Parent and Family Affinity Groups

Parents and families offer students critical support during transition times in their college lives. But colleges fail to fully include parents in their student’s experience once students are enrolled in school. Typically, parents and families attend an orientation session and a campus visit during parent and family weekend and receive semi-regular updates via newsletter. These brief interactions and reactive resources fail to provide an ongoing sense of community for parents and often require them to seek out information on available resources to aid their student.

Three channels for communicating with families

Affinity groups combine news, expert conversation, and informal discussion

The University of Alabama developed affinity groups where parents and families build community and learn about campus resources. Using CampusESP, a third-party vendor for parent and family engagement, the University of Alabama provides parents and families with a platform to interact with posts, ask questions of staff, and receive personalized newsletters—keeping parents informed about deadlines and campus news.

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Connecting both families and their students

As membership grows, Black UA participants build a sense of belonging

Affinity groups for parents and families can be a relatively light lift for institutions as they don’t require significant resources. But they have a large impact on how parents and families relate to the school and their ability to support their students.

The CampusESP page for the Black UA Affinity Group has roughly 750 members, and open and clickthrough rates for posts on the page are 68% and 10%, respectively. Participation in the Black UA affinity group’s Zoom meetings has increased from 15 participants to over 60 participants at the most recent Zoom meeting.

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