Alumni Giving

Answer

• Summary of the Marketing Question

  Alumni participation is an essential part in the success of a high performing university. The Alumni of record are the former full- or part-time students that received an undergraduate degree and for whom the university has a current address. Participation of alumni in the university is a voluntary affair, and the rates of participation are calculated by dividing the number of appropriate donors during a given academic year by the number of appropriate alumni on record for that given year. The main question is about how the rates of alumni participation can be improved. This is what the model prescribed below attempts to answer.

  The case study of the University alumni participation presented led to a number of findings that prompted a raft of recommendations to improve the participation rates at a low participation rate university. One of the recommendations for improving participation rates would be to establish stronger connections to alumni who are almost getting to retirement age and are likely to seek stronger ties amongst themselves and with their university following the free time they now enjoy. Secondly, universities must consider what they are offering young donors in order to reward their financial fidelity. Thirdly, the alumni who no longer maintain frequent correspondence with the university and who no longer participate in alumni activities and fundraising should be purged from the alumni registers to increase the rates of participation.

  The university has to do a proper partner evaluation in order to build the collaborative environment. There has to be good project management of the projects decided, with progress monitoring and communication. Collaboration is a delicate process, and it has to foster feelings of trust, commitment, respect, friendliness and continuity. The proprietary benefits and achievement of tangible outcomes have to be paid special attention to with regard to maintaining commitment of the industry partners. A proper balance between academic objectives and industrial priorities has to be sought and established.

   

  Data Analysis

  Alumni participation is one of the most important indicators of a high performing university. The determination of this engagement is pegged on various indicators.

  Indicator	Core	Shared Responsibility between Alumni relations Office and:
  Retention rate	Ratio between alumni members of the alumni association and total number of graduates	Faculty and administration
  Pro-bono services	Consulting services provided by alumni and their companies	Management for providing opportunities
  Voluntarism	Volunteer participation as event organizers, mentors, coaches, interviewers	Management, faculty and administration
  University brand promotion	Participation in ceremonies, giving interviews to media	Marketing Department
  Joint business-university research projects	Number of projects and overall project budgets	Respective research bodies
  Internships/Job promotions	Internship and job positions announced through alumni network	Career Office
  Alumni giving	Emphasis on new donations, recurring donations and endowment funds for greater affordability and diversity.	Vice-president on development

   

  Looking at the indicators above, it is interesting to see that most of these indicators are quite applicable to low participation universities that cannot simply be assessed on the basis of alumni giving alone. An advancement official would be interested in knowing the other areas other than alumni giving that can be used to measure the participation of alumni. Indicators like pro-bono services, voluntarism, university brand promotion and internship and job promotion have to be properly assessed and the liaison offices work together with the alumni to improve participation rates.

  It is interesting to note that the trends of connection to the university by the alumni differ depending on the age groups of the alumni under consideration. This reality is represented in the diagram below

  Age	Strongly connected (%)	Want to connect better (%)	Ambivalent (%)	Unconnected (%)
  Less than 35	47	16	26	11
  35-49	31	12	32	25
  50-64	27	9	36	28
  Over 65	35	5	31	29

  Fig: Strength of connection to Alma Mater diminishes over time

  Source: The Engagement Strategies Group, The Mood of Alumni, 2010

  Going by the current trends, it is a fact that with each passing year, there are graduates who qualify to be part of the alumni. This younger population, as the data shows, has declining rates of participation in alumni activities. As a university advancement official, this information would be essential for the purpose that it would make the officials determine what they can offer young donors to reward their financial fidelity. This data would enable an advancement official to establish the quality and frequency of alumni participation so that the reluctant demographics can be brought on board. Even while Alumni giving is a simple and measurable indicator for comparing alumni office results, it only serves as a snapshot of the present moment. It does not respond to the question of alumni relations can be diversified and made better.

  In terms of alumni giving, the data provided below offers some glimpses of the differences in variables in Alumni Giving in various Universities:

  ID	School	SFR	LT20	GT50	GRAD	FRR	GIVE
  1	Arizona State University	24	42%	16%	59%	81%	8%
  2	Arkansas State University	19	49%	4%	37%	69%	11%
  3	Auburn University	18	24%	17%	66%	87%	31%
  .	.	.	.	.	.	.	.
  121	West Virginia University	23	32%	19%	59%	80%	12%
  122	Western Kentucky University	19	43%	6%	49%	73%	13%
  123	Western Michigan University	19	46%	11%	52%	72%	10%

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  The model above has made use of concepts from scatterplots like the one below from the SPSS data

   

  Conclusion

  The participation of Alumni in the affairs of the university has to be measured against variables like alumni giving, offering of pro-bono services, internships, university brand promotion and voluntarism. Alumni’s giving is shaped by the age group of the various alumni and the feeling of attachment and connection they feel for the university. It is high among those who have only recently graduated and reduces over time. The groups among whom participation is lowest have to be reached for the participation level to go up.

  Recommendations

  This model lends credence to a raft of recommendations that can be followed to improve alumni giving and in the process increase the level of alumni participation. The following recommendations would be appropriate:

  • Establish stronger connections to alumni who are almost getting to retirement age and are likely to seek stronger ties amongst themselves and with their university following the free time they now enjoy.
  • Universities must consider what they are offering young donors in order to reward their financial fidelity.
  • The alumni who no longer maintain frequent correspondence with the university and who no longer participate in alumni activities and fundraising should be purged from the alumni registers to increase the rates of participation.
  • Partner evaluations that assess collaborations are essential to the process of improving participation of alumni
  • There has to be a balance between academic objectives and industrial priorities.