Christian,
There are certainly many barriers that need to be faced and then addressed, but I hope you are also seeing the incredible benefit of developing and maintaining a relationship with your graduates. Our alumni are of GREAT value to our institutions. It sounds like your job will be to sell that to others at your institution.
Use your contacts with alumni to gather their success stories and then begin to creatively share those stories. Our graduates are walking breathing advertisements and investing a little in them is 'way' cheaper than the money we give our marketing departments.
June Gudeman
1. no budget
Solution: utilize job share or volunteer alumni for part time director position.
2. No website
Solution: add a page to the current website listing the benefits of membership and focuing on a successful graduate.
3. School not interested
Solution: generate buy-in from all decision makers as well as staff and students.
Christina ,
Good job coming up with solutions! Remember that our graduates are walking, breathing advertisements for our schools. If you can gather some alumni success stories and find opportunities to share those, it will provide some of the best marketing around. This may even enable you to get some funding based on the fact that you are, in essence, doing some marketing for your institution.
June Gudeman
I expect objections/resistance from staff, the corporate finance department, and with grads when asking them to dedicate their valuable time to the association.
To overcome these objections, we have to show the staff how an Alumni Association can positively impact Placement, Retention and Enrollment. We need to show the ROI to those in charge of managing expenses. We would also need to make the grad see that coming to an Alumni event is worthwhile and the benefits are great being a member.
Andrew,
It sounds like you've thought through your areas of possible resistance and have a plan in mind. One of the things we've done is to gather alumni success stories and then used some creative ways to share them (ie: alumni success story posters, pamphlets in the lobby for prospective students, alumni success story books, 'thank you' emails to staff/instructors, etc.) There is nothing like the power of a 'story' to encourage staff and recruit potential students. Reminding your administrators and corporate employees that every alumni is a walking, breathing advertisement for your institution, it may help them grasp the benefit of spending a little time and money on them.
Good luck!
June Gudeman
I can not really answer this question yet. We have not even met as an organization to discuss setting up an alumni association. This is something that will be new to me as well as my institution. Would have to get back to you at a later date. Sorry
Michael,
What barriers might you anticipate being an issue?
June Gudeman
3 Objectives:
1) Losing Personal/Contact Information
2) Getting the interest of Alumni
3) Gathering resources from an institution to hold events .
1) I think losing personal contact is a very important objective. To fix it i think to be able to utilize the social medias such as facebook, or just emailing would be a good way to reach back out to the alumni who have forgotten or purposely not even update their information.
2) Gathering the interests of alumni also seems difficult, but i think it would be good to hold events that are broad and wide for all types of alumni, especially those that didnt like the institution .
3) TO be able to hold events is extremely important, i think it would be effective if there was funding from schools instead of having to pay the Alumni memebership fee as everyone would have paid for the institution that they have already attended, therefore it would be a hassle.
Virginia,
It sounds like you've done a thorough job of thinking through your obstacles and ways to address those barriers. Using social networking and/or providing an alumni website will often provide places where your graduates actually 'find you'! The challenge is figuring out how to get their updated contact information from them when they find you. Many institutions require an updated profile in return for something their alumni want like a free Transcript Request.
June Gudeman
1.Get update information. A possible solution is to connect with student through email, face book and social event to keep update students’ contact.
2.Budget setting. Try simple thing that students can get involve and saving the cost.
3.Getting Alumni -hold up events and get Alumni support
Lisa,
It is obvious you have thought through the possible barriers. Clearly there are issues that may slow you down - just don't let them stop you. Now comes the time to brainstorm creative ways around and over those barriers.
Good luck!
June Gudeman
1. Gaining active participation
- Making sure all departments understand how it can benefit their piece of the pie. At every school each department gains from more students at the very least simply having a job to go to. But better than that getting them excited about the people that they have helped moving forward with their lives.
Deciding what to offer as far as benefits to the alumini and getting the expenses approved.
-I think a talking paper with every aspect being covered to be able to show how it could increase profits for the school.
Sponsorship from the local community
-Invite as many businesses as you can that are in anyway related to the field out for an open house familiarize them with the school and how they could possibly gain employees with the training they need. They may have ideas on what they want or need that's already available. Just because someone may pass your school everday does not necessarily mean they know what the training part encompasses
James,
Great ideas! It's obvious you're really thinking through the details and what would draw people to participate. You are absolutely right on when you talk about involving other departments - it's all about what's in it for them. I love the idea of a talking paper covering the benefits. You are also absolutely correct that people drive by our institutions everyday not knowing who we are and how we might provide a beneficial service to them!
Hope you're able to follow through on these good ideas.
June Gudeman
Three objectives we are facing now is:
1) Losing contact with alumni
2) Information for alumno not updated in the system
3) Organizing events for alumni
We really have to work on getting the alumni involved in the school. It will help alot.
I want to try and reach out to all the alumni that has graduated from our school since opening day. I am sure I can find a list of each student somewhere in the software we have here.(Actually just ask my coworker to show me how to print such a report out)
Working along with the campus director and the alumni we can create some events that will make the alumni feel like a valued piece in our school.
Camille,
It is VERY difficult to find older grads and to keep up with their current contact information. Many institutions pay an incredible amount of money to organizations that help you find and clean up records of your alumni. We have found that by putting a dedicated alumni website together, our grads are finding us! They are finding us on the internet and they are updating their profiles. I would consider spending your money on a dedicated website.
Just something to consider,
June Gudeman
I can imagine! As I said before my own school lost contact with me shortley after graduation. My ultimate goal is to get everyone that graduated a contact of some sort to get their information corrected.
The 3 objections I think I will face are,
1. Contacting prior graduates to become part of the Alumni and enticing current students who are about to graduate to become Alumni. I would overcome this by having a facebook page and have past graduates contact me, as well as many phone calls and emails. Also providing reasons on why they would be missing out on great opportunities by not joining.
2. Staffing to be able to continually update our Alumni website, send out newsletters. I would need to get buy in from management on the benefits of a updated website.
3. Coming up with new and enticing ideas of the benefits of being part of the Alumni to keep the members interested in us and not get bored after a couple of months/years.
Coryne,
I can hear you have clearly defined your obstacles and that is the first step in overcoming these barriers. Remember, that once you set up that alumni site, they will find you. Especially if you provide some services they need, they will come to you and you won't need to spend a lot of time trying to find them.
June Gudeman
We are a small school our challenges will be funding, hiring another person to direct the Alumni Association, time to be involved with the networkingcommunity involvement.
Jeane,
Funding is probably the most common barrier. If a significant goal of your connection with graduates is to gather and share their alumni success stories, this will certainly provide incentive for your administration to provide funding. In a sense, having our grads tell their stories is the powerful form of marketing there is!
June Gudeman
