I was inspired last week to revisit some remarks I delivered last year at a "Thought Leader Seminar" hosted by Illuminate Consulting Group. The impetus to review what I had said came from a comment left by Santa Clara University's Kathy Kale on the Alumni Futures posting last week. Kathy asked,
What is the call to action for alumni organizations? What are we supposed to do to respond to or interact with loose social networks that include our alumni? We may not play a central role but what role do/can we play?The word we have been hearing for years is "relevance." This is increasingly central to alumni organizations' missions and activities. It was the first bullet point I addressed when I wrote about "mattering" in my first posting of 2010.
So here's an update to what I was saying about this a year ago. I had the perspective then of nine years in my role as executive director at one institution; now my perspective includes time as an independent consultant to education. My views overall haven't changed that much.
New Notions of Community: Ten Years Out
As the value of some traditional alumni relations activities fades steadily, and as new ways to self-identify, to communicate and to collaborate internationally continue to grow, advancement professionals must rethink their notion of what it means to “have a community” of alumni, friends, and donors.
Alumni offices can become brokers of information that alumni need from one another (and from the institution): making potentially valuable connections discoverable should be among their strategic goals, and deploying helpful tools according to a structured, but flexible, framework will enable them to succeed.
Career and professional help, fundraising, communication and marketing (as well as alumni relations and admissions/recruiting) will overlap more and hybrid offices and job titles will appear on campus. I can imagine something like the following:
- Director of Alumni Relations and Career Services
- Major Gifts Officer and Alumni Network Broker
- Annual Giving Coordinator and Community Manager
How we measure our success will also change, moving toward outcomes and success stories, network value, and visibility online. Alumni organizations will measure success, in part, through alumni connections and influence in other organizations (government, education, and business).
Getting started in this direction may require only a modest reallocation of existing resources, and willingness by advancement professionals to stand up and point out a new direction.
Leadership opportunities abound, and as with every truly new effort, for most that enter this field there will be no “wrong way” to go – but there will be many unexplored avenues to pursue.