I plan to measure the Alumni's Results by monitoring retention, placement rates and pulicity. The return of investment to the school will be explained by hopefuly increased job leads, placements, contact with HR from alumni, and contact of alumni wanting to join, and expressing this positive feedback to school leadership.
Camille,
Agreed! They are probably already happy to help, but life is so 'full' and providing incentives to help them decide to give of their time are probably necessary.
June Gudeman
Thanks! If we reward them well, they will not have a problem helping out their school.
Continuous work at getting the alumni involved in our school can help in the long run in admissions.
Camille,
I like the direction you're going. We cannot put a price tag on the marketing that occurs when our graduates 'talk' about a positive experience with our institution. Their informal conversations lead to many new students for us. I like the idea of using gift certificates to your bookstore. As always, the most difficult piece is gathering the 'numbers' to what we already know if happening.
June Gudeman
I would want to evaluate how much alumni can help with the placement of new students into the program. Advertisement streams in from word-of-mouth or internet marketing and with the help of alumni I think it would be a great investment.
We can give cash or a gift certificates to our bookstore to see if that can create some promising leads for the school.
Also, I want to have events where the alumni can come to the school and we can network with them and local businesses.
In the end, I think the ROI will be so worth it.
Virginia,
It sounds like you have thought through the areas of value to your graduates. Now the work will begin in deciding how to implement these things and work out the practical details.
Good ideas.
June Gudeman
I would address the opportunity for making employment is the part of our school transcript request and also set up the event where I can gather their employment information
I will improve graduate by offering opportunities for jobs. I offer a specific services, guest speakers and placement details that will be offered to alumni.
Virginia,
It's true that the main reason graduates come back is for placement assistance. How would you address that with your graduates? What career services would you offer that would be specific to alumni?
June Gudeman
I feel the most important for success will be involvement of the alumni for placement . Return on investment is providing graduates with opportunities in the area of job placement and locating where graduates are.
Michael,
It sounds like you have a pretty clear picture of what ROI looks like for your association. Our graduates are our best form of advertising via word of mouth. The challenge is documenting that 'word of mouth' influence.
Good luck!
June Gudeman
One of the areas that I believe is key would be the enrollment of our Alunmi into upcoming courses. The more familiar faces that we would see would show that our Association is working. Another way to measure success/failure would be the exit surveys. On those surveys would be a simple question of where the student heard about the class. For every person that states that a former student referred them is a success. Explaining ROI is not an issue, our mind set is that you have to spend some money to make money, so putting aside funds for an association with the chance of having a higher ROI is a gamble that we are willing to take.
Andrew,
It is difficult to measure your ROI with your alumni beyond participation, with the possible exception of job placement numbers. So, you are right on with that. Remember that your alumni group is all about relationships - you with them and them with you. They have much to give back to their institution. See if you can identify or quantify the benefit of those relationships.
June Gudeman
The primary reason of starting an Alumni association for our school would be to expand placement assistance to grads by delivering more job opportunities. The clearest way measure the ROI is to track specific job orders delivered directly from alumni.
Christian,
Quantifying your ROI (Return on Investment) is always a challenge. The other challenge is to think like a graduate and provide opportunities that will draw them back to your institution. Whether it's career services support or transcript request or the social events, we need to meet needs they have to bring them back.
June Gudeman
Christian,
Quantifying your ROI (Return on Investment) is always a challenge. The other challenge is to think like a graduate and provide opportunities that will draw them back to your institution. Whether it's career services support or transcript request or the social events, we need to meet needs they have to bring them back.
June
I would think the best measurement would be continued student success. To gain buy in from the Alumni body, they must see the benifit of taking the time to join, submit, and update info.
Hi Jeff,
I encourage you to, not only keep an accurate count of the number of graduates who attend your event, but to think through a plan of how you will be able to measure/track their:
- current employement info,
- connections with these employers,
- future job placements that occur as a direct result of your event.
This will give you a concrete ROI.
June
I feel that the best metrics for success will be involvement of the alumni. Signing up as member on the website and joining an e-mail list is not active enough. Our school already has an Alumni Meet and Greet event coming up. Events like this are a good way to gauge how many graduates are going to be actively engaged.
Return on investment will hopefully be achieved in the area of job placements; not only in discovering where graduates are and have been, but by providing graduates with opportunities such as the one listed above. If we can get employers and graduates into a room, who knows how successful it may be for them?
Hi Casey -
I don't think anyone would argue with the fact that continuing a relationship with your alumni will have a positive impact on your student placement. The difficulty is having a way to track that Return On Your Investment. Try to think through how you might actually be able to keep track of the impact graduates have on placement.
June
Our biggest concern for ROI is placement numbers. I am the placement department and being the only person who works in this department is hard. I'm also creating the Alumni Association, and can only hope that it helps our placement stats.
