No one could have predicted the fallout from COVID. The experience of lockdown and the explosion of digital experiences that ensued have both had a huge effect on the way alumni relations professionals work and how our audiences react. But there are other ‘disruptors’ we need to contend with and perhaps more to come: the changing demographics of our alumni communities, the expectations of recent graduates for a more personalised relationship with their institutions, the increased reliance on technology and systems to deliver a seamless experience. All these ‘disruptors’ and more will require us to be ever more adaptive and agile and might even influence the sorts of people we hire into our teams. Please join us for this track opening thought leadership session where we’ll polish our crystal ball and tap into key insights from highly experienced colleagues based in the US, Canada, the Middle East, Asia and Europe.

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis leveled the field and alumni engagement went virtual and inclusive. For years, engaging international alumni included some form of virtual engagement: online meetings with volunteers, knowledge exchanges and career development. Alumni relations depended mostly on international chapter leaders to organise and maintain the relationship between alumni abroad and their alma mater. New approaches are evolving due to switching most alumni activities online during the crisis. What are some of the new approaches? Why should higher education continue to invest in virtual engagement? How do international alumni and their alma mater benefit from online community building? This interactive session explores answers to these questions by using results of academic research and successful practices in the field.

How do we create a meaningful value exchange with our new graduates, which supports graduate employability and helps to deliver university priorities?

In this session, you will hear about University of Southampton's Graduate Ambassador Scheme - an exciting volunteering programme specifically for new graduates, which engages them as ambassadors for the University, whilst helping them to be work ready in a challenging employment market. Learn about the ways that our Graduate Ambassadors are giving back to the University through volunteering, and how we, as an alumni office, are supporting them to develop key employability skills and networks to help them stand out against their peers.

Collaboration is essential for improving the quality of research and teaching, generating meaningful societal impact, attracting funding and raising our profile.

We intensified our participation in regional ecosystems, expanded our activities and strengthened our network in a new project Leiden Law Park. This project is now the start of a whole new campus at Leiden University. In this campus we ensure that our education innovates and makes it more attractive (students), makes science accessible and relevant (society and relations), and innovations sustainable and in faster process.

In this presentation, we will focus on a roadmap to a strategic business model and offer you a canvas with which you can get to work with your alumni, scientists, students and society.

Online fatigue? Not here! At TUoS like everyone we quickly repurposed our in person volunteering activities online during the pandemic. Although challenging, this led to great results for student engagement and enabled us to reach new alumni volunteers from across the globe.

As well as repurposing existing activities we’ve developed new initiatives, including a large scale virtual networking programme engaging 100s of students and alumni volunteers. We’re excited to be moving back to face to face events, but see our virtual events as here to stay. What does this new hybrid approach look like? In this interactive session we’ll share our experiences and learnings, open up discussion and explore how we can all innovate to deliver the best of both worlds for students and alumni.

Why is it that the alumni that have the most affinity for your institution are often the hardest to reach? Let’s discuss tactics for engaging new graduates, capturing valid contact data, and leveraging the excitement of graduation into alumni engagement

Events as a percentage of the community are sparsely attended. Class reunions generate 15-20% attendance and are incredibly costly. Participation doesn't need to be limited to boots on the ground. In person is expensive and the Covid-19 pandemic has taught us to become more innovative with the ways in which we engage. This session will be discussing the digital supplement to the in person gathering and the key learnings from the past two and half years.

Since the pandemic, students have had a challenging time. For many, their university experience has largely been online, with little chance to connect on campus, and if this wasn’t enough, they weren’t able to celebrate their achievements with in-person graduations. At King’s, we have developed new strategies to congratulate our recent graduates, show them the benefits of the alumni community and make them become life-long supporters. From giving them an extra special welcome, from both King’s and the wider global alumni community, to inviting them to share their experiences, to launching Forever King’s Edge, a ‘one-stop shop’ showcasing tailored benefits and support, and implementing an innovative consent campaign, we’ve been able to enhance new graduates’ experience of King’s and our ability to stay in touch.

Hear from LSHTM's award winning Alumni Relations team about the innovative Pentacel Project.

Supporting student wellbeing and increasing belonging and community was a priority at LSHTM when COVID-19 hit. Demand for counselling services had grown. COVID-19 exacerbated student anxiety and stress. LSHTM developed a pilot intervention whereby incoming students were placed in five-person informal support groups called 'Pentacells’. Each Pentacell had an alumni facilitator to support and steer discussions.

The project aimed to:

• Increase student wellbeing.
• Improve institutional engagement, satisfaction, and retention.
• Foster a sense of belonging.
• Be adaptable so other institutions can replicate it.

Pentacell significantly improved participants' student experience. Our volunteers' life experience and diversity helped students settle in more quickly, improving student resilience, wellbeing, satisfaction, and institutional affinity.
 

Supporter journeys are the key to unlocking purpose, impact, and focus on your engagement programme.

This session will inspire strategic thinking to build supporter journeys, to advance engagement and fundraising - coupled with practical tips and case studies. We will share global experiences from across the sector, and colleagues at Manchester will reflect (in person or virtually) on their experiences of designing journeys across their alumni population of 533,000, and the impact of this on the institution.

We will invite contributions and share templates to apply the learning in your own context. Senior leaders will gain insights into how their teams can use supporter journeys to drive strategic work across advancement. Join us for this journey of inspiration and learning.

Events have changed forever. Habits have been broken and new ways of delivery have been established. In this new chapter of experimentation, institutions need to test and learn new approaches to enhance their event strategies, to meet evolving expectations and needs of their audiences (and event stakeholders).

Ask the experts in this audience session where we will tackle the burning questions every event professional faces - event strategy & design, virtual vs hybrid vs face-to-face, the use of technology, measuring success, gaining academic support and the role of the events manager. Using slido the audience will be able to vote and control the agenda of the session.

Just as Kris Jenner is the mastermind behind the Kardashian-Jenner success, effective and strategic online community managers are the ones keeping online communities booming. Fair enough, that was maybe a bit much, but what is important to realise is that a team of any size or resource can be successful in launching and maintaining an online community if executed with intention, management strategy and overarching framework. In this session, we will present key pillars to achieving success in launching and maintaining an online community by providing specific examples from clients who have been in your shoes. 

As we enter post-pandemic life, how do we ensure that we retain the digital skills we've learnt to support our Alumni community online? In this session we outline the steps every Alumni department should be applying to their strategy in order to fully optimise their hybrid and virtual events. Using learnings from Cornell University’s Leadership Week, coupled with key takeaways from virtual educational events that Forumm has hosted, you will leave this session with tangible knowledge and a host of ideas you can apply to your future strategy.

Social media is essential for reaching our alumni. In 2022, 58% of the planet is active on social media. Younger alumni have always been prolific users, whilst COVID prompted a generational boom across the platforms. As a result, the number of people following our alumni social media channels has grown enormously since the pandemic. But who are these followers? How do they engage? What do they want?

This talk will help answer these questions. It will cover:

• How to find demographic information using in-platform analytics
• The value of qualitative research for investigating content wants and needs
• Understanding how alumni interact with our content
• Creating personas to represent our followers

These insights will provide a valuable foundation for building stronger alumni relations.
 

“You can’t do that, because we’re doing it” or “We’ve already contacted that alumnus about a different project”.

How often as engagement professionals have, we felt in competition with different services and Advancement teams from within the same institution? And how does this impact on the experience of our graduate community?

At Newcastle University Business School we have devised a model which looks to add value and compliment existing activity, by working in conjunction with and not against central advancement services. This ultimately enhances the graduate and student experience and allows both teams try much more ambitious projects. In this session, we will touch on the why and how we are working in collaboration and some of the approaches we have tested.

Every event needs flawless execution but also it needs clear objectives and targets in order to be effective. How so set these and how to collect feedback and act upon it with the right follow-up?

How do you put alumni services on the radar of current students and why should you?

This session will explore the value of developing an on-campus calendar of activity to engage and build relationships with future alumni stakeholders while still students.

Taking our international academic and sports scholars as a case study, find out how to identify a key group of high-achieving students who are particularly warm towards the university and focus on offering them exclusive content, not only to enhance their student experience but also to make them more likely to engage with your alumni team post-graduation.

Hear the story of how we made good on our international student recruitment promises and transitioned student scholars to enthused and engaged alumni, maximising their volunteering contributions.

Why is it that the alumni that have the most affinity for your institution are often the hardest to reach? Let’s discuss tactics for engaging new graduates, capturing valid contact data, and leveraging the excitement of graduation into alumni engagement

The pandemic sent alumni professionals hurtling into a world of digital engagement - for KAUST, in Saudi Arabia, this world was one we wanted to be part of, so we decided to use the 'opportunity' of lockdown to increase targeted engagement with the global alumni community. From checking-in to see how alumni were, to a digital campaign with the message ‘share the view from your window’ and receiving the University’s first philanthropic gift from the Chinese alumni chapter, the first nine months of pandemic resulted in 17% increased engagement.

In this session, we’ll speak about KAUST’s experiences of engaging alumni in Saudi Arabia and internationally pre, during-and post-pandemic; our successes and learnings; as well as considering what’s next for connecting with the COVID-community and beyond.

Covid, lockdown and the war in Ukraine have tested alumni and volunteer communities like never before. Now, join me and explore ways that we can capitalize on the new reality to continue inspiring unique and meaningful alumni engagement. We’ll examine how over the past two years Central European University's Alumni Relations office met these challenges by creating meaningful programming and volunteer opportunities, allowing it to engage its alumni and student communities in new and powerful ways. Through this we’ll see how by using its strategic position, ARO not only created new engagement opportunities for alumni, but increased fundraising and affinity building as well. We’ll close with key takeaways plus potential ramifications for the future of alumni engagement.

Faced with an ongoing global pandemic and a zoom-fatigued audience, the CERN Alumni Relations team was tasked with designing an engaging, three-day, virtual reunion event. Our mission was to showcase the impact of CERN alumni on society, build networks between alumni and stakeholders, whilst renewing their deep connection with the Organization, adding a sprinkling of gamification. The foundation for 'CERN Alumni Second Collisions' was a bespoke, virtual CERN environment, which enabled guest to roam freely around iconic CERN buildings and grounds, to visit our underground experimental facilities, network with other participants and be inspired by our alumni speakers. Join me to find out if it was 'Mission accomplished' or 'Game over'.

When its Alumni Office was first established, the DA had a very active network of alumni aged 50 years and older. In order to attract more students and young alumni to become lifelong and committed volunteers, the DA developed several strategies of early engagement. In his session, Andreas will showcase the da.link career services, jointly organised by the DA and its alumni association, which have become the most successful tool to put students in touch with alumni and to convince them to join the DA's alumni network early on. Through an interactive discussion, Andreas will discuss his example with participating delegates and invite colleagues to introduce their own strategies of combining alumni and career services for the benefit of students, alumni and their institutions.

In spite of being a breakthrough woman leader in her previous career, after a year at Durham University, Penny realised to her horror that almost all the panellists at the alumni events that she had organised had been white men. This presentation outlines how she used awareness and data to be more inclusive, build a network of international chapters and events more reflective of the Business School's staff and students and work with colleagues to build a balanced international advisory board and more representative honorary appointments. She'll also outline her ambitions for neurodiversity in education. If you're feeling overwhelmed by EDI initiatives this session will help you to understand how integrating equality diversity and inclusion in your work can improve its quality and impact.