So what’s your story? Understanding the journey from student to alumna/us

In my past life, which is almost hard to remember after three children and a pandemic, I was an aspiring Hollywood storyteller. By day I was working for a TV studio, by night I was yucking it up at comedy clubs and writing scripts that few would ever read. Despite switching coasts and transitioning to the world of nonprofit advancement, I not only maintained my love for storytelling, but found it was an essential part of alumni relations and development. Philanthropy requires a story and in the case of higher education, your donor is the lead character and it’s crucial to understand their journey if you hope to inspire their ultimate gift.

First, stats. The 2020 VAESE Alumni Relations Benchmarking Study found that it’s getting harder to keep alumni engaged with their alma mater. The study reveals, on average, only 50% of the email addresses in the alumni database are deliverable. Also, in 2015, 45% of alumni organizations reported having a private, online community. In 2020, that number is down to 20%. That’s a 55% drop and with it, fewer opportunities for alumni to stay engaged with alma mater through a digital affinity group. This is bad news, but it’s not an irreversible trend.

As much as we’d like to believe it, no one alumna/us has the same story. While we generally engage based on class, school/college, major, and/or geography, those “identities” are often not connected to the heart strings, nor are they always the areas to which alumni credit their success. When you think about your college experience, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Your academic discipline, or the people? It’s almost always a person or people. Not simply who you party with on the weekends, but the people that make up your extracurriculars: a sports team, a cultural/political/religious organization, music, Greek life, study abroad etc.. A person might be proud to have graduated from your College of Engineering, but it’s the four years of competing on the robotics team that taught them the importance of working with peers, late-nights of persevering through endless experimentation, and ultimately, the rewards of competition…