What does making a pisco sour, reviewing scholarships scholarship, and writing postcards have in common? They’re all ways that alumni and friends were successfully engaged virtually that can be easily transitioned into a plan to engage constituent both virtually and in-person. Attend this session to learn how to create a flexible engagement plan that will cater to both in-person and virtual attendees. Participants will also be invited share their successes and failures via virtual engagement.

 

The launch of the alumni affinity network program at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management came at a difficult time and yet is building the most important relationships we can have with our diverse alumni populations. During a time of virtual work and racial discourse centered in Minneapolis, the Carlson School’s alumni decided to come together to build the community they needed. The program includes unique networks for women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ individuals. Learn more about the importance of a volunteer-led program, successes and challenges, and next steps.

At Ohio State, engagement professionals and Business Intelligence/Data Science partners have developed a new tool to analyze engagement data that we believe will benefit the engagement industry. Successes from this work include: an inclusive, stakeholder-centered definition of “meaningful engagement” that reflects our diverse and digital world; improved data measurement consistency among engagement professionals across the organization; a key performance indicator process that can be applied to other projects (to ask “Why?” and not “What?”); and a dashboard that provides real-time engagement data to analyze impact. Attendees will learn how to apply a Key Performance Indicator method to determine measures of success at their home institutions, plus gain ideas into tools they might want to build or refine at home to help provide real-time data and insights related to measuring the impact of engagement efforts.

Your giving day just broke another record. Time to do it again. So, what’s next? How do you amplify engagement and excitement for something we’re all doing every year? Join us for this panel discussion of how to “level up” your giving day with things like social engagement, new giving methods, multi-tiered challenges, competitions, and elite level volunteers to keep excitement high. We will also share key pivots and changes institutions made during the pandemic- and what worked. And, we'll take a look at data on over $500M in results across higher education to see key benchmarks, metrics, and new tactics are as you take your giving day to the next level.

Movies have a way of bringing people together and broadening our perspectives which is why they can be an incredible tool to engage alumni, students, faculty and staff in important conversations. This presentation will outline how a movie club centered around DE&I and social justice topics can add value to any alumni strategy looking to reach disengaged alumni. By the end of the presentation, participants will learn how to implement an online social justice movie club with zero cost and only a few hours of staff time each month.

Alumni Volunteer is a cross-campus initiative connecting alumni with volunteer opportunities, hosted by University of Michigan affiliated groups, that honor alumni’s interdisciplinary expertise and general passion for volunteerism. Beginning with a vision to create a marketplace allowing campus partners and clubs to post opportunities, our business model has expanded to include community organizations that sometimes are run by U-M alumni. Since the launch of Alumni Volunteer in January 2021, we have received positive feedback and a growing number of alumni eager to support opportunities benefiting our University and the community.

Traditional mentoring programs come with their fair share of challenges. Despite good intentions and best efforts, the matching process can be time-consuming and some pairs simply don’t connect. When COVID-19 forced The Ohio State University Alumni Association to reimagine the Young Alumni Academy experience, we embraced the idea of micro-mentorship, or short-term mentoring relationships. Using this model, alumni now make new connections each month based on industry, identity, and shared life experiences. Join us to learn about the research behind micro-mentorship and how to make it work for your organization!

Donors and alumni see our institutions as one entity, not individual departments, which means our communication strategies need to be unified. Learn how St. Norbert College audited their decentralized communication efforts, aligned departmental objectives, and created department marketing plans that provide needed & impactful communication. Attendees will then partake in a workshop on how to develop their own influencer map and audience personas, a key tool to supplement their own marketing plans.

Recent alumni engagement is critical to keep this key group engaged with their alma mater. In this session, we'll share results of our national survey on how recent alumni expect to engage and discuss the link between involvement in student organizations and engagement after graduation. We'll then share examples of how Knox College engages students while on campus and connects with recent graduates to foster and grow their engagement and support. Participants will leave this session with data to inform their strategies and next steps to grow recent alumni engagement.

Have you inherited an alumni program that needs resuscitation? Do you need to leverage volunteers to stop your program from circling the drain? Has your alumni board faded away, or was there no alumni board when you arrived? Let’s explore techniques to avoid leaving your alumni program and board on life support! Highlands University alumni board presidents and staff will share their work-in-progress best practices for building a thriving, engaging alumni outreach and a working alumni board, inspiring greater engagement and giving at all levels to the university.