For over a decade, the MIT Alumni Association used a three-category model to track alumni engagement. Visually depicted with a Venn Diagram, the circles of Philanthropic, Face-to-face, and Virtual were used to count several engagement activities performed by our alumni. We measured overlaps in the engagement categories, labeled the intersection of the three circles as the Mindshare, and reported on the overall engagement rate. Over the years, what was included in our Venn Diagram evolved as we gained the ability to store additional engagement activities in our database.
Eventually, a number of factors including, but not limited to, the conclusion of our most recent capital campaign, CASE’s launch of the Alumni Engagement Metrics, growing confusion around what activities were counted and where, and a desire to empower more staff to see their work in the engagement metrics, demonstrated a need to introduce a new way to track alumni engagement. After several proposed models, Alumni Association leadership adopted a system that closely mirrors CASE’s four-category AEM.
This session will take attendees through the process of launching an engagement measurement model. All steps will be covered, from getting buy-in from leadership to updating visuals and reports to training staff on the changes. If you are thinking about installing an engagement metrics model at your institution, or are looking to update an already existing model, come to this session to learn about our process, how we’re using the model, and what our plans are for its future.

Optimizing Alumni Engagement Through Data-Driven Clustering:
Since 2018, the Universidad del Norte's Alumni Office has measured alumni engagement through the Connection Indicator, tracking thirteen variables across categories like involvement, volunteering, and donations, based on CASE insights. In 2023, data analytics and multivariate analysis were introduced, identifying behavior patterns and helping better understand the 40% of alumni (60% in 2024) who engage most with institutional services. This has led to the creation of six alumni clusters, enabling more targeted communication and relationship strategies across key areas like career placement, tracking, and engagement management.

Join us for an engaging session, "From Silos to Synergy: The Reporting Hub Revolution!" as we explore the transformative power of a multidisciplinary and cross-collaborative reporting hub tailored for fundraising and alumni relations. Discover how integrating internal departments with external stakeholders can enhance data sharing, drive strategic decision-making, and elevate fundraising outcomes.

In this session, we'll cover:

Innovative strategies for breaking down silos and fostering collaboration across teams.
Real-world case studies showcasing successful reporting hubs in action.
Best practices for leveraging data to strengthen alumni engagement and drive fundraising initiatives.
Tools and technologies that facilitate seamless communication and reporting.
Don’t miss this opportunity to revolutionize your reporting processes and unlock the full potential of your fundraising efforts! Together, we can create a vibrant community that thrives on collaboration and shared success.

Data is an institution’s most valuable asset, but only if it’s accessible and actionable. In this session, we’ll explore how to implement data hygiene best practices during a CRM transition, ensuring that only relevant, usable information makes the cut. Learn how to leave behind data that no longer serves your institution, transform valuable data to fit the future-state data model, and maintain long-term data integrity to support smart, data-driven decisions.

Are you ready to transform how Carnegie Mellon University handles data?

Join us for an insightful session conducted by CMU Analytics team, where we’ll share best practices and experiences in integrating Snowflake, Salesforce, and Tableau. These powerful tools work together to create a data system that enhances everything from data management to decision-making.

We’ll dive into examples relevant to CMU, showing how these platforms can streamline workflows, improve data accuracy, and provide deep insights through interactive dashboards. Imagine having all your data sources consolidated, processed efficiently, and visualized in a way that makes complex information easy to understand and act upon.

This session is perfect for seasoned professionals, leaders, data analysts, and anyone working with data in advancement teams at universities, looking to stay ahead in today’s data-driven world.

This session will examine the processes, policies, and opportunities for building and maintaining alumni employment dashboards in your advancement shop. The speakers will use examples from projects at multiple institutions to discuss ways to scale the project, define your data goals, prioritize output based on institutional priorities, and build sustainable workflows for advancement data teams of various sizes and technical expertise.

It’s been almost nine months since the world’s first fully autonomous fundraiser interacted with its first assigned donor. During that time, 11 higher educational institutions joined together as a cohort to engage donors with an AI-powered Virtual Engagement Officer (and a second cohort is now live), but more importantly research, develop, and accelerate the deployment of autonomous fundraising for our entire industry.

In this session, Jennifer Shimp-Bowerman of Bucknell University and Natalie Spring of VCU will present the results they’ve seen from autonomous fundraising – donors engaged, dollars raised, and pipeline built, in addition to their experience being the first organizations in the world to deploy a Virtual Engagement Officer to a portfolio of their donors.

We’ll present what we learned, what we got right, where course corrections were needed, and how we navigated AI in a field defined by relationships. We’ll share all of our findings including portfolios for autonomous fundraisers, sourcing engagement content independently, accuracy, data collection, and more.

Finally, we’ll conclude by looking at where we are going, how we can continue to further personalize donor journeys led by donor engagement data, how to push the outer limits of technology, and more.

Pipeline development is a major challenge facing our profession. Donor bases are declining, retention rates are sliding, younger alumni are less inclined to engage with their alma maters, and the principal gifts concentration is only increasing. The University of Nebraska Foundation has developed multiple data-driven, innovative strategies to “double down” on its pipeline development work. Combined, these programs have already resulted in 14,000 prospects contacted, 3,000 personal meetings, 300 qualified major gift prospects, $10 million in new gifts, and 82% retention of leadership annual donors. Explore the strategic intent, data, and processes leveraged to build a new, innovative approach to comprehensive pipeline development.

Do you know if your donor pipeline is healthy?
Are you seeing diminishing numbers of alumni donors but aren't sure why?
In this session, we will review the outcomes of the 2025 RNL National Alumni Survey with alumni survey responses from more than 20 institutions. These insights will help you go beyond the numbers to understand the perspective of more than 20,000 alumni and what's important to them in their philanthropic expression. This type of data is critical in contextualizing what we are seeing in the diminishing donor counts many institutions are facing.

Since 2022, Arizona State University’s Alumni Engagement team has collected nearly 15,000 alumni stories, generating a powerful new personal connection to ASU. This initiative has become a pillar of our alumni engagement strategy, with more story collection planned in the future. But with such a great response, we had a "champagne problem" of too much data and too few resources to process it by hand. In this session, we’ll share how our Data Analytics & Insights team leveraged AI to transform this raw qualitative data into actionable insights, leading to new strategies that are transforming how we engage with our alumni.