Alumni SIG

Alumni SIG

The Alumni Special Interest Group (SIG) was held on Thursday 13 June, and was hosted by Liz Pellinkhof, Alumni Manager Hills Grammar, and Deanne O’Shea, Director Marketing, Communications & Engagement Ravenswood.

The key takeaways from the event were:

Topic One – Engaging Alumni

  • Engaging younger alumni is seen as the greatest challenge for most schools
  • Several have found younger alumni to be quite interested and passionate about various causes and are happy to give back to the community in support of these causes eg. Men’s mental health (Riverview)
  • Widespread tradition of most schools to hold 5-year reunions
  • Higher success of engagement with under 25-year-olds through”
  • Instagram platform with a dedicated page for alumni—archival and opportunistic posts to keep them engaged
  • Closed alumni page on Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Sporting teams eg. Netball Association
  • Networking events
  • Career events
  • Fundraising balls
  • School rugby matches
  • After work networking drinks
  • Prefects return to speak with new prefects
  • ‘Value of being an old girl/boy’ talk to Year 12
  • ‘Share your wisdom’ talk to Year 12 one year out
  • Come back to school to collect Yearbook, catch up with staff and school friends – opportunity for school to collect contact details
  • Good to regularly review what strategies you are employing to entice young alumni to engage on social media

Topic Two – Mentoring Programs

  • Examples of Mentoring formats
  • Alumni to current students
  • Alumni in the classroom
  • Alumni return to school to share experiences one year out
  • Career Expos
  • Pairing older alumni with established careers with younger alumni just starting their careers – a ‘giving back’ arrangement
  • ‘Food for Thought’ Lunch event – for senior students, involving an alumni guest speaker and alumni sitting amongst students at the lunch tables
  • Empowering alumni through alumni
  • Personal and professional development forums, providing alumni with broader life skills rather than just professional skills
  • Engaging alumni and parents to be used as mentors for students as they learn about and choose their careers
  • Alumni events in the CBD
  • Resources
  • Resourcing is a problem – suggestion of pooling resources eg. AIS running a mentoring program for schools

Topic Three – Alumni and Fundraising

  • Challenges and questions
  • Can you tap into your alumni for fundraising?
  • Can you merge alumni with current parents for the purposes of fundraising?
  • Notion of naming things in the school and linking them to a legacy (buildings, pavers, seats etc)—does this make it more meaningful?
  • Push back challenge – ‘Stop asking us for money’
  • Youthful cynicism creates a fear of ‘the ask’
  • Findings and Practices
  • A general feeling that alumni want to give to scholarships and causes and current parents want to give to buildings
  • Alumni ambassadors for each year group for bursary programs
  • Create a culture of giving while students are at school and extend it after students leave school
  • Create the notion while students are at school that being part of the alumni Association, will have value and benefits
  • Female alumni are often not asked to donate
  • Promote the ‘joy of giving’, ‘I give because it makes me feel good’
  • Consider bequests for the school
  • Connect through a passion eg. giving an art collection
  • A difference in genders of the expectations to give
  • Continue to try
  • Fundraising in girls’ schools is increasing, resulting in a culture change
  • Apps that round-up money with the round-ups going to fundraising
  • Search successful campaigns where the Alumni become heroes as well as the current school communities eg. the award winning campaigns in a school in Queensland and Victoria where Alumni gave dollar-for-dollar raised

Topic Four – Surveying Alumni

  • Key Ingredients
  • Keep samples even with girls and boys
  • Use initial survey as a base for future surveys
  • Survey topics – reunions, communications, mentoring, career opportunities, events. Keep to the topic/s you are researching
  • Allow open-ended responses
  • Keep surveys short, valid and concise
  • Send surveys only to those on email
  • Time is often a prohibitive factor – consider an external consultancy
  • Provide the audience with the knowledge of how their data will be used
  • Provide conclusions of surveys to Alumni
  • Thank alumni for assisting with surveys
  • Keeping data up to date is an ongoing challenge for all with the additional challenge with girls’ schools and female name changes