A frustrated alumni relations colleague recently posed some interesting questions and ideas via email. She wrote, in part:
We were all asked to read Jim Collins' Good to Great before [a recent] conference and it served as background for many of the discussions....I was particularly interested in the notion of "getting the right people on the bus," and how our industry is hampered in this area because many of the folks on our bus are volunteers.
Among other things, this colleague (who works at a private college in the U.S.) wrote that she was frustrated by the lack of strategy around "why we need volunteers" and "how we should put volunteers to work." Doing what we've always done isn't working anymore, in her view. She also pointed to an "inability to institute change, for fear of alienating alumni volunteers."
This might sound negative, but I believe she is putting a voice to thoughts that many alumni professionals share. She wrote, in part:
I must admit that while we're enjoying the advances of technology and paying far more attention to metrics, we still haven't (in my view) made much progress on the alumni volunteer front. I often find myself feeling trapped, frankly, by the resource drain of maintaining a vast and dated infrastructure of volunteers.
Meanwhile, this frustrated colleague reports her institution is asking the following questions to address these issues, but she (and I) would love to know what others are doing:
- What does the institution want or need alumni to do?
- What does the alumni association need volunteers to do?
- What do alumni want to do for the institution?
- What gaps exist among the answers to these questions?
- How can we eliminate those gaps while offering alumni fulfilling volunteer opportunities that help the institution?
Later this summer I will post a follow-up with thoughts on volunteer management gleaned from a discussion at last week's PCUAD meeting.
But meanwhile, leave your comments by visiting Alumni Futures on the web and scrolling down to the bottom of this posting where you'll see the words: POST A COMMENT.
Tell us what you think.
