Alumni Leadership Volunteerism Tools

Assess the impact of your alumni relations enterprise by prioritizing resource investment and determining the ROI of each program component. This toolkit will help eliminate the excess and redundant elements that compromise alumni relations program effectiveness.

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Gather staff feedback on volunteers’ effectiveness and other contextual data to develop a condensed roster of ‘must-engage’ alumni. Then match those alumni with a volunteer manager to chart a medium-term career path for that volunteer.

The life-loyal donors, stalwart advocates, and community champions who sit on boards and councils across the university are critical to development goals and larger institutional objectives. But the replenishment of this top layer of volunteer leadership in the coming decade is uncertain in an era when mid-career alumni are underengaged and attracted to many causes outside the university. This strategy takes a talent management approach to volunteer leadership development: synthesizing data from several sources to recognize leaders-in-waiting, positioning a select number for high-profile roles, and assigning staff accountability to cultivate those individuals as volunteers in the short- and long-term.

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Formally designate a group of mid-career constituents as future volunteer leaders-in-waiting through their appointment to a “junior” board or council, where they learn the foundations of philanthropy, governance, and the institution.

These junior boards—both at Hopkins and other institutions—have proven effective at maintaining engagement levels among younger alumni segments. When managed successfully, these boards can position alumni for years of involvement and pull in additional funds for institutional advancement.

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Synthesize quantitative indicators of each alumnus’ potential impact on the university and their current level of engagement. Then formally categorize the alumni with the highest means and/or talents to positively impact the university. Finally, reorganize alumni relations staff to deploy staff bandwidth to proactively engage these highest-potential segments.

Most alumni affairs programs are often broad-based in nature, marketing generic programs and messages to the largest possible base and hoping that the “right” alumni opt-in and pursue leadership roles.

Moreover, alumni affairs programs across the university tend to duplicate one another and fail to penetrate beyond the same subset of already-engaged supporters, who tend not to be those with the resources to most positively impact the institution. As a result, the return-on-investment or goal achievement of mass engagement is inconsistent or unclear.

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Provide a low-resource vehicle for alumni to self-identify as potential volunteers and leaders while furnishing valuable intelligence about their affinity and propensity.

Institutions seeking to recruit volunteers for a new project often turn to the “usual suspects,” fishing for leaders in an ever-shrinking pool of those who have volunteered before. The alternative, though, is just as ill-advised: to market a one-size-fits-all-message with a lowest-common-denominator appeal to the entire alumni base and hope that the right individuals self-select or opt in. Progressive institutions are building vetted lists of potential alumni leaders based on actions that suggest affinity for the institution and/or philanthropic propensity, actions tantamount to alumni raising their hand to be engaged.

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Provide a clear and transparent opportunity for alumni to self-proclaim their willingness and interest in involvement with the university. Over monthly sessions that offer networking, introductions to university operations, and an overview of available volunteer roles, alumni come to appreciate the contributions of leaders. Staff then path this vetted and trained cohort of participants to appropriate roles across campus.

Most institutions lack clear mechanisms to develop and nurture a pipeline of involved, high-potential alumni. Existing “open access” volunteer roles without barriers to entry often do not attract prominent or influential individuals, while the process at the top for alumni leadership appointments is political, difficult to navigate, and informal. Alumni leadership academies offer a replicable, low-resource strategy to attract, train, evaluate, and engage a new cohort of potential leaders on an annual basis.

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Reimagine the concept of traditional affinity and regional chapters: corporate chapters consist of alumni who connect by working for the same company at the same work site.

In the last five years, progressive institutions have started to facilitate alumni engagement through the workplace. By creating corporate chapters—groups or clubs that host events (often social, service, mentorship, and professional development in nature) for alumni who work at the same company—alumni relations teams have found a model that cultivates donors, volunteers, and leaders, benefits multiple departments across campus, and supports wider institutional goals.

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Collaborate with alumni relations, development officers, and other stakeholders to handpick prospects or donors from the same industry to attend a focus networking event as hosts and as participants.

There are numerous variations on the traditional networking event—and there are countless ways for each type of event to go wrong. Whether the event is alumni-only or aimed at both current students and alumni, it’s often a struggle to get people to come. And even when enough people do attend, there’s no guarantee attendees will actually network with each other.

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Recruit alumni volunteers to conduct 30-minute, one-time mentoring sessions with students or recent graduates either online or in person. The short-term nature of the mentoring relationship and the ability to conduct the session virtually appeals both to potential alumni volunteers and students uninterested in a long-term commitment.

Mentoring opportunities are popular engagement tools that enhance student career development. However, the demands of a long-term assignment diminish the appeal to prospective volunteers and donors. The ability to conduct the mentoring virtually also increases the ease with which any alumnus can participate and still offers the same benefits to students, alumni volunteers, and donors.

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Handpick a small group of volunteers to collaborate around a key question or topic, share their findings and recommendations with staff or administrators upon completion, and then disband. Volunteer strikeforces isolate the most engaging aspect of serving in an advisory or governance role—connecting with the institution’s challenges and opportunities, interacting with leadership, and offering consultation—and distill it into a one-time or short-term intensive that fast-tracks relationships and accelerates problem-solving.

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Establish a seed fund to subsidize the creation of innovative volunteer opportunities. Campus units and organizations respond to a request for proposals from the Alumni Association. Successful concepts receive grants to pilot their ideas.

Millennial and Generation X alumni seek substantive and skills-based volunteer opportunities that pertain to their specific areas of interest, rather than generic university-wide roles. However, central alumni relations and advancement are typically not well-poised to identify or execute these niche opportunities.

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Develop this process to aid in the identification of alumni volunteers working across campus. Alumni relations staff offer central services to support decentralized units with alumni programming. In exchange, staff report the names of alumni they engaged to access these benefits.

Most institutions lack adequate protocols to track the involvement and service of alumni who are engaged as volunteers and leaders across decentralized divisions, such as academic schools, student affairs departments, and other campus units. As a result, alumni relations leaders often lament failure to present a united and coordinated front to alumni, and advancement CRM systems lack valuable intelligence on engagement and affinity. This practice helps central alumni staff discover colleagues across campus who are engaging alumni and build relationships to enhance their work.

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