception starts. The organizers know it’s really many small (and big) events all held together with remarkable planning, coordination and execution.

With so many complexities building on top of each other, the limits of an older event management system start to show up in unexpected ways, creating overhead previously unaccounted for.

iModules, now known as Anthology Encompass, is one such platform which was designed for a much simpler event model: one page, one registration flow, one event at a time. Many institutions have since outgrown that approach. Today's advancement teams are managing interconnected event weekends, accommodating attendee preferences, handling faster check-ins, and looking for reporting that reflects the bigger picture instead of a single event in isolation.

In this article, we'll look at where those differences stand out the most, and where a modern platform like Almabase comes through.

Overview: Almabase and Anthology Encompass (iModules)

Anthology Encompass, formerly iModules, has been part of the advancement technology landscape for a long time. It’s still a familiar choice for when an event needs a registration page, a payment option, or a way to collect attendee information. And for a straightforward event, it does well enough.

But modern advancement needs have long since evolved into something much more complex, not the least of which is seamlessly integrating multiple experiences and collecting and processing large amounts of attendee information and gift data in real time. This is where an older platform starts to show its age.

Almabase accounts for this complexity right from the beginning. The platform brings registration, payments, check-in, and reporting into one place, with event data synced back to your CRM through TrueSync. In practice, this looks like complex events, cleanly handled for both attendees and organizers alike.

Feature-by-Feature Comparison: iModules vs Almabase

Here’s how the platforms stack against each other, before we get into the deep dive:

1. Complex, Multi-Layer Event Weekends

A Homecoming or reunion weekend multiplies across the many sub-events usually due to the multiple segments of attendees interacting with each other.

iModules handles it just fine if you're asking someone to RSVP for one event, collect their details, and perhaps pay for a ticket, and there's little reason for the process to be complicated. But it might get overwhelming when these events need to co-exist.

In iModules, each layer typically means creating another page and linking it back to the others manually. That can work for a small number of events. But when a weekend needs to scale up to work at the level of a small festival, it becomes too much to oversee, causing unnecessary hang-ups.

Almabase approaches this differently with sub-events. A Homecoming weekend can sit under one registration umbrella, with each individual gathering nested underneath it. The tailgate can have its own capacity and ticket, and the class dinner can have its own schedule and attendee list. Attendees still move through one continuous registration experience, while the team gets the separate information it needs to run each event.

2. Event-Day Check-In and Walk-In Registration

Once event day is here, wave after wave of alumni comes through the doors, each with their own quirks and customizations. Some can’t remember which event they registered for, others are walk-ins or have a guest with them that they haven’t registered. While the volunteer looks up their information, a line (and friction) starts to build.

The influence of a smooth registration experience over a smooth event-day experience is definitely something for the organizers to consider.

iModules doesn't offer a native mobile check-in app or QR-code scanning, which can leave teams relying on manual, paper-based processes at the door. There's no offline registration mode either, so even a temporary connectivity issue can add another complication to an already busy arrival.

Almabase brings check-in into the same registration experience. Guests can scan the QR code from their confirmation email at a self-serve kiosk, while volunteers can search for attendees by name when needed. Walk-ins can register and pay on the spot, too. That information is synced back to Raiser's Edge NXT so the team doesn't have to reconcile a separate set of event-day registrations after everyone has gone home.

3. Registration Information: Merchandise, Guests, and Meal Preferences

An event that spans multiple days and sub-events needs more information than ‘Yes, I’ll be there’. Guests are expected to answer questions like:

• Will you be joining the class dinner?
• What would you like for dinner?
• Any dietary requirements?
• Would you like the reunion T-shirt?
• What size?

One RSVP carries a surprising amount of information, which brings with it the needs for efficient management.

On iModules, extras like merchandise or meal choices sit outside the core registration flow, requiring a separate form or transaction. With this siloed registration experience, every extra step gives attendees another thing to complete and your team another set of responses to track.

Almabase is built to manage these decisions with the ticket  itself. A ticket can have its own custom questions, whether that's a meal preference or dietary requirement, along with optional add-ons such as an event T-shirt. Attendees can answer everything and make their selections at checkout.

4. Engagement Reporting Across Many Events

Data reported from a single event only tells you how that event performed, but in order to see the full picture, you need to connect the data from each event and recognize the trends and patterns that emerge.

Your team needs to see engagement across events and programmes, spot participation trends, and understand how alumni are engaging over time. With iModules, this means exporting data from individual events or campaigns and stitching it together manually before you can see the bigger picture.

Almabase takes a broader approach through Engagement Studio. Activity across events, forms, directories, emails, and giving campaigns can be tracked in one dataset, making it possible to report on engagement across programmes.

Activities that happen outside Almabase, such as campus visits or phone-a-thons, can also be added as tracked programmes and included in the same reporting.

This allows for timely changes and adaptations to your engagement strategy, making it possible for each event to make the next, better.

| For more on how Almabase is purpose-built to handle complex events, check out our blog on how it scales events effortlessly.

As Ashley Agron, Director of Constituent Engagement at Illinois Tech, puts it, the ability to see directory views and alumni interaction data across digital campaigns changed how her team approached engagement. Before Almabase, getting those insights meant pulling reports from five different tools and piecing them together manually. Now, the data is used to shape the strategy around segmentation and communications.

5. CRM Integration and RE NXT Sync

For institutions already running Raiser's Edge NXT, their event platform doesn't operate in isolation. The data from each event needs to make its way back into the CRM, stay current, and be available to the people who rely on it. A connection between the two systems is only useful if it keeps that flow moving and in real time. Both iModules and Almabase connect with Raiser's Edge NXT; however, there are subtle differences which can prove consequential on event days.

iModules primarily works as a transactional gateway. Gifts, registrations, and basic profile updates can move back into RE NXT, but keeping everything synced requires careful setup, constant oversight and the occasional manual imports or checks. As more event activity accumulates, this can easily inflate the number of hours your team has to spend on the data.

Almabase takes a more continuous approach through TrueSync. The integration works bi-directionally, so information can move between Almabase and RE NXT in real time. Registrations, attendance, gifts, and profile updates can sync automatically. With its field-level controls, your team can decide what data should move, where it should go, and when.

TrueSync also helps prevent duplicate records from being created as information moves between the two systems.

6. Alumni Directory and Community Engagement

A good event sees a great attendee turnout, but it is your engagement plan between these events which will yield results, event after event, year on year.

On iModules, the alumni experience largely centres around the event itself. Profiles are relatively static, with no native mentorship matching or affinity-group functionality to turn those profiles into an active community. Once an alum has registered for the event they came for, there isn't much else keeping them engaged with the platform.

Almabase treats the alumni directory as a starting point to build a community. It pairs a searchable alumni directory with mentor matching and affinity groups, giving alumni a reason to return to the platform even if an event is not imminent. Alumni can search for one another, find mentors and mentees, and join groups built around shared interests, professions, locations, or other affinities. You can use the platform to support relationships between alumni, not just interactions between an alum and their institution.

Merchant Taylors' School took this approach with its alumni community, bringing its directory, mentorship programme, and interest-based groups together with Almabase. Consequently, their alumni community showed up for them in a big way: 90% engaged at least once after the switch, and more than 70 alumni remain active mentors. They also saw their average annual donations grow threefold.

When Does iModules Still Make Sense?

If your event calendar is fairly light, your registrations are mostly single-tier and you don't need to coordinate multi-day weekends, iModules can still do the job. If the gaps covered above aren't showing up in your day-to-day work, you’re probably well set with iModules.

Something you could consider is how much complexity your team has to manage. Scale isn't necessarily the deciding factor. A large event with one ticket type, one payment path, and one day of programming can be perfectly straightforward. A smaller Homecoming weekend with six interconnected events, multiple ticket types, and different attendee requirements can be much harder to manage.

It comes down to how many moving parts your team is managing and how much time could be saved when switching to an integrated platform.

Ready to Move Beyond iModules Workarounds?

Almabase unifies registration, event operations, engagement, and reporting in a single system, so your team isn’t stitching together disconnected tools or reconciling fragmented data after event day.

If that’s what you’re looking for, book a demo with us to explore what it would look like for your institution.