NEWS & UPDATES

January 23, 2012 In News By Wes Hartline

There is no off-season: Alumni engagement

In order to develop a suc­cess­ful ath­let­ics pro­gram across all sports, a uni­ver­sity must engage its alumni base. This is eas­ier said than done.

The ben­e­fits that come from engag­ing alumni are greater than sim­ply grow­ing the finan­cial resources of your pro­grams. When you engage the alumni in a mean­ing­ful way, the imme­di­ate impact is a resur­gence of pride in ones alma mater. If the only com­mu­ni­ca­tion your alumni receive are solic­i­ta­tions for funds to build “the facil­ity that will change XYZ Uni­ver­sity” and “bring us to a new level of suc­cess,” then you may never be able to sup­plant the cham­pi­ons of old, or worse, win the cov­eted rivalry game.

True engage­ment of alumni is an involved process. It does not cease at the end of Football/Basketball sea­son. in fact, much like recruit­ing of student-athletes, there is no off-season to alumni engagement.

Ini­tially, you must deter­mine their areas of inter­est and involve them. Which por­tions of the uni­ver­sity do they wish to remain involved? Do they attend events/games/speeches/etc.? Why or why not? Do they feel a con­nec­tion to the uni­ver­sity although they have been away from the cam­pus for some time?

These ques­tions can­not be pur­chased from exter­nal sources. They must be cre­ated within your uni­ver­sity. Once you begin to under­stand the desires of your alumni, you can begin build­ing a plan that not only excites the alumni base, but (more impor­tantly) effec­tively engages them for long-term suc­cess. Think of your high value donors: you prob­a­bly know them by name. What about the next gen­er­a­tion of donors? What about the one after that? If you wait until these mil­len­ni­als have devel­oped their wealth, your requests for sup­port may fall fur­ther down their list of year-end con­tri­bu­tions than you could have ever imag­ined. This gen­er­a­tion specif­i­cally has a heart for giv­ing, but they respond to those that ask for their sup­port early and often. Those groups that have mas­tered this have set them­selves up for great devel­op­ment over the next forty years.

Engag­ing alumni is crit­i­cal, not only for the ath­let­ics pro­grams, but for the uni­ver­sity as an insti­tu­tion. Devel­op­ment of the donor base should inevitably lead to a university-wide effort to engage alumni. If an alum­nus cares lit­tle about ath­let­ics, they may be deeply con­victed about fund­ing a new cam­pus library or edu­ca­tion facil­ity. Maybe they want to sup­port an alumni foun­da­tion by start­ing a fund for alumni devel­op­ment. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less, and every­thing done to improve the uni­ver­sity only serves to ben­e­fit the recruit­ing at some level down the line.

You already know that alumni are an impor­tant part of the devel­op­ment of ath­let­ics pro­grams. But are you pay­ing them enough atten­tion? If you are, you can recall con­ver­sa­tions that will touch on the cor­ner­stone of this dis­cus­sion; what keeps them engaged? Are they excited for the direc­tion the uni­ver­sity is headed? If you don’t know the answer to that ques­tion, it’s time to pick up the phone and make some calls.

Authored By Wes Hartline

Director of Marketing and Video Production