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 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.
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
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.
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
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
1.) Funding for the department. The best I can do is reqest for it, and try to see upper management support and buy in.
2.) Staffing. Everyone has a job at the school already and most people do not want to work past their job descriptions unless getting paid for it, which ties back into #1-funding - to over come we'd have to pay for the work being done and that ties back into buy in from the upper management.
3.) Graduate support - getting alum to join. They have to see the benefit. They have to see the WIFM- What's in it for me. Showing opportunites of joining would be 1 way to over come.
Francis,
It sounds like you have a clear idea of your barriers - and they are all common ones. Your next step is looking at a way around or over your barriers and, perhaps, coming up with some creative/out-of-the-box solutions for your particular institution.
June Gudeman
3 barriers I see are
1 Locating our long list of alumni
2 Setting a budget
3 Getting organized and implementing the association
so it is effective and proves its worth to the school.
Anna,
It sounds like you've thought through some of your issues in setting up an Alumni Association.
Let me comment on a couple of the ones you mentioned. Most institutions use an Alumni Website as their main method of building and maintaining a relationship with their graduates. If you think in those terms, then having students in other states is not an issue and, frankly, in today's world our students find us if we have a website for them to go to. We don't even need to spend a lot of time and money finding them, they actually come to us via the internet. If we provide a place on that alumni website for them to update their information, it allows us to keep in touch with them.
June
June
Ginny,
Certainly, in order to provide a FREE service, your leadership needs to see the value of maintaining a relationship with your graduates.
I, personally, believe that our grads are living, breathing, walking advertisements for our institution. We pay LOTS of money for marketing. Why not tap into our own student's stories for this? If you are able to gather Alumni Success Stories via your alumni website/association and can put them on your websites, share them with employers, make success story posters to display at your campuses or even their workplaces, put together an Alumni Success Story Book, or even share them with your staff/instructors as a source of encouragement, there is power in a story!
To see an example - take a peak at several of the alumni success stories on the bottom of the home page of this website - www.alumni.pmi.edu
If you can get your financial decision-makers to see the value in this, they'll provide the budget.
June
Three objections we will be facing when initiating an Alumni Associations are:
1. Participation-It can be very difficult getting students to return as many come from out of state and some move out.
2. Student records- Keeping student files updated.
3. Manpower- entirely being dedicated to this association itself.
Definitely the initial cost of setting up a website...getting buy ins.....maintenance of the website and newsletter....having the time....
We already have a great referral system in place among past, present students as well as a great referral between employers and job placement but keeping it lively will be a challenge after overcoming the above issues....it will take someone's time and time means pay....even advisory boards can be a challenge if it is not during there working hours. I would like more sugestions talking to someone that has actually done this with no pay cause I see that as a big issue. If this is to be a FREE Alumni Association where does the funding come from...sure you can say future students but again we already have this in play without the association in place.
Buddy
Randy,
I'm glad to hear your eyes have been opened to all that's involved in setting up an alumni program. 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.
Good Luck!
June
1. Needing a director. We just hired a retention specialist and I believe it would fit to begin with him.
2. Budget is always an issue because we have buy in but no one know what all is truly involved like your course has really opened my eyes.
3. Getting the school department to buy in. This will take time but we can do it.
June, that has worked really well for us so far. We created a Facebook page for our school and have had a lot of graduates come out of the woodwork to "like" our page. It has been great to find out everyone's updated contact information.
Shawnie,
We faced some of these same obstacles when we started our program. One suggestion I would give you is to have your grads complete an alumni profile on your website, giving you all their updated personal information, which you can then enter into your database. You certainly can get the word out via email and social media, but you will be amazed at how "they find you"! If you provide a link off your school's main site, many will find you that way. I would not let the fact that you have out of date records keep you from getting started. You can update as you go - as they come to you and provide their updated info.
June
Justin,
It sounds like you have a pretty clear idea of your obstacles in setting up an alumni association for your institution. I believe you also see the benefits. As you mentioned, your challenge is to show the Board of Directors the benefits and help them understand the issue of cost.
But, the bottom line is a RELATIONSHIP - we want to continue our relationship with our graduates and we want our alumni to continue a relationship with us. It can be a mutually beneficial relationship. That's the issue your board is going to have to agree on. The cost/benefit can be somewhat blurred, but the relationship can prove to be very powerful for your institution.
Good luck!
June
The first challenge our school would face is that we have not kept up to date with our students' new addresses. A possible solution would be to connect with students through email and social media so that we do not have to constantly update students' addresses.
The second challenge would be the initial start-up cost for updating our records. We still have many files from students a decade ago that are not in the computer and trying to update those records, before we kept track of email, is going to be a problem. We will unfortunately have to take the time to manually go through all the records and put them into the computer.
The third challenge would be how few people we have working at our school and hiring someone to run the alumni department is simply not feasible for our school. We will have to figure out what duties each person will do or just have one person run the entire department.
1. We are a small school so participation might be a challenge. In addition, our students come from all over the United States so getting them to come back to school might be very difficult. A solution would be for us to communicate using the internet/forums/Skype instead of face-to-face meetings.
2. The start-up costs for a website would be expensive and might be a challenge to convince the Board of Directors. I think an analysis of costs versus possible referrals might be very helpful for them to see.
3. Manpower as we are a small school so it would be another thing that administration would have to do. But, I think that it would be very beneficial for our school and students to start one- something everyone can agree on.
