A Recap of the Capital One Foundation’s Alumni Engagement Summit

By Andrea Rush

Last month, I participated in the Capital One Foundation’s Alumni Engagement Summit in New York City. I had a great experience meeting other social sector organizations and sharing best practices and lessons learned. It was an eye-opening experience to see how other organizations think about the following critical questions around alumni engagement:

• Who are our alumni? 
• What strategies should we use to engage these groups?
• How should we consider mutual benefit to host organization and alumni groups?

The definition of ‘alumni’ varied widely, as host organizations offer different program experiences and to different audiences. Some organizations, like ProInspire, offer professional development cohort programs for adults working in or transitioning to the social sector. Other organizations offer services to young adults from high school through secondary education or job training. As a result, what these alumni need from their host organization and what they can give back to it differ across programs, but ultimately the questions asked around engagement and mutual benefits are universal. Regardless of organization and program type, your alumni community can and should be viewed as an organizational asset to continually leverage and cultivate, not solely (or in some cases at all) from a development perspective but also (or instead) from the perspectives of human capital, critical stakeholder input, and future growth planning.

The Summit was structured in part to learn from the three organizations who comprise the Building the Alumni Generation beta group: Year Up, College Summit, and Breakthrough Collaborative. Each of these organizations shared their lessons learned from the past five years of building their alumni engagement programs, focusing on their particular strategies and areas of expertise:

• Year Up provided great insights on its structural growth to facilitate and focus on alumni, recognizing the power of alumni for the organization’s future planning and potency.
• College Summit shared its journey in building effective alumni communication and outreach, leading to the creation of a national alumni council, social media campaigns, surveys, and a giving campaign.
• Breakthrough Collaborative shared its lessons learned and tips related to the power of data and a centralized tracking program and process.

Overall, I learned new tips and strategies while also getting validation on some of ProInspire’s recent movements in alumni engagement as best practices.

The Summit organizers also created intentional space for peer sharing, both formally and informally: what works, where challenges arise, and our particular goals for alumni engagement. Attending organizations were at different stages in their journeys of building out alumni engagement goals, budgets, strategies, and tactics — and seeing different results. Yet one common theme surfaced: our alumni value the benefit of our programs, so how do we keep them engaged with our community and organization over time and beyond program participation?

Ultimately, much like a university alumni program, keeping alumni engaged is key to the future of an organization, as it strengthens the alumni base and helps members continue to feel a part of the community and connected to and supported by their peers. ProInspire’s Alumni Council is an inspiring group of Fellowship and Managing for Success alumni from DC & Bay Area cohorts created this year to work towards stronger engagement and community building for their fellow alumni. Along with the Alumni Council, we are creating an Alumni Directory and launching other initiatives to keep our great community connected to one another and to ProInspire. The Capital One Alumni Engagement Summit gave us some more promising ideas for making our alumni activities and tactics even better.

If you are a ProInspire alum with questions, ideas, or you want to get involved more, please reach out to me directly at arush [at] proinspire [dot] org!  You can also reach the Alumni Council at alumni [at] proinspire [dot] org.

Andrea Rush is ProInspire’s Network Manager.