4 steps to strengthen your community college alumni strategy

Community colleges thrive at helping individuals—and entire communities—succeed. Yet despite this impact, many two-year institutions have not fully tapped into one of their strongest sources of long-term support: their alumni. 

Research shows that 72% of community college graduates want to stay connected, but alumni account for only 5.3% of fundraising dollars. At the same time, community college advancement leaders face declining donor participation, public skepticism toward higher education, urgent appeals from nonprofits competing for support, and tightening budgets. Together, these trends make one point clear: alumni engagement can no longer be treated as optional. 

This blog offers practical, research-backed guidance to help community college advancement leaders build a modern and sustainable alumni engagement strategy.

3 Reasons Alumni Engagement Matters More Today

Many advancement teams understand the value of alumni relationships, but campus leaders may not always view engagement as a strategic priority. Several trends highlight why this work is increasingly essential.

A Practical Framework for Strengthening Alumni Engagement

Here are four steps advancement leaders can take to build a more effective and scalable engagement strategy.

1. Get clear on your goals and make sure your team is on the same page. 

When teams aren’t aligned, alumni engagement can easily become scattered or reactive. A good first step is agreeing on what you’re trying to accomplish and how you will define stronger alumni engagement. This gives your team a roadmap for where to focus limited time and resources. Consider:

• What you want to achieve: This might include more alumni participating, stronger annual giving, better contact information, deeper employer connections, or a more active mentoring network.
• How you’ll measure progress: This could be digital engagement, growth in contactable alumni, event turnout, recurring gifts, or improvements in your data quality.
• Who you want to reach first: Are you targeting recent grads, local alumni, young alumni, industry partners, or adult learners coming back to upskill?

2. Make the case to leadership early and consistently.

Leadership support is essential for securing resources, coordinating across departments, and sustaining long-term strategy. Advancement leaders can strengthen their case by showing how alumni engagement supports broader institutional priorities. Consider emphasizing how alumni relationships drive:

• Improved community visibility
• Stronger workforce and employer partnerships
• Better outcomes reporting
• A more diversified revenue base

3. Prioritize personalized, authentic engagement.

Today’s alumni expect more than broad, transactional outreach. They respond best to communication that feels tailored, coordinated, and meaningful. Because many community college students may not have had a traditional “campus life,” this intentional engagement becomes even more important. Once alumni data is centralized, institutions can create meaningful segments based on shared experiences—such as academic program, campus, graduation pathway, or student background. Segmentation to specific cohorts allows advancement teams to communicate in ways that feel relevant and intentional. When outreach reflects alumni experiences and aligns with what they care about, engagement becomes more natural and sustained. Alumni value: 

• Messaging connected to their interests and experiences
• Outreach that is not centered solely on requests for support
• Relationship-building across multiple channels
• Digital engagement that meets them where they are

4. Strengthen your data foundation.

Data is the backbone of modern alumni engagement. With reliable information and integrated systems, advancement teams can connect outreach, segment audiences, and personalize communications. Strong segmentation relies on data that evolves over time. In addition to core alumni records, teams benefit from tracking interests and behaviors such as communication preferences, event participation, and ongoing areas of engagement. These insights make it possible to refine outreach based on how alumni actually interact, rather than relying on assumptions. When data is complete and actionable, engagement becomes easier to scale and more effective. A strong data foundation includes:

• Accurate and centralized alumni records
• Clear data-sharing across advancement, enrollment, and student success
• Segmentation that identifies engaged, high-potential alumni, and reflects real behaviors
• Tools that support automation, efficient outreach, and integrated communication

What Makes Alumni Engagement a High-Impact Strategy

Alumni engagement offers community colleges a powerful opportunity to deepen community connections, strengthen student success, and expand advancement capacity. While logistical and staffing challenges sometimes make it difficult to engage alumni, the good news is that they genuinely want to stay connected. With clear goals, better data, and consistent leadership support, community colleges can transform alumni engagement into an engine for deeper engagement and support.