alumni futures

What Makes Reorganizations Successful?

Over the last few years, I have helped a number of organizations review the way they deploy their advancement teams. I also led the reorganization of a newly combined alumni relations and annual giving team at a leading private university.

Through these experiences I’ve noticed a couple of frequent expectations among the leaders driving the reorganization process. One expectation is that the newly arranged team will be more efficient. The other is that they’ll be more effective.

Below are some thoughts on both these ambitions. And I close with a comment on one key factor that all organizations require, even if they’re not changing their reporting lines.

Efficiency

Resources are scarce! Budgeting is a contact sport, and adding a gift officer might mean shrinking the advancement services or alumni relations teams. So, efficiency matters.

The Efficiency goal drives many reorganization efforts. And it can make sense. I consulted on one such effort that revealed duplication between two large, merging offices. Each organization hosted its own finance, budget, and HR specialists. And with big organizations there might also be a facility manager or an events team whose work would overlap with their colleagues’ in an integrated model. In these cases, combining the functions across teams makes sense. The budget and the staff time spared by integration can create alumni-facing roles that increase audience engagement.

On the flip side, my Switchboard colleague Chelsea Haring points out that it’s critical to factor in up-front financial costs when estimating the ROI of a re-org. If you’re increasing the experience, education, or specialization required to satisfy new job descriptions, don’t expect to hire the new people for the same salaries you paid staff members with less experience, education, or specialized knowledge.

[Resources spared by integration can create alumni-facing roles
that increase engagement]

Effectiveness

This is tougher. Effectiveness is only partially the result of structure. You might say that effective organizational design is “necessary, but not sufficient” for long-term success.

I managed an annual fund reorganization that increased efficiency without measurably changing our effectiveness in the first year —as measured by traditional metrics. After the vice president and I had moved on to new roles, our successors decided on yet another model, and reorganized again. Nobody will ever know whether our original work would have improved results—but if it were going to be more effective, it would have needed more time. As I mentioned in a recent commentary on integrating alumni relations and fundraising, re-orgs often affect an organization’s culture. And cultural change requires a lengthy interval before you can accurately judge its effects.

Why can’t the “right” structure guarantee success? Two reasons:

1. “Effectiveness” means successfully achieving your stated goals. You do have stated goals, don't you? That's the first hurdle to address: having a strategic road map. Almost every alumni office and association has a mission statement that describes its purpose. But to fulfill that mission and achieve that purpose, you need to know which few high-level, long-term achievements will get you there. So a strategic plan is the first step, to identify and articulate what will fulfill your mission. Without it, the best organizational structure will still fall short.
2. You must measure and report your success. Therefore, you need metrics that tell you whether you are reaching your goals. Too often, we track inputs instead of outcomes. For example, many alumni communities have a goal of “engaging people through online interaction.” The assumption is that if you’re engaged online, you’re going to be supportive of alma mater. Maybe so. But maybe not. An alumna joining your LinkedIn group or opening your e-newsletter is not “success.” Making a donation, volunteering one’s time or responding to a student’s request for information—those are successful outcomes.

So two necessary steps—identifying priority goals, and tracking outcomes—lead us to the final question: how do you do that? And the top answer is:

[True collaboration means bringing institutional partners
into the planning process at the start]

Collaborative Planning

Every alumni community strategic plan I’ve read or helped to draft in recent years includes multiple mentions of “reaching out across campus,” “partnering with other units,” or “collaborating to break down silos.”

This is certainly a critical means to more effective student and alumni engagement. However, too often, collaboration happens only after the plan is written. The alumni team drafts engagement goals and strategies for the next three years, chooses tactics to get them there, and even sets up some metrics to track their progress. They produce the final document, and only then do they share it with the development office, admissions, career services, and maybe even academic departments.

The problem in this scenario is that it’s already too late for effective partnership. By setting its goals and choosing its strategies in isolation (the familiar silo problem), your team prevents partners from co-owning the plan’s results. A truly collaborative partnership means bringing institutional partners into the planning process at the start—when you’re revisiting your mission statement—to develop goals jointly and ensure that responsibility for success belongs to all those involved.

Hosting a brown bag lunch where you highlight for another office the top three things you included in your plan usually results in exactly one thing: a delicious lunch. You need your colleagues to help you identify what you want to achieve and why, and to plan alongside you exactly how to achieve it.

That’s true collaboration, the secret ingredient to shared success.


A version of this article originally appeared on the Switchboard blog

Step Away from the Printed Directory – Once and For All

Note: This article originally appeared on the Switchboard Blog.

Back in the late 1990s, I worked at a large public research university. We sat through a sales presentation by a vendor of printed alumni directories, and when he left, we said to each other, “OK, but I guess this will be the last printed directory we ever do.” This was the dot com era, the CD-ROM was the latest and greatest way to store and access large amounts of information, and we believed that before long, the digital wave would submerge the printed alumni “phone book” at last.

Five years later I sat through a presentation by the same sales representative, at a different institution. When the salesman left, we looked at each other and said, “I don’t think so. Let’s just host it on the web.” A year later, Facebook was gaining traction and the phrase “social network” was rising in prominence. Alumni still weren’t ready for a digital-only directory landscape. So eventually we compiled, edited, and printed the directory in-house, as a benefit to dues-paying members of the Alumni Association.

Five years after that—now as Associate VP at another university—I got a call from the same sales rep, who told me the business model had changed. He acknowledged it was hard to get alumni to buy the directory outright, but he told me that they would provide the directory to alumni who contributed an agreed amount to the annual fund. I said, “No thanks.”

And finally, we didn’t do a printed directory.

I was not inundated with complaints from alumni expecting the book to arrive. I did not field a single question from curious alumni, wondering what could possibly have changed. The passing of the printed volume went unnoticed by all except the university staff members, whose time was now free to deliver benefits and services of more relevance and value to more alumni.

[I did not field a single question from curious alumni]

This point is critical. The idea of “opportunity cost” in business is important, and it applies here. Simply put, opportunity cost refers to what you give up by forgoing an opportunity to pursue an alternative.

In other words, every minute you spend handling the extensive details required to produce a printed alumni directory is a minute you cannot invest in a project with higher value to your audience and your institution. So even if the directory, for example, is of interest to some alumni, you should ask whether there’s a project of value to even more alumni (or of greater value to the same alumni).

In the past few months, I’ve spoken with alumni professionals and volunteers at four institutions who are planning to produce another printed alumni directory. Davidson College’s experience with this has been documented on this very blog. This continuation of the alumni directory business surprises me, as I see alumni leaders try to justify the effort they know it will take.

Why am I surprised? After all, the alumni relations landscape is crowded with “traditional” events and programs that institutions hesitate to discontinue. So why not a paper book sent through the mail?

Because today, ubiquitous internet access combines with powerful search to make most information instantly accessible to most people, anywhere in the world at any time. And the information you find online is likely to be more up to date than information captured in a static form at a specific point in the past. Since printed directories routinely take more than one year to initiate, compile, edit, format, publish and distribute, about 15% of the contact data is likely to be wrong by the time you send it to the few alumni who want it.

To learn what value remains in compiling and printing such a book, I asked for input from alumni professionals. Here are some of the responses, with my comments:

“I’m amazed that it’s still a business, but there’s still some money to be made. More complaints, more pain than ever, however.”

Some alumni will always complain. Knowing that you can’t satisfy everyone, and accounting for limits on your resources, you should actively decide who you can satisfy, how, and with what expected outcome.

“Alumni seem to expect it. The book in hand is a more tangible experience.”

Do they really expect it, or do they just “seem” to? Those are two different things – but you can check. You should at least find out how many alumni expect it and which alumni they are. If alumni do expect it, it is because we have trained them to expect it by repeatedly providing it.

[We have trained alumni to expect it by repeatedly providing it]

“I am building an advancement program with almost 60,000 alumni and no active database. I will take advantage of the directory company collecting current data...at no expense to my program. To be honest, I don't care how many (if any) books they sell.”

Ah, perhaps this is a good use case. Someone starting with “no active database” can find it useful to have a publisher gather data. But is there really “no expense” to your program? Yes, there is no cost to your budget to purchase the books or the service. However, we’ve already seen that there’s the opportunity cost (i.e. everything you cannot do because you’re busy with the directory). There’s also the time, attention and effort that goes into negotiating the contract, ensuring accuracy in the survey instrument, scripting the calls, handling inevitable customer complaints, checking the accuracy of data collection, shepherding the project through your advancement services team, and monitoring the production, distribution and (guaranteed) further complaints from people who were omitted or listed incorrectly (or included, when they had in fact opted out of being listed).

To ensure a quality product, there is absolutely a considerable and real cost.

I emphasize that the “quality product” is not just the printed book. It also comprises customer service and interaction with the publisher’s callers, the printed survey or update form they mail, and most important, the integrity of the data itself. If you’re going to spend a year or more trying to get an upload for your advancement database, you need to be certain that the data you’re adding is correct, and is more accurate than the data you already have in there.

A final comment from a colleague:

“Just did one this past year. It will likely be our last, primarily because our vendor experienced terrible delays (and didn't always share info about them in a timely fashion), which in turn impacted our credibility with the alumni who participated. We did a get a lot of interest in the print directory from our 1960s and 1970s alumni.”

“A lot of interest” perhaps. But how much interest did the alumni team miss out on by spending the effort and time to handle the delays, and to repair the damaged credibility she mentions? And what about the opportunity to engage more effectively across generations who are not so thrilled by the alumni directory?

Before you decide that the printed directory is a prudent investment of your organization’s scarce resources, weigh it against the actual need and ask yourself which of your strategic goals it helps you to achieve. And – as with any existing program or activity that you repeat because “alumni expect it” –  think about what the project will prevent you from doing that could be advancing your mission more effectively.

My New Role: Switchboard

 

I am thrilled to announce that on October 1 I will join Switchboard as Vice President. Switchboard is an award-winning online engagement platform based in Portland, Oregon that works with leading colleges, universities, and independent schools. I have been an advisor to Switchboard for four years, and believe strongly in their approach to community-building, and to student-alumni engagement in particular.

[On October 1 I will join Switchboard as Vice President]

My family and I will continue to make Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania our home.

 

I will continue limited work as an independent consultant for GG+A, with the title of Consulting Vice President. In my two-plus years there, I have been privileged to work with some three dozen diverse institutions across seven countries. Many times, I have seen potentially strong alumni communities under-perform, due to inadequate understanding of the outcomes that effective engagement can create. Working with Switchboard, I will help clients understand what they can achieve for their institutions when they enable alumni, students and families to support each other. I believe that tracking engagement outcomes is the future of alumni relations. And Switchboard is unique among engagement tools in its ability to track and report these outcomes, and their value to alma mater.

[Tracking engagement outcomes is the future of alumni relations]

As I complete my 29th year in advancement, I look forward to approaching the sector’s challenges from this new direction, and to enabling institutions to define, achieve and report their successes. Alumni relations is a wonderful profession, and I’m excited to continue my career in this new role.

 

Read Switchboard's announcement of this news on their blog.

Alumni Networks: Allies for Institutional Reputation

This article is based on a presentation developed for Building Universities’ Reputation 2017, a conference hosted by the Universidad de Navarra in March 2017. Unfortunately, due to travel difficulties, I was unable to participate as a speaker. I am sorry that I was unable to attend, and hope that this article provides conference delegates and others with useful information.

§

Competition is heightened among universities today, as rankings increasingly influence public perception of educational quality. These rankings - sometimes referred to as “league tables,” in a nod to European football standings - have detractors and advocates. But regardless of one’s opinion about them, the rankings clearly have public visibility.

Universities work to improve the various factors that influence rankings, including student achievement, research output, facilities and recognition for teaching. But all universities have a particular army of supporters who often remain underutilized in the effort to promote the institution: their alumni.

Before we look at how alumni can help universities, here are three key points to understand about alumni communities and reputation:

1. Alumni form the largest group of stakeholders at your institution

You may have thousands of students, hundreds of professors and researchers, and just as many staff members… but the number of alumni will always be much larger. There are numerous institutions whose alumni number in the hundreds of thousands.

2. Alumni form the only permanent community at your institution

Students are students for only a few years. Professors and administrators will retire or take new positions elsewhere. But alumni status is lifelong.

3. Alumni are both insiders and outsiders

In Institutions for Future Generations (p. 382) the authors explain that as insiders, alumni have a personal interest in their university’s success. And as outsiders to the daily life of the institution, alumni bring the external perspective of semi-detached observers.

Considered together, these three points form the foundation for engaging alumni to enhance your institution's reputation.

[Alumni form the largest, and only permanent audience within your university's community]

The Benefits for Alumni
As citizens, we trade in “social capital” in our lives, especially for professional purposes. Connection to a respected and known institution can enhance graduates’ professional stature and their employability, and can offer professional prestige among family, friends, co-workers and employers.

This is the concept of “degree equity”: the idea that your diploma can increase in value long after you leave university. Its value will rise as your university’s reputation and stature increase. Alumni are usually judged according to their alma mater’s current reputation – so if you attended many years ago, before the institution was well-known or highly-ranked, others will still regard you in accord with its current reputation.

In addition to social capital, it helps to understand “social identity theory.” In part, this says that one’s personal identity is formed somewhat by the groups to which they belong. A university’s alumni often share a sense of identity or community. If so, the university benefits when those alumni spread the word about the strength of their connection to their alma mater. Over time, this can contribute to an increase in institutional recognition; and with increased recognition comes the opportunity for improved reputation.

Some universities’ names are well-known around the world (these institutions top the league tables, of course). But the quality of an alumni network does not depend on the academic quality of the institution itself. There are smaller, less famous universities whose alumni are active, supportive and helpful in increasing reputation. Any university can harness alumni as allies to improve its public reputation.

The Role of Alumni
There are many ways in which alumni can contribute directly to areas that influence reputation. They can...

·     ...act as academic talent scouts to attract top students for enrollment.

·     ...help with employability and career support for students and fellow graduates. This means providing internships, externships, or speaking in classrooms and on panel discussions at career events for students and alumni.

·     ...serve as “brand ambassadors” for the university. This can include visibly displaying their affiliation, talking about the institution and sharing its social media content with their own networks. Many institutions have formalized these volunteer roles for alumni to spread the good word about alma mater. Among European examples are Radboud University in the Netherlands (click on an ambassador’s photo for full information), the University of London, and Cass Business School.

More specifically, alumni active in online communities can serve as social media (or digital) ambassadors, as described in detail by the University of Reading. This can serve organizations of all types, not just universities. Schools often provide ambassador roles to volunteers, and Chevening, the UK government’s international leadership program, has ambassadors who blog about their experience in more detail than you’d find in a Facebook posting or a Tweet.

These means of promoting the institution illustrate how times have changed. In the past, universities mostly controlled which information the public received about them. Now technology allows all of us to publish anything, at any time, to any audience, and therefore communities of all types can self-organize. The university can still publish its own information, but it is just one of many sources of information. So, instead of dominating what people think and know about it, the institution instead has only limited influence over people’s perceptions and opinions. And this includes correcting incorrect views or “fixing” damaging news stories.

[In the past, universities controlled which information the public received...]

The Fine Print About Alumni
I believe that the student experience is the single most influential factor affecting a graduate’s relationship to alma mater. Alumni who had a poor student experience can harm your reputation, just as those who support the university can improve its reputation. Having a good alumni website, nice events, or a strong social media presence cannot “fix” negative alumni attitudes created by lackluster student experiences. This is why more than ever, alumni professionals, academics, communications professionals and student affairs leaders must work closely together. They need to support the student during their brief tenure as students, and accompany the student during the gradual transition from student to alumnus.

There are limits to the benefit a good reputation can provide. Recent research confirms that alumni financial support for high-reputation institutions declines with negative news coverage. In other words, a good reputation cannot provide permanent or total protection to your brand. In fact, a good reputation may create a more negative impression when bad news surfaces, because alumni expect better from an institution that is highly ranked and well-known.

Professionals interested in alumni support of institutional reputation must also explore the meaning and role of an organization’s brand. Brand works alongside reputation to contribute to long-term university success. However, university brand and alumni relations are usually managed from different departments inside the university. Success requires active collaboration by all involved. This means sharing information and partnering to plan and execute public-facing projects, as well as sharing strategic goals and jointly measuring their outcomes.

Leave a comment with your thoughts about reputation and the roles of alumni.

Photo: Bibliotèque de la Sorbonne by John Towner, via Unsplash

Three Trends in Global Community Engagement

I am privileged to work with a diverse array of alumni communities: institutions from different countries; public and private universities; independent schools; and even non-governmental organizations, public agencies, and foundations. This year, I have noticed several themes emerge across all of these types of organizations. Below, I share my year-end thoughts about three of the most prominent themes - related to volunteerism, engagement structures and strategy - that should be of interest to any non-profit organization, large or small.

1.    Volunteers expect to see their impact.

Over the past several years, the motivation behind philanthropic donations has steadily shifted from supporting an organization to supporting a cause. This trend has now moved beyond donating money; we are also seeing it where people donate their time. I see this in my work with regional chapter presidents to members of national boards and every volunteer in between.

Committees, boards and councils have historically had a largely honorary or advisory role. But today volunteers expect that the time they are giving, and the work they are doing, is something the organization needs in order to accomplish its mission, as well as something with a tangible outcome for the institution.

For alumni communities in particular, this can go beyond volunteering time with the institution. Alumni don’t only work to support the parent institution; they also support other alumni. For example, graduates provide career support and access to professional networks for students and for fellow alumni. They can also recruit high-quality students, who raise the academic quality of the institution. Over time, this increases “degree equity,” the long-term value of the credentials of all alumni whom the institution has graduated in the past.

The relationship between the institution and its alumni is mutually supportive – a “two-way street.” Volunteer leaders represent the needs and desires of members at large, while promoting the institution’s overarching mission to other community members and to the outside community as well.

2.    Non-profit organizations are investing less in “permanent structures.”

There are generational differences in community engagement. For example, younger members expect to engage with organizations on their own terms – when, how, and as much (or as little) as they wish. This conflicts with the long tradition of formal, permanent structures as the primary portal for connecting with one’s shared community.

My colleague J T. Forbes, Chief Executive Officer of the Indiana University Alumni Association and GG+A consulting vice president, is articulate on this in the context of alumni communities. He notes, for example, how more fluid and informal alumni networks are replacing many traditional regional chapters. Many younger professionals see “joining” a club as an old-fashioned idea; they want to participate in communities, but on their own terms. The result is looser and more adaptable group formation. Small groups can convene on short notice and without official approval for every meeting. This activity is driven by grassroots interest and not by corporate mandate, financial resources, institutional policies, or professional staff. Many groups exist without the knowledge of the parent organization, using online tools and individuals’ interests to drive their activity.

This means the organization must shift its scarce staff time and financial support away from permanent structures and toward more responsive answers to audience needs and expectations. This is challenging for institutions wedded to long-standing, bureaucratic arrangements; but for rising generations, those structures inhibit the creativity, flexibility, and responsiveness they need when working via social or professional networks.

The shift away from permanence is also visible in governance structures, such as boards and their committees. I often advise clients to let standing committees give way to task forces or temporary ad hoc working groups that form and disperse more easily and more frequently. There are still important roles for permanent committees: an executive committee for strategic decision-making; an awards committee for recognizing individuals’ service or achievements; and a nominating committee to select new board members. But for communications, career services, and events, it is more common than ever to have project-based, impermanent groups.

3.    We're trading breadth of engagement in exchange for depth of engagement.

Traditionally, community-based organizations (including alumni associations) have tried to appeal to as many people as possible. The goal was broad participation, even if many participants were only minimally engaged. As times have changed – and due in part to the increasing importance of fundraising for many organizations – the focus has shifted. Now, there is greater acknowledgment and acceptance of reaching fewer, but more selected people, and thereby engaging more deeply with each person we reach.

In this tradeoff, organizational staff must decide at every stage whether to continue trying to reach as many people as possible, or to reach a smaller fraction of stakeholders, more deeply. Think of it in terms of “opportunity cost:” every minute or dollar spent reaching one additional person could instead be spent making an existing supporter even more committed. Over time an organization must do both, but also needs to strike a balance and maintain it through a combination of strategic planning and outcome measurement.

§

These are not the only issues facing our organizations today, but they are ones that bear careful consideration and periodic reassessment. Are they relevant for you? What additional trends or shifts will you be watching in 2017?

Leave a comment. 

Photo by Andy Shaindlin: St. George's College, University of Western Australia

The 2016 Ross-CASE Survey: Alumni Engagement in the United Kingdom

In two recent blog posts on the Grenzebach Glier & Associates website, my colleagues Adrian Salmon and Lori Yersh highlighted key top-level trends from the Ross-CASE report, and delved into the implications of individual versus organisational support for UK universities. As Lori mentioned, the Ross-CASE report groups institutions into five categories (Fragile, Emerging, Moderate, Established, and Elite). I use the same cohort labels in this article.

The data reported in the recent Ross-CASE Survey on UK Fundraising for higher education doesn’t focus very much on alumni relations. The data around alumni programs is mostly about inputs – not outcomes. However, on a strategic level, the report can help to inform your alumni relations approach.

First, let’s look at a chart that my colleagues at GG+A compiled using data from the Ross-CASE report. It shows Total Advancement Cost per Alumnus and Cost per Donor (click image to enlarge):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The more invested per contactable alumnus, the less expensive it becomes per acquired or retained donor.
(Source: Ross-CASE Survey 2016) 

This chart shows, in pounds spent, two metrics:

• The very short, blue columns represent total spending on fundraising and on alumni relations per individual graduate, by each cohort’s member institutions. We see measurable increases from the Fragile cohort onward, and then a quite large relative leap as we move from Established to Elite institutions, as defined in the Report.

• Next, the taller gray columns show the institutional cost per donor obtained (for all kinds of donors, including alumni).

What does it tell us?

• Acquiring and retaining donors does incur a cost. How much? The mean cost across all institutions in the survey is £440 per donor, and the median is even higher, at £608. This is a very useful metric for advancement professionals checking the targets their leaders expect them to achieve, against the resources allocated to achieve them.

• Even though the more established programs are spending more on advancement per contactable alumnus of their university, their cost per donor becomes progressively lower.
  
  In other words, as they invest more in advancement per alumnus, their fundraising efforts become more efficient.

[Alumni relations is not simply an expense, it is an investment, 
because it has a long-term return]

Many institutional leaders worry about rising costs and say, “We must control spending!” Thus they limit their allocation for alumni relations staff and activities. The report shows that outlays for alumni relations at Fragile institutions amount to only 0.07 percent of total institutional expenditures. As a percentage, this is just half of what the Established institutions are investing.

As a cost-containment measure, severely curtailing alumni relations spending makes sense if spending on alumni outreach is solely an expense. But it isn’t.

When pursued with long-term outcomes in mind, alumni relations is not simply an expense, it is an investment, because it has a long-term return.

The Total Advancement Cost Per Alumnus chart above suggests that if you make false economies in fundraising and in alumni relations, and if you do not invest adequately per contactable alumnus, your fundraising becomes extremely inefficient. This is true whatever the absolute results may be.

You are, in effect, deciding to spend much more, per each pound you raise from donors.

Alumni relations in general doesn’t usually show short-term ROI (financial or otherwise) so many decision makers believe that spending on alumni outreach is a waste of scarce funds. However, investment in alumni relations moves you off the starting line for fundraising with new donors and helps you overcome the resistance that often accompanies a fledgling engagement effort.

Building new relationships doesn’t typically show immediately visible results. These come over time, and mature advancement operations show this.

What kind of return can you expect in the short run when connecting alumni to one another and to their alma maters? Well, fortunately, alumni give in other ways, and these are visible, if not easily quantifiable in monetary terms:

• Alumni who do not currently donate financially can participate by attending events, providing expertise to students and alumni, sharing access to their professional networks, and hosting or organizing alumni gatherings.

• Behavioral researchers identify reciprocity as a key ingredient for positively influencing others . People are much more likely to respond to requests of any kind from those who have already provided us with something of benefit or value. Seen this way, alumni relations is not just a counterbalance to fundraising, but a prerequisite for fundraising as well.

A word about resources: Success doesn’t require that you spend as much or hire as many staff as large alumni offices in North America. Rather, it suggests pursuing relative increases in your own efforts, compared with your historical effort.

[Any reduction in uncertainty represents a form of measurement]

Finally, I want to encourage measurement and benchmarking in alumni work. You can benchmark alumni relations, although it is a little different from tracking philanthropic gifts. Below are two approaches to consider. They are not surgical in their precision, but they may offer more insight.

• First, you can estimate alumni relations expenditure per contactable alumnus:
  • Take your alumni relations budget – staff plus programs – and divide by number of contactable alumni.
• You can also estimate the number of alumni per alumni relations staff position:
  • Divide the number of contactable alumni by the full-time equivalent (FTE) number of employees working on alumni relations.

• The mean in the UK appears to be approximately 16,000 alumni per alumni relations staff member. The report’s Fragile and Emerging institutions, with about 25,000 alumni per staff member between them, are operating at 50 percent more alumni per staff member than the UK mean. This is not a viable formula for long-term success.

You can track your own investment over time (internal benchmarking) as well as your efforts compared with those of peer institutions (external benchmarking).

And with all these metrics, remember this useful definition of measurement, from author Douglas Hubbard: “Measurement is any reduction in uncertainty.”

You do not need to know everything quantitatively to improve your understanding of alumni engagement. You just need to know a little more than you knew before. 

 

I am indebted to my colleague Adrian Salmon for contributions to the insights above.

Alumni Networks for Those Who Will Benefit Most

One cliché about alumni networks is that they are hotbeds of power in government and business. The "old boys'" network has been all too real for a long time. 

But why should alumni networks be strongest among those who need them the least? Members of elite alumni networks (you know the ones I mean), by and large, already have relatively privileged access to jobs, capital and influence. 

Arguably, the people who benefit the most from alumni support are students in ordinary or in under-privileged communities around the globe. Public or government-funded high schools with few financial resources other than the local tax base don't have official alumni networks, budgets or staff. More fundamentally, their students are largely unaware of the existence of an alumni network. 

But that is starting to change.  

[Why should alumni networks be strongest
among those who need them the least?]

Late last year I gladly accepted an invitation to join the Alumni Advisory Group of a UK-based non-profit organization called Future First Global. Their work is directly in line with many of the principles and ideas I try to incorporate into my work with consulting clients around the world.

Future First Global (FFG) has a unique purpose: they work with "governments, schools, teachers and NGOs to support the growth of high school alumni networks globally," to ensure that students gain skills and experience that enable them to get a job. 

The founders of Future First Global realized that alumni networks can benefit "ordinary" people too. Now, at long last, alumni networks are helping the people who probably need them the most: high school students and graduates from ordinary secondary schools, and especially those in underprivileged or lower socio-economic communities. 

In a pilot program, FFG partnered with 15 schools in Kenya, to "build, maintain and mobilise alumni networks that support current students." For alumni professionals, this may not sound so innovative: supporting students is, after all, something that effective alumni communities commonly do.

But Future First Global helps schools without the history, infrastructure and culture of alma mater that many of us take for granted. By connecting successful graduates of rural or under-funded schools with those schools' current students, Future First will be able to show just how important alumni can be. For a school where few students will go on to further education, and where new graduates won't have many jobs to choose from, alumni connections, experience and wisdom could be the crucial difference for many new graduates. 

[Future First Global helps schools without the
culture of alma mater that many of us take for granted]

I'm excited to see awareness of alumni networks take root in ordinary communities. The elite Old Boys would hardly recognize most of these schools' alumni as "successful" by the standards they grew up with.

But that's exactly the point. “Alumni success” isn't absolute. It's relative to the expectations and opportunities in place at the start. This is how alumni achievement is measured. 

With that as the backdrop, even the smallest victories will have an enormous positive impact on these communities. 

§

Do you have questions, comments or ideas for Future First Global? 
Send an email to Abi Nokes, Research & Programme Manager: [email protected].

[Photo: Students performing at an FFG event for girls from TumuTumu Public High School in Kenya]

 

 

9th Anniversary for Alumni Futures

Today is the 9th anniversary of my first post on Alumni Futures.

The blogging is less frequent than ever, but the blog lives on as a resource to alumni community professionals of all kinds. I can tell from the analytics that people find it, search it and read it at a consistent clip, so I'm happy it still holds relevance for so many.

You will find all my articles since March 2014 on LinkedIn as well: Alumni Futures on LinkedIn.

About a year ago, my own career shifted from leadership of a single alumni program to (again) consulting for many programs worldwide, and to speaking and presenting globally as well. It's been a rewarding transition. I hope to assist many more alumni communities as they improve and grow in the coming year.

As ever, thank you to my readers and followers for your interest and support - and Happy Birthday to us!

Note: I'm on Twitter as @alumnifutures, and you can (of course!) "Like" Alumni Futures on Facebook.

 

Prove, or Improve? The First Goal of Alumni Engagement

Over on LinkedIn, Daniel Cohen asked, "Is it possible to prove the value of alumni relations?"

This is a fundamentally important question for advancement professionals.

I'm sharing my comment to Daniel here as a standalone idea for further consideration. It's about the reasons for measuring the value of alumni outreach.

[There's a strange dynamic in almost every conversation
about 'the value of alumni relations']

There's a strange dynamic in almost every conversation about "the value of alumni relations." This week marks my 27th year in the alumni profession, so I've been privy to thousands of these discussions over the decades. 

Almost every one of these conversations begins with the assumption that alumni engagement at institution X certainly has enough value to warrant further investment, and that the alumni team's role is to prove that to their colleagues.

We should recognize that in the eyes of their audiences, not every alumni team delivers real value to its respective organizations and communities. For underperforming teams, perhaps the focus should shift from "proving our value" to "improving our effectiveness." It's risky to start by assuming:

• that alumni love the program,
• that your job is to prove that, and
• that you will inevitably prove your value, if only you sift through the data for long enough.

[Perhaps the focus should shift from "proving our value"
to "improving our effectiveness"]

This matters, because the opportunity cost of tracking, recording, reporting and analyzing data can be relatively high, especially in small shops. You must also improve outreach, enhance your engagement targeting and customize your communications and interaction.

You need a balance, and some teams don't update or improve outdated offerings, but instead use the increased availability of data to select measurements that will influence leadership to provide continued or additional resources. 

Daniel asks what you'll say when, going around the leadership table, it's your turn to "make the case" for investment in alumni engagement. "If you have no data," he points out, "it is very difficult to justify your value."

That's right. Having no data is a big problem. But if you have the data, and they say you're failing, you have a bigger problem. 

Establishing a benchmark for your effectiveness is not only for proving how good you are. It's for improving how good you are too.

How Not to Rank Alumni Networks

The generally reliable Economist magazine published something a little naive early this year.

In a February column titled A ranking of business schools' alumni: Network effects, the magazine listed the business schools with "the most useful alumni."

There may be a reliable methodology for determining such a ranking, to some approximation. But The Economist's method isn't it. Their methodology is simple. To quote them:

Each year, The Economist asks students to rate their school's network. 

So what's wrong with this system?

[There may be a reliable way to find the 'most useful' alumni,
but The Economist's method isn't it]

Simply put, it is in the direct interest of every student surveyed for others to believe that the student attended an influential and successful institution. This confers the maximum perceived value to their degree.

For that reason, every student asked to rate their own school's network should rate it as highly as possible.

In this survey, that would be a 5 out of a possible 5. The students at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business seemed to understand this: they ranked their network 4.98 out of 5.

It's surprising that the ratings of the top 10 schools dip as low as 4.71. Maybe the schools should offer more marketing courses to their MBA candidates? 
 

Thank you to John Arboleda for sharing the Economist article with his network on LinkedIn, where I first saw it.