[This week I asked Ray Satterthwaite to comment on assessing alumni engagement. A former alumni director at McGill University, and Director of Development and Associate VP
for Advancement at Queen's University, Ray recently started an independent consulting company that
specializes in the measurement of alumni engagement. Ray served on the CASE Alumni Commission, and will be presenting some of his research at the CASE District II conference in March.]
Emotion 401
As a psychology major at McGill University in Montreal, I remember a course called Emotion 401 — The exploration of human emotion. The professor asked us what seemed like a very simple question, “What is love?” In my mind love was simply what I was looking for when I chose a program with a 50:1 female to male ratio. We spent the next several months looking at love from every possible angle. The experience formed in me, years later, a desire to define and measure the work I was doing in alumni relations and fundraising.
We had fun and no one got hurt
When I began in alumni relations, only accountants had computers, and the idea of measuring and quantifying alumni relations was almost unknown. Relationships were built for their own sake. We measured the effectiveness of our programs as follows: We made it through, it didn’t go over budget, people showed up, they had a good time, and no one got hurt! That covered the post-mortem held in the hotel lobby after the event. OK, next event!
There are still alumni offices where the idea of measuring programs’ impact is foreign, and even worse, staff fight against quantifying their programs. It must be difficult to justify budget requests with little empirical evidence of program impact.
Feed the database, it is hungry
Then along came the PC. We now store massive amounts of data, collect registrations online and connect data across platforms. It began with logging event attendance and volunteer roles. The problem was the amount of time required to ensure that everything that could be collected was collected. We were so busy planning and executing our programs that success was measured by overall attendance. The goal was higher numbers, not better engagement.
Another challenge was the number of databases — academic affairs, student clubs, athletics, residences, alumni relations, and alumni giving. All this valuable information was stored separately. "What about event surveys?" you ask. In most cases, the results never made it past the Alumni Officer’s desk. Time spent compiling results was needed to plan more events.
Many schools now annually measure event attendance, emails opened, and publications mailed. Over the last five years or so, a number of benchmarking programs and scoring systems have been introduced by organizations like CASE or communities of practice like PCUAD, in an attempt to standardize what we count and how we count it.
In my effort to quantify alumni relationships I did some data mining. The scores proved to be highly connected to giving. The CASE Commission on Alumni Relations encouraged me to broaden the study to include multiple schools. With the Commission’s assistance, I contacted 70 schools; only seven could provide sample data. Most either had not kept the information or had only recently begun keeping it. Often the information was on a different platform or they were in a dreaded “conversion.” Our results were valuable, but the message was clear. Detailed data was not available at many schools.
The multivariate nature of Engagement
The event is not the goal; increased engagement is the goal. So why measure only event attendance or specific event satisfaction? That’s like measuring how one date went and then saying you are ready to get married. Vegas here we come. It is best to measure the whole relationship, one which changes over time.
Research has shown that an alumnus’s pride in his school is greatest on the day he is admitted. It’s all downhill from there. Not getting the choice residence, failing a class, no treadmills at the gym; you would be surprised at the things that can affect engagement. Life issues can also impact engagement, such as having children or “my kid didn’t get in.” I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that one.
To truly measure engagement, you need to measure the perceptions and feelings of your alumni. Many things affect engagement: their experiences from the time they were students, the current reputation of the school, their involvement and their awareness of — and interest in supporting — the priorities of the school. The only way to get at these perceptions is to ask the alumni.
So don’t stop tracking the “butts in the seats,” but by all means add to this some form of market research on how your alumni feel.