Your school’s biggest fundraising asset is your alumni. Explore strategies for building meaningful connections with former students that will last long-term.
Published:
February 29, 2024
Updated:
February 29, 2024
After graduation, your alumni lead busy lives, and higher education institutions need to get creative to maximize their fundraisers. Fortunately, with a combination of today’s technology and time-tested outreach strategies, universities still have a range of successful outreach strategies to choose from.
But just what strategies will help boost your alumni donor retention rate? Ultimately, the answer depends on your unique school community. However, there are a few engagement strategies we’ve seen find success time and time again, and we’re here to share them with your university or college. Let’s get started.
Mailed cards have a personal touch often lost in the digital age that can make your alumni feel special. On the other hand, it’s hard to beat the speed and convenience of email communication, allowing you to connect in seconds on special occasions.
eCards combine the benefits of both methods, creating a fast but memorable experience for your alumni community. eCardWidget’s charity eCards guide walks through how nonprofits like your university can use this communication method to connect with donors:
Another benefit of eCards is the diverse ways you can send them. Send your eCards through email, text message, or social media to communicate with your alumni via their preferred outreach channels.
Why do alumni give to your university? Each donor likely has their own specific reasons, but in general, most supporters give to universities for two reasons: they are grateful for the experiences they had, and they want to recreate them for future students.
Capitalize on this and continue giving updates on your university simultaneously by having students share their stories. Ask your current students to write up their stories, explaining their reasons for attending your university, the memorable experiences they’ve had so far, and what they hope to accomplish before graduation. At the end of these stories, ask them to emphasize how their positive school experience is enabled by the generosity of the university’s alumni community.
Formatting these stories as emails gives you plenty of space to add context, details, and fully get your message across. But you can also recruit students to send abbreviated text messages or call to talk with alumni one-on-one.
If possible, pair students who attend the same clubs or have the same majors as the alumni they’re contacting did. This can help strengthen your alumnus’ connection to your university and lead to additional support beyond the occasional donation.
Current students who participate in your fundraising efforts can be volunteers or part of a student work-study program to help them earn a little money while helping your university earn the funding it needs to continue creating a great experience for them. Be sure to review their stories before sending them to alumni. Ensure each student has the opportunity to tell their unique story while also creating a consistent message to share with your greater alumni community.
Alumni become stalwart parts of their school’s community when they have more involvement opportunities. Invite your alumni back to campus or get them involved online by organizing virtual events.
A few types of events you might host include:
These types of events help you engage alumni and keep them a part of your community, so you can eventually encourage them to donate. For fundraising-specific events, there’s still even more to explore. Auctions, galas, and sports-related events can all bring in alumni who are specifically interested in giving back.
With gamification, you can turn donating to your university into a fun activity in and of itself rather than a chore.
Gamification is the process of adding “game-like” elements to an activity to encourage increased participation. This might be something as simple as an animation and celebratory jingle that plays when a donor gives to entire event engagement strategies, such as creating a donor leader board during a fundraiser.
Gamification can be especially effective for engaging alumni during virtual events where they are otherwise distant from your university. For example, during a virtual auction, you might use software to send them a red “danger” text alert whenever they get outbid. Or, for a pledge fundraiser, you might create a virtual leaderboard to push alumni into friendly competition with one another.
Your alumni community is one of your university’s biggest assets for raising funds, building your reputation, and creating a network that prospective students will want to join upon graduating. Stay in touch with your alumni by reaching out in creative ways and sharing the same heartfelt emotional stories that have helped you cultivate support for years.
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It’s no secret that keeping alumni engaged in the post-pandemic landscape will present unique challenges, considering most events and fundraising efforts have moved online. Fortunately, many educational institutions have risen to meet those challenges and sharpened their abilities to maintain and even increase alumni engagement in the past year.
If you’re wondering what are some key strategies your organization can utilize to keep that momentum going and continue peaking alumni engagement in 2022 - we have got you covered. Let’s dive into some of the best approaches to keep your alumni virtually engaged with your institution going forward this year.
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Nothing encourages former students to stay plugged-in with their alma mater like the opportunity to create a community with other alumni. Many people have struggled with a lack of social interaction during the pandemic, and virtual community-building events are the perfect remedy for this situation.
In order to plan a successful virtual event be sure to nail down key logistics beforehand like an event agenda, promotional efforts, and setting up a plan to analyze post-event feedback. Let your alumni know in advance what the event has to offer and make sign-up as seamless as possible by offering quick registration supported on a variety of devices.
When it comes to promoting the event, use multiple channels to maximize your outreach. For example, you could create Facebook pages alongside email invitations to reach alumni no matter how they prefer to communicate. A good way to increase engagement would be to make your promotional efforts interactive. Ask your alumni to RSVP using a hashtag or commenting on a Facebook post - this will ensure better reach and engagement on your social media handles.
Finally, you can create opportunities for post-event feedback to tailor your approach for future events and increase alumni turnout. You want your former students to know that their opinions matter to you, so make sure you ask them to share it! This will also make planning your next event simple since you can build on the feedback and experience that your alumni share.
Check out how various institutions have leveraged the virtual space for innovative online events like virtual happy-hours, book clubs, and flagship events.
A good social media presence can undoubtedly do wonders for your engagement goals. You likely already have a social media strategy in place, but how tailored is it to empower alumni to interact with one another and the institution? A simple way to get alumni engaged is to interact with their posts and to invite them to interact with yours!
One option is to create content that invites alumni to post photos of them at college events or even happy memories from their time at the school, college, or university. This is a great method to evoke nostalgia in your alumni and encourage them to remember the positive impact that your institution had on their academic experience.
You can even personalize these calls-to-action by tailoring them to specific programs or organizations involved within your school. For example, you could ask all journalism students to post a memory of why they chose to pursue journalism - or maybe ask all of the students involved in your athletics program to post a photo of their team. These specific calls-to-action are more likely to fetch responses from the targeted group of alumni.
Ensure social media calls-to-action remain engaging and personal by applauding donor efforts and the impact their gifts have on opportunities for future students. You can even share narratives of these impact stories by showcasing the effect their donations have made on a particular student or program. This is a great way to remind them that they are a part of the good change which will surely translate to donor engagement and retention.
Finally, you can encourage peer-to-peer giving campaigns through social media, so that alumni feel more directly involved with their community fundraising. By encouraging students to fundraise directly with their peers, you ensure an organic giving environment that fosters the sense of community that many alumni might associate with your school - making it a win for everyone involved!
When it comes to finding new ways to keep alumni engaged with your giving campaigns, matching gifts is a valuable giving option to consider. Matching gifts are a form of corporate philanthropy in which companies financially match the individual donations their employees make to charitable organizations - sometimes even at a 2:1, 3:1, and even 4:1 ratio.
Donors love to discover their eligibility for these programs as it allows them to instantly double the impact their donation can have on causes they care about, without having to reach back into their wallets. Informing donors of their eligibility can encourage higher donations; 84% of donors are more likely to give a donation in the first place if they know their gift will be matched and 1 in 3 donors indicate that they would donate a larger amount if their gift will be matched.
Many donors are actually unaware that they qualify for a matching gift program - in fact, 78% of match-eligible donors don’t know about their employer’s matching gift program. That’s why we recommend marketing matching gifts to your former students to help them discover eligibility and submit their matching request. This is a great way to add value to their donation experience while boosting revenue for your fundraising campaign. You can utilize a variety of avenues for this outreach, such as on a “Ways-to-Give” page, via social media, and through email outreach.
Moving forward into 2022 with these alumni engagement strategies in your toolbox, you can ensure your alumni remain not only plugged-in, but also well engaged, which is sure to reflect in your fundraising campaigns.
Alumni Engagement: 3 Ways to Keep Former Students Involved
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Adam Weinger
June 8, 2021
12 minutes
As an alumni association professional, one of your most crucial responsibilities is to secure fundraising revenue. Giving days, such as Giving Tuesday, are a prime opportunity to raise a large amount of funds quickly.
While giving days last just 24 hours, you should begin preparing for Giving Tuesday far in advance. For universities today, attracting attention on Giving Tuesday requires a strong online presence and digital fundraising strategy. Using popular hashtags like #GivingTuesday is a step in the right direction. However, attracting alumni who will continue to give long-term requires developing engaging content, presenting it strategically, and maintaining communication to build a long-term relationship.
Based on years of experience assisting nonprofits and educational institutions in developing their Giving Tuesday fundraising strategies, here are four key best practices alumni associations can use next Giving Tuesday.
Set your alumni fundraiser up for success by conducting prospect research beforehand. Prospect research is the practice of evaluating your organization’s prospective donors by their capacity and affinity to give.
Essentially, prospect research allows your organization to identify alumni who are in the best financial position to donate, and that have the strongest affinity toward your organization. Ask yourself the following when evaluating prospects:
Use this information to focus your fundraising efforts. However, keep in mind that it can still be worthwhile to contact lower-earning recent graduates and alumni to begin building relationships for future engagements.
The more potential supporters you can get in touch with, the more your Giving Day fundraiser will raise. To reach more alumni, your university should take a multi-channel approach by marketing the campaign on a variety of platforms.
NXUnite’s guide to starting a fundraiser suggests several different outreach channels to market on:
Managing multiple communication channels can be a strain on your resources, and not all platforms will produce the same return on investment. When selecting your outreach channels, consider your data from past marketing campaigns to determine which platforms yielded the highest engagement rates.
Straightforward outreach through phone calls, direct mail, and email are all core parts of fundraising. However, you can leverage your technology to further engage your alumni and provide them with creative, memorable ways to give.
For example, many Giving Day campaigns include an event. Hosting an event provides a tangible reason why alumni should give on that specific day while also inviting them to participate in fun activities and engage with your university.
To make these events accessible to your entire alumni community, consider how you can take your Giving Day event online. Let’s walk through an example of a popular but often complex fundraiser, the silent auction. To encourage more bidding on your giving day, use gamification strategies like:
If you have never hosted an event like an auction virtually before, consider meeting with a technology consultant who can help you set up your event platform and step in quickly to resolve any technical issues that may occur during the event.
Recently alumni donations have been decreasing. This is due to a variety of factors, including economic instability, new legislation, and the fact that 93% of alumni organizations provide no benefits or only content that alumni do not find worthwhile.
Avoid this for your association by offering valuable content in exchange for alumni gifts. While alumni may no longer attend classes at your university, you can still demonstrate your value in their lives by publishing informative content, hosting networking events, and sharing stories about current students.
Effective data management can help you identify pertinent topics. Look into your database and find survey answers, demographic information, and more to base your content on. Then, host events and create content on subjects that are relevant to your alumni, such as current events or topics related to specific professions.
In your donation appeals, consider what content you can offer your alumni. For example, you could provide webinars or panels on current challenges your alumni might face in the workplace—such as how to succeed in a hybrid workplace—or virtual happy hours where they can connect with one each other. Consider getting faculty involved to provide their subject matter expertise and give former students the chance to talk with their former professors.
Giving days are an opportunity to rally your university’s community together and raise funds to continue providing current and former students with the resources they need to succeed professionally. Focus on your approach and engage alumni by using your data to guide outreach and event hosting.
Carl Diesing, Managing Director – Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with ongoing web development projects. Together DNL OmniMedia has worked with over 100 organizations to assist them with accomplishing their online goals. As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues. Carl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah and their two children Charlie and Evelyn.
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Alumni Fundraising For Giving Days: 4 Technology-Driven Tips
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Having an updated alumni database is a massive asset to any alumni program. Unfortunately, very few schools actually have a database that is seamless and functional enough. While we all understand the herculean task of tracking thousands of our graduates across the decades, we cannot ignore how pivotal a role it plays in our alumni engagement strategies.
Having observed hundreds of institutions around the globe take up various approaches with respect to updating their alumni databases, we’ve compiled for you the best techniques that are typically employed by schools and their relative benefits.
Address Finder Services look up publicly available information on individuals and matches them against your database. Typically these services are charged on a success fee model - so if they help you find new data then you pay for it, otherwise, you don’t. Some of these services are integrated into your database, and some are independent. A few popular service providers are — LexisNexis, AlumniFinder, and Raiser’s Edge Address Finder.
1. Affordable for low-volume data appends: For organizations that work with low volumes of data, Address Finder Services can be affordable but the costs are high if you have a large alumni base.
Quick results: Address Finder Services eliminate the need to manually collect data, thereby saving time and resources.
1. No user consent: Since you are not asking your alumni for this information, they are not giving you explicit consent to use their information to communicate with them. The recommended practice here is to get consent from your alumni once you get new contact information, but this is a separate effort you’ll have to take up.
2. Incomplete Data: Since these services compile data based on publicly available information, more often than not, you may find yourself dealing with incomplete information as it is likely for people to limit their personal data online.
3. Inaccurate Data: As these services extract data from various public sources, you might often come across outdated alumni data. While some of the data may be accurate, it is highly likely that all of it isn’t.
4. No ongoing updates: In order to keep your alumni database updated, you will have to run this service regularly.
This is an easy option and almost every school includes a form on their website requesting alumni to update their information using that form. Within the alumni page of your website, this is a key section. However, the challenge that every school reports is that very few alumni actually fill it. Think about it — what is the motivation for alumni to go to your website regularly and fill out a long form to update their information?
1. Data accuracy: Since your alumni are providing this information voluntarily, it would be accurate at least for then.
2. Easy to setup: Setting up a form on your website that captures information from your website visitors or in this case - alumni, doesn’t take much time or effort.
3. User consent: Unlike address finder services, forms collect information from only those who are willing to provide their information, thereby establishing user consent.
1. Low volume: Without an incentive in place, very few alumni actually fill out the form.
2. Manual efforts: While setting up a form may be easy, the challenge lies in entering the data collected by these forms into your database.
3. No ongoing updates: Most updates are not captured on time. For example: if an alum finds a new job and moves from Boston to San Francisco, how likely are they to immediately update you via the form?
LinkedIn is a great source of information, some schools turn to the social media platform to capture relevant alumni information. LinkedIn has an alumni tool that you can use to find your alumni who have indicated an education at your school on their profile. You can either have a staff member use their personal LinkedIn account and browse through alumni or create a separate account using your school’s name only for this purpose. The major problem here is that beyond a point LinkedIn will detect that you are browsing through too many profiles and will block you.
1. Data Accuracy: LinkedIn being a professional networking platform, alumni are much more likely to keep their profiles updated here.
2. Beneficial for smaller institutions: For smaller organizations, with a smaller alumni base, capturing alumni data via LinkedIn is feasible.
1. Limitations by LinkedIn: Since LinkedIn only allows a fixed number of searches, upon exceeding that limit, you will be either blocked or asked to shift to a paid account.
2. No user consent: Similar to address finder services, the data collection process is discrete and user consent is not involved.
3. Expensive & time-consuming: You would need to appoint designated people to solely do this job which can make this process rather time-consuming and expensive.
4. High risk of error: Where there’s manual extraction of data involved, there is always a high risk of error.
Events are wonderful opportunities to re-engage alumni and offer a chance to gather relevant information from event attendees. The data collected from these event registrations is highly accurate since it’s provided by your own alumni who are actively engaging with you.
1. Data accuracy : Since the source of this information is your alumni, there’s no doubting its credibility.
2. User consent : Since the information collected via events is provided by your own alumni, user consent is established.
1. Low volume : If your institution doesn’t see a lot of alumni participation at events, you might not be able to capture enough information to update your alumni database.
2. Manual effort : While alumni information collected from events can be highly useful, this information needs to be manually entered into your database, thereby increasing the risk of errors and time taken.
4 ways to update your alumni database
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Kalyan Varma
August 26, 2019
12 minutes
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