Kent State University transformed its phone center into a multichannel Alumni Engagement Center that’s revitalized the way it interacts with constituents. The new center has enriched relationships with alumni, friends, and partners—transitioning from transactional to transformational partnerships. Here’s how it works.  

Combining data and storytelling in meaningful ways can be a challenge in advancement. Let the following key concepts of data-driven storytelling be your guide—and see how other teams have applied them to reach their donors, alumni, and other key stakeholders.  

CASE Insights has launched a major initiative in Latin America to foster greater professionalization and standardization of advancement practices in higher education. Learn about the project and hear from Mónica Manzanilla, Vice President for Institutional Advancement at CETYS University in Mexico, a trailblazer in fundraising in the region and a participant in the benchmarking project.

Four technical universities in the Netherlands pooled their international alumni efforts and ended up with a world-class network. Now in its 10th year, 4TU encompasses more than 30 alumni communities in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Nordics, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.S. as it continues to extend its global reach.

Advancement professionals are diligently focusing on DEIB initiatives within their teams.  And more and more of them are beginning to look outward as well. Two advancement professionals with wide experience working in the DEIB space offer practical strategies to more effectively identify, involve, solicit, and steward alumni of color.

The most recent classes of graduates, shaped by pandemic interruptions to their campus experiences, present a unique set of challenges when it comes to reconnecting with their alma maters. Find out how alumni relations teams are rising to the challenge, with innovative programs and strategies for engaging their newest young alumni.

Institutions’ Circle of Excellence Award-winning projects used nostalgia to engage alumni in fun, new ways. Explore how advancement teams broadly balance looking back and looking forward, why nostalgia works well to engage alumni, and what takeaways advancement teams can apply to their own work.

The seeds of alumni support are sown even prior to enrolling in college.  Formative pre-college experiences play an important role in shaping pro-social habits, mindsets, and dispositions that predict later-life support for one’s alma mater.

Campus traditions bring communities together. They build alumni identity and connections. But the pandemic has disrupted the ways campus communities gather, cancelling or changing traditions that were rooted in years of history. Where do traditions stand, in times of change? Here, advancement professionals and higher education researchers share why traditions endure, how they shift, and what role advancement today plays in celebrating and shaping them

What is race equity as it applies to education institutions? How are advancement teams approaching this work, which experts say involves a wholesale transformation of organizational cultures? How are institutions and individuals moving forward in the name of equity?