About Antioch College

Antioch College, established in 1850 in Yellow Springs, Ohio, is a private liberal arts institution known for its innovative education and strong commitment to social justice. With a focus on experiential learning and cooperative education, Antioch fosters independent thinkers and community leaders. Despite its small size, the college has a significant legacy of activism and civic engagement, producing alumni who have played pivotal roles in various social movements. Today, Antioch continues to empower students to live purposeful lives centered on sustainability, social justice, and service.

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What were some significant challenges that Antioch College struggled with?

Antioch College encountered several obstacles in effectively engaging and communicating with its alumni community. These challenges not only hindered the college’s efforts to maintain strong relationships with alumni but also complicated the overall management of alumni records and communications. Some of the key issues included:

1. Despite years of digitizing paper directories, many alumni records were out of date or never recovered
2. Multiple responsibilities made it difficult for the college staff to keep up with alumni inquiries and ultimately led to the suspension of regular alumni communications
3. Alumni-led groups created their own workarounds, making it harder to archive, retrieve historical
 information, and track alumni engagement
4. Without an accessible and up-to-date alumni directory, alumni could not easily look for friends 
and classmates they had lost touch with

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Engaging the alumni community at Antioch

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Finding lost peers & scaling self-serve engagement

After Antioch University closed the College in 2008, alumni rallied to save their alma mater and purchased the campus and its name in 2009. The College reopened in 2011, and the new advancement office immediately began reconstituting its alumni and donor database. 

The alumni directory - last printed in 2007- was outdated and inaccessible to many community members.  

An engaged alum convinced the College administration to experiment with an online directory where alums could directly update their information. The Antioch College Alumni Association launched Almabase in July 2017, with the alumni directory populated from the College’s database.  By the end of the year, nearly 500 alumni had registered and updated their records. The following year, 883 alumni had registered, and four years later, 3300 alumni, students, faculty and staff, and friends of the College were registered in the alumni directory.

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Streamlining alumni activities and events

Since 1984, Antioch's Volunteer Work Project (VWP) has consistently contributed to the College's sustainability. Started by a few alumni with limited financial resources but a willingness to help, VWP gathers on campus four times a year to tackle various projects such as cleaning the library, restoring historic lab furniture, and renovating buildings.

Antioch has moved its alumni activities management online. Over the seven years since launching Almabase, nearly 400 alumni events have been posted on the Alumni Association website, ranging from local chapter events to affinity group talks and much more. VWP has set up forms on Almabase for alumni volunteers to fill out and choose the projects they wish to work on. Paper timesheets are now being digitized, as are the volunteers available timelines and the duration of their commitment. This approach streamlines the process for alumni to offer their valuable time and for the College to recognize these in-kind contributions and manage and track the program.

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Redefining communications with quarterly newsletters

In the past, Antioch College distributed  newsletters and a semi-annual printed alumni magazine to keep its alumni informed and engaged. However, this practice was suspended several years ago due to staffing issues. 


Recognizing the need to strengthen alumni engagement and re-establish a communications strategy, the Alumni board recently launched a quarterly digital Alumni newsletter created by alumni and sent by email to all members of the Alumni Directory. Back issues are now conveniently accessible to the general public in the dropdown menu of the resources section on the Alumni Association website.

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Key Results

✅60,000+ Engagement activities recorded last month

✅10% Email click rate recorded

✅4500+ Average alumni engaged monthly