Advancementfor a New Era

How Career Services and Alumni Relations Can Close

the Giving Gap

BY MARA ZEPEDA & KIERAN HANRAHAN

Table of Contents Introduction

Setting the Stage

“The Career Community as Institutional Strategic Asset"........................................................2

“Personal and Professional Development: A Critical Investment in the Future”..................4

Higher Ed Leaders Explain the Synergy Between Career Services & Alumni Relations......7

Best Practices & Case Studies

Marquette University..................................................................................................................10

Binghamton University................................................................................................................15

Harvard Business School.............................................................................................................19

Yeshiva University........................................................................................................................22

Pomona College, Franklin & Marshall College, Colgate University......................................26

Oberlin College...........................................................................................................................29

Literature Review

“Inputs vs. Outcomes: Are You Using the Right Data to Measure ROI?"...........................36

“Next Generation Networking"..................................................................................................38

“5 Complaints about Alumni Relations and Career Services Platforms"..............................41

IntroductionFor the last year, we at Switchboard have been on a listening tour. We’ve listened to you and your colleagues from across the country, whether at the CASE Summit and district conferences or the National Association of Colleges and Employers or the Alumni Career Services Network. We’ve interviewed industry leaders and profiled best practices from institutions from coast to coast.

The results are in, and they couldn’t be clearer: To stay competitive, institutions must invest in the personal and professional development of students, and they must leverage their alumni networks in order to do so effectively and efficiently. Institutions must create synergy between career centers and alumni relations offices.

This investment has an inarguable impact on the bottom line. A strong, connected community that demonstrates personal and professional value will: • Attract prospective students • Retain current students• Boost college ratings• Improve student outcomes• Increase alumni engagement and giving

When graduates succeed, they become more loyal to their alma mater and want to engage in meaningful ways. This engagement translates into increased philanthropy.

The most direct catalyst of this success comes in the form of facilitating career opportunities, mentorship, internships, advice, and the informal relationship-building you’ll find at any reunion or event. Our goal with Switchboard is simple: We aim to create a platform that brings creates these connections online, generates career opportunities, measures the results of student-to-alumni connections, and fills your pipeline of time and talent so you can more easily identify prospects down the line.

Achieving these results is both an art and a science. It’s an alchemical interplay between alumni affairs, advancement, and career services. Bringing this magic to your campus is our speciality at Switchboard. In fact, we won a CASE Circle of Excellence Gold award for delivering the highest quality student and alumni engagement in partnership with one of our customer schools, Oberlin College.

We look forward to bringing the same level of service to your institution.

–Mara Zepeda, CEO & Co-founder, Switchboard

mara@switchboardhq.com switchboardhq.com @switchboardhq

Setting the StageWhy collaboration between career centers and

alumni relations offices is necessary.

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The Career Community as Institutional Strategic AssetAN ARTICLE BY SHEILA CURRAN, CEO, CURRAN CONSULTING

Why do students go to college? Most academics would be horrified to discover that it’s not to get a great education and become educated citizens of the world.

Today’s students still want high quality academics, but they take the educational benefits of college for granted. What students really expect from today’s college, as reported in the Higher Education Research Institute’s survey of incoming freshmen, is to get a leg up. Three of the top four

reasons for coming to college (and the percentage of students who cited that reason) are related to careers:• To be able to get a better job (86%)• To get training for a specific career (77.1%)• To be able to make more money (72.8%)

There are many reasons for the increased focus on careers—most notably the ever-higher cost of college and the average debt load of close to $30,000. Curiously, the concern about return on investment has not translated into institutional investment in Career Services; according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, between 2007 and 2014, support for career services actually decreased for schools of all sizes. There appears to be little trust that traditional services provided by colleges—however helpful-- can make a significant difference to the career outcomes of students.

One promising idea that is being implemented in a wide variety of schools, including Miami University of Ohio and Augustana College, IL, is the Career Community. Borne from the recognition that there will never be sufficient staff in a

COLLEGE CYCLE OF SUSTAINABILITY

ADMISSIONS

RETENTIONALUMNI

ENGAGEMENT

GRADUATE SUCCESS

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career services offices to meet the specific and diverse career needs of all students, the Career Community engages alumni, parents and friends of an institution in providing career information, advice and mentoring. Career Community members often use their specialized knowledge of a particular career field to provide tangible advantages to students seeking jobs or internships.

The benefits of a Career Community on the professional success of students and graduates is obvious. What is less obvious is that the Career Community can positively influence one of the most fundamental goals of any college or university: attracting and retaining applicants.

In order for a college to thrive, it needs students to not only matriculate, but also to stay and to graduate. Prospective students will be more likely to attend a college if they see and hear from successful alumni who attribute their success to the school and are actively engaged in helping the next generation of students achieve similar success. And, students who see the value of their education embodied in their older peers are more likely to stay in school—especially if they feel they have an inside track to internships and jobs through the advice and opportunities provided by members of the Career Community.

The success of graduates is not only good for individuals, it can also benefit the institution, as the following graphic suggests:

The Alumni Attitude Survey surveyed 500,000 alumni from 235 colleges. As Robert D. Shoss explains in his remarks about the survey “we looked for questions with the highest correlation to how an alumnus/a answered a question about their intent to financially participate with the university…As it turns out, loyalty for the university is the overwhelming winner.” Mr. Schoss goes on to say that “relationship with the university” is a reasonable proxy for loyalty”.

Colleges and universities know that their bottom line depends on attracting sufficient students, keeping them in school, and raising money from alumni. A vibrant, managed Career Community will lead to the achievement of multiple strategic goals, with the added bonus of responding to some of the most fundamental desires of students: achieving professional success after graduation.

GRADUATE SUCCESS

POSITIVEFEELINGS

LOYALTY TO ALMA MATER

DESIRE TO ENGAGE

INCREASED PHILANTHROPY

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Personal and Professional Development: A Critical Investment in the FutureRobert Shoss has been measuring the “unmeasurable” in higher education since 2001 with his Alumni Attitude Study©. The study defines key drivers of alumni loyalty and provides educational institutions the right information to successfully manage alumni communication, programs, and participation issues. More than 250 colleges and universities have participated in the study. He has published articles on national alumni trends for CASE Currents and presented survey results at many CASE conferences.

In his articles, Rob explains which engagement activities produce the highest return on investment when it comes to fostering loyalty among young alumni in the post-9/11 and post-great recession era:

Activities with the highest correlation to young alumni loyalty• How well the institution prepared the alumnus/a to respond to new career opportunities• How well the institution prepared the alumnus/a to gain their current work status• How well the institution prepared the alumnus/a for a deepening my understanding and commitment to personal development

There is a clear relationship between the loyalty of young alumni and how much they feel their experience at their alma mater prepared them for their lives.When it comes to young alumni, one of the most important investments an institution can make to increase loyalty and giving it to increase the value a graduate receives by offering personal and professional development opportunities.

To learn more about Rob’s work & the Alumni Attitude Study, visit alumniattitudestudy.org.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: A UNIVERSITY COMMITMENT

Despite the data demonstrating that personal and professional development is the single most important investment a university can make to increase the loyalty of its graduates, the investment in career services remains at historically low levels. In fact, as a report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers reports, “despite increasing institutional pressure for career centers to prepare students to enter the workforce in the post-recession period, career center budgets have stagnated.”

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REINVESTING IN CAREER SERVICES IS A CRITICAL ISSUE.

The Obama administration’s college “scorecard” rates schools on their outcomes. The NACE report says, “Higher education institutions are being forced to pay more attention to the employment and income outcomes of their students than they have ever had to in the past.” And yet, the critical resources that will lead to better outcomes and increase loyalty are absent. Here, we present data from NACE’s “Career Services Benchmark Survey for Colleges and Universities,” by Edwin W. Koc and Kenneth C. Tsang.

Operating Budgets

Staffing

Career Services Support vs. College Revenues

The NACE report concludes that, “university support for their career centers has not responded to the increased need.” Leading institutions recognize that this reinvestment is a win-win that increases alumni loyalty, donations, and economic outcomes down the line.

For more, see “The University Commitment to Career Services,” NACE Journal, 2/2015.

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LINDSEY POLLAK, NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLING AUTHOR & MILLENNIAL CONSULTANT

"There are tremendous opportunities for synergy between career services and alumni affairs. I've worked with schools that collaborate on events (both inviting alumni to speak to students and offering programming to combined audiences), internship and full-time job postings, formal and informal mentoring and, of course, networking on a variety of topics. What's most important is that each group knows what the opportunities and protocols are for engaging with the other so it's a comfortable and productive interaction for all involved. "

CHAIM SHAPIRO, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF CAREER SERVICES, TOURO COLLEGE

"I deal with the overlap between career services, alumni relations, and advancement. Offering career services help and assistance to alumni is something that alumni like and that they respect. It builds long-term relationships with alumni, so that’s obviously good for any alumni association, and for development opportunities. There’s a real synergy between the three, and if they work well together, those services translate into committed alumni, and committed alumni translate into development opportunities."

CHRISTINE Y. CRUZVERGARA, ASSOCIATE PROVOST & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FOR CAREER EDUCATION, WELLESLEY COLLEGE

“The primary purpose of career services in this next era is to build connections and communities for a stronger network that promotes students’ success. By focusing on authentic relationships with stakeholders, career services professionals can transform their offices into hubs of connectivity and provide more tailored advice, strategy, and feedback to their constituents.”

Higher Ed Leaders Explain the Synergy

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CRAIG SWINYARD, DIRECTOR OF ALUMNI RELATIONS, UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND

“We’ve spent a lot of time this year thinking about how we can continue the UP experience for people who’ve graduated and have gone on into the world and are seeking that connection back to campus. When our alumni connect, it brings them closer to the university. Particularly when they’re younger, they may not have financial gifts to offer, but their non-financial gifts, their own personal expertise, those are still valuable.”

ANDY CHAN, VICE PRESIDENT FOR PERSONAL CAREER DEVELOPMENT, WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY

“You have to empower students to network and get out there. They can do it; they’ve been doing it their whole lives with Facebook. We have to think about how to use technology in a positive way to activate networks like that.”

KIM BROWN, DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS & DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

“Alumni career services has exploded. The growth has been 1000%. My position didn’t exist ten years ago. And now it’s grown: what was a coordinator is now an assistant director. It’s happening at universities across the country.

MICHAEL SCIOLA, ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT OF INSTITUTIONAL ADVANCEMENT AND CAREER INITIATIVES, COLGATE UNIVERSITY

“By moving career services out of student affairs, which is by nature inwardly focused, housing and food, and student activities, moving it to advancement, the division that actually is more outwardly focused, we’re building community relationships with alumni worldwide, creating opportunities for generations to mix and match.”

Between Career Services & Alumni Relations

Best PracticesCase studies from institutions who are using alumni

career services to advance their mission.

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How Marquette University Integrates Alumni Engagement and Student MentorshipAN INTERVIEW

Events? They’re on top of them. Mentoring program? Enormous success. Measuring engagement? They have a 16-point model. In short, Marquette has it figured out.

We were fortunate enough to have the chance to catch up with Marquette’s Engagement Director, Dan DeWeerdt, after he spoke at the 2015 CASE V Conference in Chicago.

We asked him about facilitating mentorship, measuring engagement, and combining the traditionally separate efforts of career services and alumni relations.

ALUMNI RELATIONS OFFICES HAVE TO BALANCE THEIR EXISTING PROGRAMS WITH NEW ONES THEY DEVELOP AND THAT OTHER OFFICES SUGGEST. HOW HAS MARQUETTE PERFORMED THIS BALANCING ACT?

At Marquette, the balancing act evolves and is incorporated on many levels. From an external standpoint, we make it a priority to be mindful of the life stage of alumni and meeting them there.

For example, we’ve found young alumni to be more interested in social gatherings with their classmates, whereas those in their 40s and 50s find value in our alumni programs through professional networking and development as well as doing business with Marquette alumni in their industry.

Learning through alumni focus groups and ongoing dialogue with university leadership, faculty, and engagement and development colleagues has also been essential.

These key findings then help us to determine alumni events for the fiscal year and where they may fit based upon the following categories:

Presidential priorities/campaign planning

Staple programs: Reunion weekend, awards, affinity groups, National Marquette Day

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(a spirit day in conjunction with a Marquette men’s basketball game), and a national mentor program are a few examples.

Regional clubs: Includes service initiatives, faith-based programs such as Mass, career and networking events, collaborations with the Office of Admissions; scholarship fundraisers, socials, and game-watching gatherings. These events are developed and implemented in collaboration with alumni clubs nationwide and attract thousands annually.

Fiscal year priorities to support development initiatives

Finally, we meet annually to determine which programs will continue and those that will no longer be offered. An alumni event that has been a university staple for years doesn’t mean it will continue when it’s not meeting the division’s key performance indicators.

We’ve found our alumni understand and appreciate this review process, too, especially when they’re part of the discussion. When it comes to club events, one size doesn’t fit all, either. Some clubs offer programs that aren’t available in other areas for a variety of reasons.

With respect to recent successes, programs focused on students, young alumni, and career and professional development have netted significant results. Providing access to students for alumni and vice versa has been very well received, ranging from scholarship to professional networking events.

MENTORING PROGRAMS HAVE TRADITIONALLY FALLEN UNDER THE PURVIEW OF CAREER SERVICES OFFICES, BUT NOW ARE INCREASINGLY LOOKED UPON AS OPPORTUNITIES TO ENGAGE ALUMNI. HOW DOES MARQUETTE USE ITS MENTORSHIP PROGRAM BOTH TO SERVE STUDENTS AND STRENGTHEN ITS RELATIONSHIPS WITH ALUMNI?

Housing the local and distance mentor program through University Advancement has provided an unprecedented platform for development and alumni relations staff to work with alumni who have an interest in mentoring a Marquette student.

The nationally recognized Marquette University Alumni Association Mentor Program is a 1:1 match for students and alumni with similar majors and career interests during the school year. Alumni in 15 states currently mentor students on campus and it’s our development and engagement teams who identify these individuals to participate.

The program hasn’t only provided a value proposition to current alumni who are engaged and support the university, but it’s also an engagement tool for key alumni

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who haven’t been involved with Marquette in any capacity. Some alumni mentors who have never been involved in the university are finding real value in the program. One mentor recently shared, “It’s been an honor to be engaged in the program. I have benefitted from it and hope that my mentee has grown from her experience as well.”

The bottom line is alumni want to support students through mentoring, which is why the program has a 90% retention rate annually for mentors and 100% of participants share they would recommend the program to fellow alumni and students. Overall, 98% of mentor and mentee participants have indicated the program has exceeded or met their expectations. Since the program is run through alumni relations, we’re able to also share this information with our development team, which regularly attends mentor events to meet their alumni prospects as well as other mentors who are supporting Marquette mentees.

The program has also netted other significant results for University Advancement and the university:• Alumni participation in the mentor program has led to new and increased gifts.• It’s been a valuable prospect tool for wealth discovery. • Accomplished mentors in their field of work are being identified as potential university alumni award recipients. Some have already been honored, in part because of their new engagement with Marquette as mentors.

Student mentees are finding significant value in the program, too, including:• Secured full-time positions through their mentor following graduation• Secured internships with their mentor• Traveled nationwide to shadow their mentor• Continued the mentor relationship following the formal conclusion of the program in spring

In part due to its strong relationship with faculty partners across campus, other non-participating academic units have asked to participate in the program to support their students. At the same time, alumni are reaching out to University Advancement staff inquiring about how they can serve as mentors.

AT YOUR CASE V PANEL, YOU SAID THAT MAKING IT EASIER FOR MARQUETTE’S ALUMNI TO DONATE EXPERIENCES IS ONE OF YOUR PRIORITIES. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO ADOPT THIS STRATEGY, AND HOW DOES IT BOLSTER YOUR ENGAGEMENT EFFORTS?

With approximately 115,000 alumni worldwide, it’s not always possible for Marquette

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graduates to return to campus. However, University Advancement looks at how we can bring Marquette to them.

Through online surveys and focus groups, Marquette’s Seven Essentials of Highly Engaged Alumni was created to allow the university to provide alumni with touch points based upon life stage, whether it’s young alumni or a company CEO.

Through this platform, we track when alumni are engaged with Marquette through several ‘essentials’ such as service, learning or connecting with students. These could be classified as donating their experiences or time to support the Marquette mission and getting engaged with their alma mater.

In addition, Marquette’s current Alumni Engagement Model created in FY10 is considered a benchmark and cutting-edge tool by other institutions. The model tracks and measures our engagement efforts throughout our alumni population.

What are our goals through this model? • View each attribute as something we can count and work to improve. • Enhance the effectiveness and results of our work by treating each attribute as an area that we want to strengthen (i.e. more e-mail addresses will make it easier to communicate on many levels; updated/additional business contact information will lead to more accurate qualification, matching gift information, etc.). • Use this model to measure work we are all doing; in the spirit of “one team,” it is relevant to all departments across Advancement and holds all of us accountable. • Keep our colleagues informed of the score on an ongoing basis, and assure our ability to look at the data in various ways, such as breakdowns by rated vs. unrated, colleges, regions, grad years, etc.

The tool is a 16-point model with giving weighted at 50% and involvement/connectivity, such as serving as a volunteer, participating in a meeting, engaging in the online community, attending a university event, or having your business employer/title also weighted at 50%.

The score measures the engagement level across our alumni base and we begin with a fresh score for all constituents with some continuation (such as having an email address, which carries over annually).

What impact has the alumni engagement model had on our work and within the industry?

This tool provides us with valuable insight in a variety of areas, such as working to

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better understand regions, segments, and niches.

The model has also allowed us to better define the strong relationship between engagement and giving. In fact, when reviewing data over a two-year period, we found the following correlation between giving and engagement: • Alumni with updated employment information: Twice as likely to give• Alumni with an email address on file: More than twice as likely to give• Alumni who attended their last reunion: Three times as likely to give• Alumni who volunteer with Marquette: More than three times as likely to give• Alumni who attend an event: Four times as likely to give• Alumni who are visited by a prospect manager or university representative: Six times as likely to give

This model has continues to serve as a catalyst for engagement and giving as our work to support Marquette alumni evolves.

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How Binghamton's Fleishman Center Works with Alumni to Bolster Career ServicesAN INTERVIEW

At Switchboard, we believe that alumni are career services' biggest allies, and we're not alone. Thousands of career services offices collaborate with their colleagues in alumni relations and connect students with alumni to further their careers.

Binghamton University has made that interdisciplinary approach one of its specialties. Binghamton's Fleishman Center for Career and Professional Development works with the Office of Alumni Engagement to hold dozens of events with alumni speakers every year. Their Cool Alumni, Hot Connections speaker series provides career advice and connections for hundreds of students.

We asked Dr. Kelli Smith, Director of the Fleishman Center, to tell us about the event series.

THE BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY FLEISHMAN CENTER FOR CAREER AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND OFFICE OF ALUMNI ENGAGEMENT WORK TOGETHER ON THE "COOL/HOT" SERIES. COULD YOU EXPLAIN THE SERIES AND HOW IT IS SUCCESSFUL?

One area for which the Fleishman Center for Career and Professional Development collaborates with the Office of Alumni Engagement is to deliver the Cool Alumni, Hot Connections speaker series. Started in 2011 by the Office of Alumni Engagement, alumni from a variety of fields and industries are recruited to present, whether in person or virtually, to students about their careers. For the first part of the Cool/Hot program alumni speakers take 10 to 15 minutes and provide a narrative about their valued Binghamton experiences, explain what steps they took to get to their current role, and speak to what has contributed to their success. The remainder of the hour-long program is open to students asking questions and alumni sharing insight and helpful advice.

Part of why I like to share about this program is that it is a great example of how

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campus collaboration results in better student programming. Before our office partnered with Alumni Engagement, only four programs were held in 2013-14. Since that time we have been able to help significantly grow the number of programs, the number of students participating, and insight into what industries and careers our students would like to see represented.

The partnership between the Fleishman Center and Office of Alumni Engagement has helped both offices advance their missions by engaging students, alumni and employers. The Office of Alumni Engagement takes the lead in identifying alumni speakers who are passionate about giving back to the University and are eager to share the story of their career and offer insight. The Fleishman Center takes the lead in the marketing efforts and identifies interested students who can benefit from a particular alumni speaker. The ultimate winners of the Cool/Hot programs are the students who gain better insight in to the world of work and the alumni speakers who strengthen their affinity to the University.

In the 2015-16 academic year the two offices facilitated 30 Cool/Hot programs attended by 935 and a median program attendance of 28.5. Speakers ranged from Wall Street financial managers, software engineers, educators, health professionals, and sales and marketing professionals to screen writers, talent agents, and television personalities, among others. According to student feedback about these programs, 99% of students said they obtained a better understanding of the industry and profession of the alumni and 99% thought the alumni speaker provided valuable career advice. The Cool/Hot program earned a +56.6 net promoter score, which is the highest among other measured career center programs.

THE FLEISHMAN CENTER ALSO DOES SOME ALUMNI OUTREACH VIA EMPLOYER RELATIONS. HOW DO YOUR EMPLOYER RELATIONS FILL A DUAL ROLE IN THIS RESPECT? HOW DO YOUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH ALUMNI EMPLOYERS, OR ALUMNI WORKING FOR EMPLOYERS, STRENGTHEN YOUR OFFICE?

Our department is keenly aware that one of Binghamton University’s most valuable resources for increasing the pipeline of employers for students is our alumni network. Whether it is a first time connection or a sustaining relationship, alumni are eager to give back to their alma mater by participating in career development programs, guiding students towards their chosen career path, and recruiting students for internships or full time employment. It is much easier to make a connection with employers through partnerships developed with alumni versus employers who have no prior connection with the university.

The Fleishman Center strategically targets firms we want to partner with for the

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purpose of strengthening the career development of our students, while broadening the scope of employers to satisfy the needs of a diverse undergraduate and graduate student population. To do this, we use our internal alumni database and other tools to find alumni in these desired fields. Alumni understand the caliber of student that graduates from Binghamton University because they too have attended this institution. This alone gives alumni a greater appreciation of Binghamton and a desire to turn to the university to satisfy their recruiting demands.

After an initial connection is made with an alumna/alumnus, she or he will typically provide a conduit to their Human Resources department, and from this point forward a strong recruiting relationship is built with the team. An active employer soon realizes the quality and drive of our students, which entices them to continue their recruiting needs at our premier institution. This is a model that has proven success, and one we plan to utilize to increase employer outreach at the Fleishman Center for Career and Professional Development at Binghamton University. We secured four new positions this year, and one of those new lines is specifically dedicated to connecting with new alumni and employers to recruit and educate our students.

THERE’S BEEN A SHIFT IN FOCUS IN HIGHER ED TOWARD QUANTIFIABLE OUTCOMES. HOW CAN MEASURING OUTCOMES HELP YOU AND YOUR TEAM’S CAREER SERVICES WORK? WHAT LIMITATIONS DO THESE DATA HAVE?

We know the demand for evidence of student success after graduation has never been higher. Prospective students and families are asking, “What can I do with this major?” “Wow soon will I have a job after graduation?” “What kind of graduate schools will I get into?” and “What difference will my Binghamton University degree make?” Due to this, we have significantly stepped up our involvement with our Admissions office, which hosts more than 47,000 prospective students and family members on campus each year. We are open during the major visit weekends and are the first stop for the tour guides throughout the entire year.

At the same time, accreditors are requiring graduation outcomes data as a measure of academic program and institutional quality. Federal and state governments demand more information about the value of a college education, linking that evidence to calls for “students’ right to know” and a College Scorecard that can be used to help students make college comparisons, and potentially even be tied to funding of higher education institutions. I also served on the NACE committee that develops the standards for first-destination surveys, and we have stepped up our efforts on campus to be transparent and capture as much information on our graduates’ destinations as possible.

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The stakes are high for universities to know where their students go after graduation. There are undoubtedly limitations to the focus on first-destination data, such as how liberal arts graduates may tend to fare better with long-term data, and it may not measure how "the liberal arts and sciences play a major role in sustaining the social and economic fabric of our society," but that is context we use when working with students, too, and does not negate the importance of first-destination data.

Separate from societal expectations, one of the biggest motivators for me to ensure we as a campus are collecting rich data on our graduates' first destinations is that it helps us in our daily work with students. When I’m working with a student who is considering English as a major but who, in the same breath, says they do not want to make that choice because they would not like being an editor, having data on the variety of options that their peers have taken (whether it is with internships, post-graduate employment, or graduate school) is a powerful tool. Students can see how other graduates have leveraged their academic journey and been successful. We also use graduate salary data for those students that hold that as a value when choosing careers or negotiating job offers.

Lastly—and simply—I believe it is our obligation in institutions of higher education to care about where our students go next and see that they are successful in their next phase of life. As a liberal arts graduate myself, I am a believer in the lofty ideals of education for its own sake and learning that empowers our students to deal with complexity, diversity, and change. But while education for its own sake is a worthy idea and one we must continue to support, I am a firm believer that it is not the same thing as education without purpose, and that and preparation is not undesirable or mutually exclusive. In addition to being lifelong learners and engaged citizens, preparing our students to be career-ready should also be part of what we as institutions do.

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How Harvard Business School Creates Organic Connections Between Students and Alumni

AN INTERVIEW

If running successful networking events and mentoring programs were as easy as making an introduction over email, the job of alumni relations and career services offices would be pretty simple. But it's vital that the connections we make between students and alumni not feel contrived.

Finding the line between artificial awkwardness and organic openness can be difficult.

Lindsay McConchie and Kathryn Tripp are Harvard Business School's associate and assistant directors of student & young alumni engagement, respectively.

We asked them to give us a preview of their CASE D1 conference panel, "Close Encounters: Creating Organic Connections Between Students and Alumni."

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO CREATE ORGANIC CONNECTIONS BETWEEN STUDENTS AND ALUMNI? HOW DO THOSE ORGANIC CONNECTIONS DIFFER FROM CONNECTIONS THAT AREN'T ORGANIC?

It is fundamentally important to create a space that fosters these mutually beneficial student:alumni connections. Outside of the construct of career and professional development (where many student:alumni connections traditionally take place in a graduate school), students experience the myriad benefits of the alumni network.

During HBS's MBA program, it’s challenging for anyone to imagine what life will be like one year, five years or twenty years from their graduation. Sitting down with an alumnus in a setting that encourages candor and provides a real life demonstration of what life after HBS can be like for the students is really powerful and even indirectly instructive. Students come to truly understand the alumni network, what it means to be an engaged alumnus, and the value proposition of being active within that network.

At the same time, alumni are able to reconnect with the school via current students.

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They get to experience what their alma mater is like today and how the common thread of HBS has evolved since their own graduation. Organic connections fostered in this way are very rare and special. We’ve learned that most other interaction between students and alumni at this point in the student experience is need-based (job searches, asking alumni to speak at conferences or in classes, etc.).

Organic connections provide space for both students and alumni to find far more commonalities and points of shared interest than would come with a more contrived grouping. This is not to say to that there isn’t tremendous benefit in career-focused student:alumni engagement, and we work with our Career office to support their efforts to connect students and alumni around job searching. We know that our Career office is far better equipped with extensive experience and knowledge than we are to help students find their career path.

What we hope to instill in students is a visceral understanding of the alumni network so they can see themselves in it, and as an active part of it. The added benefit is drawing alumni into the excitement of the student experience and reconnecting them to their time at HBS by offering them a real, meaningful opportunity to connect and provide their personal story.

HOW CAN WE BUILD INSTITUTIONAL CONSENSUS TO CREATE PROGRAMS THAT GENERATE THESE ORGANIC CONNECTIONS?

Institutional consensus to any alumni engagement program is paramount. That said, it can be difficult to illustrate the value of engagement with traditional metrics and measurements.

Fortunately, the success of such programs ultimately speak for themselves.

Executing programs that connect students and alumni requires the efforts and collaboration of multiple departments. For us, we engage Development colleagues, the Admissions Office, Student and Alumni Clubs, and the Career and Professional Development Office. The programs have mutual benefit to Alumni Relations and all these departments in that they engage top prospects, aid in the Admissions yield efforts, connect student clubs and alumni clubs around shared interest, industry, and region, and support the goals of the Career office in helping students during and post HBS.

Multiple stakeholders across the institution become champions for the program and others like it because their benefactors (alumni or students) have provided such positive feedback about their experience and the connections they were able to make as a result.

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For numbers and metrics, we do our best to create systems to capture qualitative data, like brief multiple choice surveys that can be aggregated into numeric data that tells a story of engagement and satisfaction with our programs. We also capture as much anecdotal feedback as possible. We’ve heard quotes like this one, from an alumnus who hosted a dinner for students a few years ago, that speak volumes about the value of these programs:

“Thank you for organizing this dinner. What a great idea this program is! The students are great; HBS continues to attract incredibly interesting people from around the world. I feel more connected to the school and will happily support this year's annual fund.”

We don’t know that we could offer any data point better than that in support of these programs!

WHAT CAN WE DO TO ENSURE THAT OUR PROGRAMS ACTUALLY CREATE ORGANIC CONNECTIONS?

Setting the stage for these gatherings is really helpful. We like to communicate to all parties involved that the point of their meeting is simply to connect without any formal agenda.

So much can come from these organic, unstructured gatherings without the School imposing an agenda. Some hosts do request introductory talking points to get conversation started but those requests are rare. For the vast majority, people are really excited and grateful for the opportunity to simply connect. Our mission is to provide the time and the place.

Engaging the right internal stakeholders is really important. If you are working with Development frontline fundraisers, or if you ARE a Development frontline fundraiser, ensuring that you have the right alumni host means everything.

This is a cultivation opportunity. Alumni are excited to volunteer their time and are often willing to answer an email with a request like this. Additionally, many alumni are honored to be entrusted with the responsibility of embodying the alumni network to students. Setting alumni up for success is key.

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Marc Goldman of Yeshiva University on the Synergy Between Career Services and Alumni AffairsAN INTERVIEW

At Yeshiva University's Career Center, Executive Director Marc Goldman and his team have focused on the synergy between alumni relations and career services for years.

We asked Marc why it's important for career centers and alumni relations teams to work together, how he accomplishes that at Yeshiva, and what his team's metrics for success are. An edited and condensed version of our conversation is below.

WHY DO YOU THINK IT’S IMPORTANT THAT ALUMNI RELATIONS OFFICES AND CAREER CENTERS COLLABORATE?

I think it depends on the institution, but many institutions, particularly smaller institutions, rely greatly on their alumni population as a resource. For their alumni that offers a way to give back that is not funding-related, to offer opportunities for students and other alumni, or to offer mentorship and advice.

For students to be able to achieve success, having these resources, mentors, and advocates out there is essential. Communication and collaboration between the two departments is extremely helpful for the student body and the institution.

WHAT KIND OF WORK DO YOU DO TO MAKE THAT SYNERGY HAPPEN AT YESHIVA?

A good deal of it is partnering with Alumni Affairs on various programs. For example, partnering on student-centered programs where alumni are involved in an educational, mentoring, or informational way. The Alumni Affairs team helps us by identifying individuals or providing information about how to contact certain individuals to get them involved in our various programs and events for the Career Center. In addition, we come up with employers and alumni that we’re working with who might also be good for alumni-specific events. It’s a sharing of information, a

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sharing of resources, to help both students and alumni.

I think that sometimes the Career Center is the conduit for an alum reconnecting with the university, and other times the Alumni Affairs office is the way that they reconnect. And through both of those entry points alumni are exposed to other areas of the university, too, and to one another. So it definitely is a synergistic approach in that regard as well.

DOES YESHIVA HAVE A FORMAL MENTORSHIP PROGRAM, OR IS THERE JUST A SERIES OF INFORMAL CONNECTIONS YOU SET UP BETWEEN STUDENTS AND ALUMNI?

We do both.

We have an informational interview resource database composed of volunteers, successful professionals and employers, many of whom are alumni, to provide information and advice to students. We refer students to them through our office. A student who is curious about a career field does some homework first, and then we offer networking preparation and set up the student with a mentor to talk about his or her career path and current role.

In addition, we have a Women in Business Initiative, which is a program that encourages and supports women in exploring career fields in business. It connects them with role models who are successful women business professionals. We try to match them as closely to their career field of interest as possible. And there is a one-to-one mentoring piece as well. We have twenty or more students in that program every year whom we connect to fantastic professionals. We also have speakers come in and engage students on leadership, professionalism and work-life balance topics.

MORE BROADLY, WHAT ARE THE METRICS FOR SUCCESS THAT YOU USE TO MEASURE THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUR OFFICE AND THE LEVEL OF SERVICE THAT YOU PROVIDE TO THE COMMUNITY?

Success is a very challenging thing to define. Career centers probably have more stakeholders than the majority of higher education offices, and the stakes are different for each stakeholder, so the definition of success for each one is unique.

Outcomes, destinations of our graduates, are one measure of success that many external parties look to. With jobs in particular, I find that it’s always good to see how closely a job is related to a student's career field of interest and major field of study. When the economy was more troubling, people would say, “Well they have jobs, but what is it that they’re actually doing? And are they happy about it?” So to really get a sense of how closely their job aligns with their goals is important. The closer it does,

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the better your success—and their success, because it really is their success, not ours.

Looking at things like salaries is another measure—are our graduates' salaries going up over the years? The number of internships they have over time in college, is that something we’re considering? Those are different statistics we look at with our graduating students.

We also do an annual report for internal constituents as a measure of the services we provide. Counseling, direct-service programming, workshops, fairs, job postings, collaborations and partnerships on campus, special programs—all those types of things are a measure of success if there is participation in them. You can offer all the programs in the world, but if people aren’t participating, I don’t know how successful you’re being as an office.

Measuring success also entails getting feedback and evaluating qualitative information. We collect monthly counseling feedback to assess our students’ opinions, to see whether the counseling appointments are benefiting them, and to see if there are any concerns or questions that they might have as well. We get very high marks on that. I think that if people really wanted to say something of a complaining nature, they would respond. I don’t see it happening a lot. That’s certainly positive.

We also communicate a lot with student leaders and employers for feedback. When we have job fairs, we always want to hear back from employers. When they come and recruit, we always ask them how the students are doing and how we’re doing. For the students themselves, we have liaisons from the student body on the men’s campus and the women’s campus to ask us questions on behalf of students and make recommendations to our office. We take them seriously, and if we can address student needs either by following up on what they request or by discussing them with them and coming to other conclusions, then I think that’s also a measure of our success. But I think it’s also a measure of success and involvement on the part of students in their own career development, which is great.

DO YOU SEE THE WORK THAT YOU DO WITH ALUMNI AND IN COLLABORATION WITH THE ALUMNI RELATIONS OFFICE CONTRIBUTING TO THAT SUCCESS?

This is clearly true on so many levels, including having alumni getting directly involved by offering opportunities and advocating for students. Networking is a huge part of students' finding employment, and a large segment of our networking population is alumni. So from just a job search perspective, alumni are immensely helpful to our student body.

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And again, alumni are crucial partners in educating students because they are subject matter experts. They are the ones who are in their field day in and day out, who can really inform our students and mentor them in the way in that only someone who’s in an actual industry or sector can. That’s huge for our students too.

Our students are very, very busy. We have a dual curriculum at Yeshiva where they’re doing both Jewish learning and academic studies. They also do your typical activities that students across the board do, so they’re very highly scheduled and highly programmed. The fact that they have these resources and exposure to these alumni is a critical piece of their success.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU WANT TO MAKE SURE WE COVER?

I think that the alumni-to-alumni aspect of our work also should be thought about. Alumni gain goodwill and good feelings from helping students, but we want to be able to help alumni in return too. When there are alumni-to-alumni programs, and we play a part in those, sometimes they benefit even more. And that certainly instills in them a greater school spirit, a greater dedication to the institution and a greater desire to give back in general. So helping alumni affairs with their events that are strictly alumni focused is also part of what we do because it will benefit the university more broadly as well.

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How Career Centers Can Leverage Alumni and Parent Engagement to Advance Institutional GoalsThis piece was adapted from the 2016 NACE Conference presentation, "Leveraging Alumni and Parent Engagement to Advance Institutional Goals," by the following authors:

Teresa Olsen, Associate Vice President of Institutional Advancement & Director of Career Services, Colgate University

Mary Raymond, Director and Associate Dean of the Career Development Office, Pomona College

Beth Throne, Associate Vice President, Office of Student and Post Graduate Development, Franklin & Marshall College

In today’s market, colleges and universities must demonstrate success in preparing and launching their students into the professional world. Although not the sole metric, these indicators are key factors in how institutions are perceived by prospective families, the federal government, college rankings, recruiters, admissions committees, and the media. The career services team is central to this success; leveraging alumni and parent engagement is a prime factor in this equation.

This dynamic is not surprising. Colleges and universities have been tapping alumni as panelists, recruiting contacts, and donors for years. However, the alumni and parent engagement landscape has changed significantly in recent years. In that, the orchestration by career services teams to conduct their own initiatives while concurrently impacting institutional goals has become a nuanced advantage. The following examples from our NACE Conference presentation illustrate unique initiatives that have significantly moved the dial on distinct institutional priorities.

POMONA COLLEGE

Academic institutions thrive when students are able to articulate the value of their classroom learning in relation to students’ ability to succeed in an area of professional interest. Likewise, faculty and career services offices are asked to demonstrate the

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variety of paths possible launching with a certain major. Pomona College’s Career Development Office, under the leadership of Director and Associate Dean Mary Raymond, launched Sophomore Reorientation to do just that. Featuring alumni panelists, this program displays how former students of different majors have applied their liberal arts education to succeed in different career paths. Furthermore, alumni spoke on how their personal identities—being a person of color, first generation student, etc.—impacted high stakes decisions, such as study abroad, fellowships/scholarships, career path, or graduate education. The voice of alumni is pivotal for the students to hear, but also for faculty members, who then can amplify their message across students exploring major choices, or concluding their academic work.

The voice of alumni is pivotal for the students to hear, but also for faculty members, who then can amplify their message across students exploring major choices, or concluding their academic work. The Career Development Center relies on faculty as a source of explicit encouragement for students in their pursuit of summer experiences that test drive academic learning in action. The Faculty's voice in this process has been pivotal to also help identify students' funding needs. In turn, alumni and parents have stepped forward to help grow the Summer Internship fund in an unprecedented 1000% growth in the past 5 years. It has become a huge win-win-win for students, faculty, and alumni engagement.

FRANKLIN & MARSHALL COLLEGE

In gathering feedback from current and perspective families, Institutional Research, advancement leaders, and admissions counselors, Beth Throne, associate vice president of Frankin & Marshall’s Office of Student and Post Graduate Development (OSPGD) decided to reorient her office’s annual report. Reflecting the significant commitment the college has made to supporting the career preparation and outcomes of its students, this piece now more clearly features detailed internship and post-graduate outcomes data (with knowledge rates), and points of distinction of the office. As such, her annual report has become a tool frequently used by admissions, athletics, media relations, and of course, in fundraising and employer relations tied to OSPGD. Each campus entity is now armed with more concrete and poignant data to share in their alumni and parent engagement initiatives.

COLGATE UNIVERSITY

Alumni pride is palpable at Colgate University. It is a driving force that maintains a high level of alumni and parent engagement, and it results in outstanding support for student initiatives. For the Career Services, Alumni Relations, and Advancement teams, finding new ways to stay relevant and instigating even greater engagement led to the creation of the Colgate Professional Networks. Under Director of Professional

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Networks Jen Stone, these ten interdisciplinary networks provide alumni-to-alumni career development, create recruiting and programmatic opportunities that benefit students, and serve as a fundraising tool. Assistant Vice President of Institutional Advancement & Director of Career Services Teresa Olsen has seen significant impact of these efforts over the first few years of this initiative. Unpaid internship grant funding has increased to nearly $700,000 this year, the number of formal recruiting partners has jumped significantly, and several hundred alumni who had not been engaged with Colgate in the past five years have found value in attending events, volunteering, or giving back financially. These efforts have increased the number of hands-on experiences that can be offered to students while also stroking pride and engagement among parents and alumni.

Each of these examples illustrates how career centers are finding ways to evolve traditional programs to move the needle forward on institutional priorities. Whether we focus on initiatives that leverage the benefits of existing alumni and parent engagement or on initiatives that cultivate further opportunities to engage, it is apparent that these collaborations have an impact on campus’ priorities that is far greater than a single entity could achieve. As a result, these institutions are thriving in new ways.

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Going for the Gold: An Application for a CASE AwardAN INTERVIEW

Oberlin's May Day Switchboard Celebration won a 2016 Gold CASE Circle of Excellence Award for student-alumni initiatives. The Celebration, which connected students who needed advice with alumni who could help, was a collaboration between Advancement, Alumni Relations, Career Services, and Communications. It furthered the aims of each office by empowering students and giving alumni a way to connect with and give back to the Oberlin community.

Judges from the CASE Commission on Alumni Relations selected the program from among 17 entries in the student-alumni initiatives category. Here's what they had to say about their selection:

The Oberlin Switchboard—a virtual space for the Oberlin community to ask for what they need and offer what they have—celebrated its first anniversary by encouraging students

(most importantly, graduating seniors) to ask for advice on May Day. The judges loved the play on the phrase ‘May Day,’ and how the institution created a virtual network among

alumni and students. —CASE Commission on Alumni Relations

We asked Oberlin’s Manager of Social Strategy and Special Projects, Ma’ayan Plaut, to explain how Oberlin made the campaign a success.

COULD YOU DESCRIBE THE OBERLIN SWITCHBOARD MAY DAY CELEBRATION?

On April 30, 2015, the Oberlin Switchboard—a virtual space for the Oberlin community to ask for what they need and offer what they have—celebrated its first anniversary by encouraging students (most importantly, graduating seniors) to ask for advice or connections about next steps beyond Oberlin.

On May 1, 2015—May Day, a phrase colloquially uttered in a time of need or desperation—alumni from all generations descended on the students’ posts on the Oberlin Switchboard to help.

WHAT WERE YOUR OBJECTIVES FOR THE PROJECT AND HOW DID THEY SUPPORT OBERLIN’S INSTITUTIONAL MISSION?

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At a macro level: starting in September 2014, Oberlin began the strategic planning process. One of the emerging discussions and ultimately, a cornerstone of the final plan, is the Oberlin 4+4 program. Oberlin 4+4 connects current Oberlin students and recent Oberlin graduates with alumni who can provide mentorship and advising as our newest Obies start down meaningful and fulfilling career and life paths.

Taking place before the new strategic plan’s formal adoption, the Oberlin Switchboard May Day Celebration served as a proof of concept for the plan’s emphasis on student/alumni relationships and demonstrated early the ways in which the new plan could help meet students’ existing needs. The lessons learned from this programming were foundational to the initial partnerships between the career center and the alumni association that are integral to the Oberlin 4+4 program’s success.

At a micro level: the mission of Oberlin Alumni Association is to foster communication between the College and its alumni and among alumni. The Oberlin Switchboard fulfills the last part of that mission—fostering communication among alumni—by allowing members of the Oberlin community to aid each other with the various steps along their post-Oberlin paths. The connections between the May Day campaign and our advancement goals are manifold. By giving alumni other ways to contribute, we offer them non-financial avenues to advance Oberlin as an institution and a community. Furthermore, these alumni are more likely to remain engaged and continue to give back. Finally, the students that connect with alumni mentors will be in a better position to give back to the college in the future, both financially and otherwise.

WHAT WAS INNOVATIVE ABOUT THE MAY DAY CELEBRATION?

Starting when we launched the Oberlin Switchboard in late April 2014 and through the rest of the first year of our Switchboard, we found that the most valuable interactions were between students and alumni on posts that fall under the category of advice. These are the posts that are easiest for Obies to connect with, since they draw upon the networks and knowledge of our community to strengthen all parties involved.

With the Oberlin Switchboard May Day Celebration, our aim was to have every single post have at least one meaningful connection. We promised the students who participated that if they made a post, we would guarantee that at least one alum would help them the following day. That served as a good motivation for the students to make their posts on the designated date of April 30, and the sheer mass of new posts gave alumni an opportunity to engage with a post most meaningful to them.

What makes these interactions special is that the college takes a back seat in this

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communication medium and allows the common thread of our community—we’re here together because of Oberlin—to drive the conversation instead. Two posts during the Switchboard May Day Celebration highlighted this:

The post that garnered the widest range of responses from the largest span of alumni from different decades was a post from a current student, Jacob, seeking advice about dropping out in order to pursue radical grassroots activism.

Jacob appeared at a tabling session, initially for chocolate kisses, but agreed to hear the campaign pitch while munching on a treat. After hearing the premise of Switchboard and the assurance that alumni will be answering every single post the next day, Jacob started hyperventilating “Oh my god oh my god this is great oh my god,” ran off mid-conversation for about 15 minutes, and returned a few times to talk to the tablers about the best way to approach writing his post.

Jacob wasn’t sure if he should post the question on his mind and he was urged to do so, mainly because both tablers knew people who had dropped out (and some who had returned) and knew that Oberlin folks have the chops to talk about this from many angles. The post was bold, brave, and a good thing to ask of other Obies for brutally honest and ultimately useful responses. (Everyone asks if Jacob is still around—he is—but the point is more that Switchboard was there in this specific time of need, and the community came in to help in exactly the right way.)

The second story comes from a recent grad named Miryam. Several people contacted Miryam as a result of her post on freelance writing and performing—three publicly on her Switchboard post plus unknown others via private message—another came from a mutual connection rather than an immediate Switchboard interaction. An alum who visited campus while Miryam was studying abroad saw her post on the Oberlin Switchboard and reach out directly to her advisor to facilitate an introduction. She thought she’d never again have the chance to connect with this ideal alum since she’d missed the golden opportunity to meet them the first time around, and through her Switchboard post, this alum was able to find her instead.

Jacob and Miryam’s experiences were not an exception but the norm regarding connections made during the Switchboard May Day Celebration. The Celebration initiated life-changing connections during this blitz of posts in May 2015 and they still continue to this day.

WHO WERE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCES? HOW DID THE CELEBRATION MEET THEIR NEEDS?

Oberlin students:

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• We emailed the senior class (nearly 700 individuals) on April 29. While the Switchboard celebration was for all Oberlin students, the senior class was the group who could stand to benefit the most. We included an example post from Taiyo, one of the senior class officers, to encourage similar posts from peers.• We advertised the May Day Switchboard celebration on our internal news site and included it on our weekly email newsletter received by students, faculty, and staff (readership of around 3500).• We reached 45 students in person through printed handouts explaining the day’s activities handed out during tabling sessions.

Oberlin alumni:• Our monthly alumni email newsletter was scheduled for distribution on May 1 already, so we added a dedicated section about our Switchboard celebration with a call to action to go help students TODAY. This message went out early in the morning on May 1.• The regional alumni mailing lists also sprung into action around lunchtime on May 1 with an encouragement to visit Switchboard and help with regionally relevant questions.

During the span of April 29 to May 3, we had 221 engaged participants and 612 actively informed Switchboard members. The Oberlin Switchboard gained 150 new users during the course of the celebration. 1,539 people accessed the site during the span of the Switchboard May Day Celebration, and these people spent an average of 4:03 on the site while visiting an average of five pages. 38% of the people visiting the site during the celebration had visited before; 62% were introduced to Switchboard because of the celebration.

HOW MANY ALUMNI AND STUDENTS DID YOU CONTACT?

Alumni contacted (45,000 possible):• 18,616 alumni were contacted directly via email newsletter with a 27% open rate. This is slightly lower than usual open rates for our email newsletter, however, the general theme and subject line for the email was about information regarding commencement/reunion weekend, not strictly about Switchboard engagement.• Regional email newsletters sent on the same day called out Switchboard engagement in the subject line and contained only one link directing recipients to head to Switchboard. Our solicitable base for regional alumni newsletters is over 11,000 alumni, with a 40% open rate for this message and 17.3% engagement rate for recipients clicking on the internal link.

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• Via social media, we had the potential to reach 5,500 alumni.

Students contacted (2,900 possible):

Every student should have received at least one touch via the career center newsletter, the general campus email newsletter, social media from the career center or through individual class Facebook groups, emails from Switchboard, via a PSA on the college radio station, or in person with a call-to-action handout from a tabling session.

HOW DID THE CELEBRATION MEET YOUR GOALS?

Our plans for the Oberlin Switchboard May Day Celebration aspired to have 100 posts from students offering their skills and expertise to open the door to conversations with other Oberlin students and alumni. Switchboard asks and offers are fundamentally the same thing, but the positioning of the post is what differentiates the two. An ask seeking connections could just as easily be an offer to BE a connection to others—it’s a matter of perspective.

As clearly as we communicated our goal to the Oberlin community, Switchboard and its possibilities are rather self-explanatory. While we were encouraging offers on April 30, explaining Switchboard as a space that fulfills many needs for many people meant that people used it in the way that made the most sense to them in that moment. On the whole, all but a few posts made by students were asks; nearly all the posts asked for advice or connections.

The window of time for student to posts for this campaign spanned from April 29 to May 1. The window of time for alumni engagement spanned from May 1 to May 3 (knowing the busy life/work schedules of our alumni, we wanted to buffer engagement time with a weekend). While we did not reach our ambitious goal of 100 posts on April 30, students made 40 posts between April 29 and May 1, with each post made by students receiving an average of four comments from Oberlin alumni. A total of 136 public comments were shared and 84 private messages were exchanged between 221 Switchboard users during the span of the campaign. Participants spanned from the class of 1955 to the class of 2019; the most active student class was the class of 2015 and the most active alumni class was the class of 2007.

Since this was a pilot project, it’s hard to assess in detail the long-term success of a campaign such as this, but we now have questions we’d like to answer in the future. For the next major Switchboard campaign we run, some things we’d like to explore:• Follow up with non-senior students who engage during the campaign and how they’ve engaged with (the same or new) alumni since their interactions on

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Switchboard.• Keep track of users who continue to engage through a post, comment, or message a month, three months, and six months after their engagement with a Switchboard campaign.• If there is a correlation between engaged users and users who give (for the first time or who increase their gift to) the Oberlin Annual Fund. Switchboard campaigns emphasize the time and abundant talent of the Oberlin community, and engagement in this nature will hopefully translate into a substantial and meaningful financial contribution in the future.• 25% of traffic to the Oberlin Switchboard during this celebration came via mobile, which was well before Switchboard had released their mobile app (the site is responsive; however, the app allows for deeper and more persistent engagement). Future iterations of Switchboard campaigns will incorporate the mobile app into marketing, since app users access and engage with Switchboard posts and users 2 to 14 times more often than with just the site.

There are some concrete wins we’ve noted: the Switchboard May Day campaign had the second largest number of signups since the launch of the Oberlin Switchboard—150 over the course of the marketing and engagement surrounding May Day (the largest number of Switchboard signups coincided with our email newsletter that introduced the Oberlin Switchboard to the broader alumni community—350 new users in a three-day span)—and several students noted through success stories that they managed to connect with interesting alumni who helped them in some way.

Literature ReviewArticles to help you make the case for integrating

alumni relations and career services efforts.

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Inputs vs. Outcomes: Are You Using the Right Data to Measure ROI?AN ARTICLE FROM THE SWITCHBOARD BLOG

Higher ed professionals face increasing pressure to collect data on the performance of their work, and to use that data to calculate return on investment. Our directive these days seems to be "All data are good data."

That may be true. But not all data are the right data.

We discussed the topic with some of our customer schools the other week at a roundtable hosted by Andy Shaindlin, founder of Alumni Futures, Vice President at GG+A, and advisor to Switchboard. Andy raised the issue of right and wrong data as a cautionary note about our growing obsession with performance metrics.

When we use the wrong data to evidence our success, we are not only likely to unintentionally inflate or fabricate positive outcomes, but also liable to accidentally mask inefficiencies and failures.

Take the following example. College A's career services office decides to invest 5 hours a week promoting and maintaining its career networking LinkedIn group for students and alumni. Within two years, over 5,000 people join. The office counts this as a huge success.

But is it? On closer inspection, we find that the group's 5,000 members have only held a couple dozen conversations in those two years. And only one of those conversations had a tangible positive result—one person found a new job.

On one hand, we have 5,000 group members. That's good! On the other, we have a success rate of two hundredths of a percent—.02%. That's not so good, especially for an investment of hundreds of hours of work.

INPUTS VS. OUTCOMES

The difference between those two numbers is, in Andy Shaindlin's words, the difference between inputs and outcomes.

An input happens at the beginning of your "conversion funnel." The conversion funnel is a marketing metaphor analogous to the "giving pipeline"—it begins with awareness and ends with a positive result (a gift, say, or landing a new job). As your constituents travel through the funnel they go from being unengaged and needing help to being engaged and offering help.

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"5,000 people joined our LinkedIn group": That's an input; it's at the beginning of the funnel. From there you need to engage those 5,000 people, get them to participate, and get them the help they need. "One person found a job": That's an outcome; it comes at the end of the funnel. It's the positive result you want, the positive result that demonstrates that your work is successful, and the positive result that motivates your constituents to give back in return.

You can see how using inputs as evidence of success instead of outcomes is jumping the gun. The input is just the beginning. 5,000 people joined our group—now what? With inputs, we have what we need to move toward where we want to be, but we aren't there yet. Measuring inputs and stopping there is like packing for a trip, filling our tank with gas, and then announcing that we've arrived. We still need to go the distance to get the outcomes we want.

A second example. University B's career services and alumni relations offices decide to collaborate on a student/alumni networking event. They count about 200 attendees, split evenly between students and alumni.

That's many fewer people than College A's LinkedIn group. But University B's outcomes metrics reveal that the event was far more successful: Of the 200 attendees, 19 reported that they made connections that led to jobs or internships, and the giving rate among alumni attendees increased by 10% the following fiscal year. As always, a number of factors likely contributed to that increased giving rate, but if University B can isolate the increase in giving among event attendees from increases across all of its constituency, it can prove a strong correlation between the input (event attendance) and the outcome (increased giving). How's that for ROI?

Positive outcomes aren't always so clearcut or easy to measure—especially when proving a causal link between input and outcome is difficult—but that doesn't mean we should be satisfied with using inputs as a metric for success instead. Positive outcomes are what we work for, and we should demand them for our constituents and our institutions. To ensure that we're delivering those outcomes, we need to track them, no matter how intimidating that process—or the data it generates—may be.

At our roundtable, Andy Shaindlin, paraphrasing Douglas Hubbard's How to Measure Anything, offered some reassuring advice to those unsure how to start: “Measurement is any reduction of uncertainty. You don’t need to know everything. You just need to know more.”*

* Andy notes that Chapter 4 of How to Measure Anything is especially useful for Advancement professionals.

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Home > Publications & Products > CURRENTS > CURRENTS Archive > 2014 > November/December 2014 > Next­

Generation Networking

Next­Generation Networking

Alumni offices want a robust and engaged network.

Alumni want connections, freebies, and a helping hand.

Here’s how one social tool—Switchboard—can build you

a stronger and happier university community.

By Tara Laskowski

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Archive/Keystone View/FP

Griff Radulski had a problem: 11 chickens needed atemporary home while his landlord reseeded thebackyard. A senior biology student at Oberlin College,Radulski kept the chickens as personal pets and alsomanaged chickens from the Ohio institution. So heturned to Switchboard, an online bulletin board used by the Oberlin community. The sitefeatures two types of posts—offers and asks—and within days, Radulski was contactedby Kira McGirr, a 2006 Oberlin graduate, who offered her backyard as a kind of chickenhotel (in return, she received as many eggs as she wanted).

From Portland State University in Oregon to Williams College inMassachusetts, a growing number of institutions are adoptingSwitchboard as an alumni and student benefit. The site was created in2012 by Reed College alumni Mara Zepeda (2002) and Sean Lerner(2010) as a volunteer project: a way to connect the Oregon institution'salumni, students, faculty, and parents. Now it's a business. The model isalso expanding to communities beyond universities, from womenbicyclists to meat sellers.

For alumni associations, Switchboard is a new way to serve and broaden their networkand engage alumni. "Community is top of mind at Switchboard," Zepeda says. "Wewanted to capitalize on the talents and generosity within higher ed."

No cat videos, political rants, filtered photos, or ads clutter Switchboard. It's just peoplehelping people. Stephanie Bastek, a recent Reed graduate, snagged an internship at theWashington, D.C.­based American Scholar magazine from 11 time zones away inSoutheast Asia, while Stephanie Chan, a current student at Willamette University inOregon, found summer work creating media lists, writing pitches, and developing casestudies at a San Francisco public relations consultancy.

"The success stories keep reinforcing that this works," says Mike Teskey, director of

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alumni and parent relations at Reed. The numbers help, too.Since Switchboard launched at Reed, more than 3,400 usershave posted more than 1,000 asks and more than 1,100 offers—requests and talents that might have gone unheard oruntapped without a tool to communicate them. Oberlin'sSwitchboard adds an average of two dozen users each week,and half of those users immediately engage with the site.

When Zepeda served on Reed's alumni board, she saw anopportunity to directly connect with more people, beyond the campus borders. "Collegesdo a great job," she says, "of hosting in­person events and connecting that way, but theydon't always know how to serve their network—or have the time and resources to do so."

Alumni associations might struggle with how to advertise an alumnus's art galleryopening or assist students who are seeking a friendly face in a foreign city. In addition,universities may decide they cannot promote the numerous crowdfunding campaigns orbenefit fundraisers that come their way­even though they generally wish to support them."We had requests like this," Teskey says, "but we didn't always know how to fulfill them.Switchboard fills this need to serve our alumni faster by letting them help each other."

It also strips down barriers to communication. "Students are often intimidated by alumniand have a hard time taking that first step to contact them," says Colleen Sump, directorfor alumni and parent engagement at Willamette. "But there's something about this toolthat makes it easier for that initial contact. Students are more willing to put [theirrequests] out there and see what they get back."

Do We Need Another Social Tool?

Yes, Zepeda says. The biggest platforms are more concernedwith mining users' data and selling advertising than connectingpeople. Professional networking tools like LinkedIn can helpsomeone find an internship or job connection, but they're lesshelpful for finding a place to stay the night before a big out­of­town interview or crowdsourcing contacts with connections to a

certain industry or skill.

While alumni relations' databases can connect alumni to each other, those databasesgenerally aren't user­friendly or intuitive. "Directories are problematic for many reasons,"Zepeda says. "They are often out of date. They unnaturally silo the network. Generally,people don't find one another through a directory."

This was certainly true at Willamette, where many eager alumni were interested in talkingwith students but not easily able to make those connections. Alumni could sign up for acareer adviser program, but it wasn't effective. Technology was partly to blame—with aclunky search system on the website, the process and the lack of results discouragedstudents and alumni. Students were also hesitant to contact alumni, whom they thoughtmight reject them.

"We surveyed alumni to see how often they were being contactedthrough the career adviser program and found that the majority ofpeople had never been contacted at all. This was a huge missedopportunity," Sump says.

With Switchboard, engagement levels have increased in just sixmonths. "It casts the net much wider," Sump says. "It's really like thatold switchboard model—if one person cannot connect you, chances are

they'll know a friend or a family member who can. It's our network—on steroids."

A Community for Young Alumni

For alumni professionals, engaging recent graduates is often the hardest task. Newgrads are not just starting out in their careers; they're also struggling with student loan

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payments, relocating, and figuring out their lives. Giving back to their alma mater is oftena low priority. But the demographics for Switchboard show that recent grads want to beengaged. At Reed, 34 percent of alumni using Switchboard are graduates from the pastthree years, and 60 percent of the current student body is registered for the site. Nearly40 percent of Oberlin's users graduated in the past five years. These young graduatesare sharing their expertise and generosity by giving advice on what courses to take,speaking frankly about a previous internship, or offering a student a free ride to theairport.

"Those on the younger end of the spectrum need a lot of help at this point—they'rebuilding their network, and they're in major discovery mode, but these individuals alsohave a lot to give," says Ma'ayan Plaut, manager of social strategy and projects atOberlin.

Engage First, Ask Later

Alumni helping alumni is great, but will Switchboard generate more interest in theinstitution? Will Switchboard users volunteer at university events or contribute to theiralma mater because of their connection online?

Switchboard's founders are thinking seriously about these questions. Too manyinstitutions ask for gifts without showcasing their value in facilitating alumni networks—that's one of the reasons Zepeda came up with Switchboard. "You have to lay afoundation first, invoke that generosity of spirit," she says. Basically, you have to step outof the way and let your network help itself.

Switchboard's setup works like this: The first year an institution implements the platform,it focuses on community engagement. After the second year, if the client wishes, theplatform incorporates giving prompts in strategic places, such as when someone posts asuccess story. The idea is that if an institution can give more value through a well­connected network, it will garner more gifts in the long term.

"Switchboard is a give­back, get­back situation that we hope will indirectly lead to moreengagement with our school," Sump says.

"It's a feel­good place," Teskey says. "I've heard people on campus saying, ‘You shouldSwitchboard it!' about all sorts of things. It's becoming a thing." But the true test ofsuccess for the Reed advancement team may come this academic year when itimplements a "Give to Reed" button on the site: Then Switchboard's impact on financialgifts to the institution can be measured.

Keeping the Community Coming Back for More

The biggest challenge for university Switchboards iskeeping their network engaged. Even if users getresults, they must keep returning to the platform for thecommunity to thrive. Better email notification systems

about asks and offers in key interest areas or locations might help users remember tocheck in to see how they can help, rather than just visiting the site when they need tomake an ask.

Yet for those who find success—from professional development to help with yardwork—a connection has been made, a relationship has been started, and a link to the institutionhas been strengthened. "One of the greatest benefits of any college experience is thenetwork you become a part of," Plaut says.

As for that temporary chicken coop setup at Oberlin? Not only did it give Griff Radulski'schickens a safe place to stay but it also turned into a learning experience for McGirr'sson. "My toddler loves the chickens, holding the eggs, Griff, helping Griff, and the factthat the chickens poop," McGirr wrote on the Switchboard success board. "He talksabout the chickens all day long and helping Griff, and again, that the chickens poop."

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The 5 Most Common Complaints about Alumni Relations and Career Services PlatformsAN ARTICLE FROM THE SWITCHBOARD BLOGThere are dozens of platforms that cater to the needs of alumni relations and career services offices. In talking with schools who use these platforms, I’ve learned that many of them share the same set of flaws. If you’re considering signing on with a company that sells one of these platforms, make sure that they don’t receive these five common complaints.

1. FAILURE TO LAUNCHPlatforms are substrate. They don't do much good without an active user base. But many companies sell you their platform without helping you get your community to actually use it.It's as if you bought a car from a dealer only to find out its gas tank was empty and you had to push it to the nearest gas station. Or as if you hired a wedding planner who didn't send invitations to your friends and family.The "if you build it, they will come" mentality just doesn't cut it anymore. When you buy into a platform, you need to know that you will get the support you need to make it succeed. Otherwise, it just wastes your team's time and budget.When you talk to vendors, ask them about their customer onboarding and platform launch plans. Be wary if the company doesn't offer that kind of support.Not all institutions need help launching new platforms. Large universities with in-house teams can often handle it on their own. But even if you are one of those large universities, it's good to know that your vendor has your back. And if you aren't a big shop, that help is essential.

2. CONFUSING INTERFACEIt's a no-brainer that a platform should be easy to use. But it can be tricky to tell when a platform's interface is unintuitive. You have the benefit of having the vendor walk you through how to do everything in a demo. Your users don't.If you aren't sure whether a platform's interface is easy to understand, try some basic user testing. Present it to someone who has never seen it before and watch them sign up and use it. If there are hangups and confusion, ask the

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vendor about them. If they don't respond well to questions or constructive criticism, you might want to keep shopping around.Keeping your platform's interface intuitive is especially important when you're trying to serve multiple generations of alumni. Older alumni won't use something they can't understand, and young alumni won't tolerate bad design.

3. INTEGRATION PROBLEMSThird-party integrations are one of the most appealing features a platform can have. Schools use these integrations update donor contact information, keep track of constituent activity, authenticate users using existing school credentials, and so on. Integrations make everything easier and more connected. Right?Not quite. Integrations can actually be very difficult for vendors to maintain, and they can break when the third-party application they integrate with is updated. A vendor might say they integrate with a sign-on system, but not every school uses the same iteration of that system, and each one requires hours of development time to get working. A vendor may promise that their product will integrate with your donor database or constituent management system, only to tell you later that the integration won't work because you're using an older version of that software.Integration is great because it's seamless, but getting apps to talk to each other in the first place takes a lot of work. Before you buy, make sure your vendor pays attention to the details that can prevent their integrations from working properly.

4. LACK OF MEANINGFUL DATADoes it work?That's not only a question you want to answer for yourself, but also one you have to answer in order to justify budgeting for the platform you use.Quantitative and qualitative data are the only way to evaluate the efficacy of your platform. You need to be able to drill down deep into user activity statistics, growth and retention rates, and patterns of behavior.Some platforms don't show you this data at all. Other platforms present data, but obscure what's really going on by cherrypicking the numbers that look good. When you're evaluating a platform's data tools, ask yourself these questions:• Does the platform track user activity data?• Does the platform track meaningful user activity data that help you evaluate the

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efficacy of the platform and your strategies for using it?• Does the platform display data in a way that is easy to understand and share with your colleagues?• Does the platform track positive outcomes so that you can you can justify its expense and take credit for your work?

5. THE VENDOR IS MORE FOCUSED ON SALES THAN PRODUCTThis complaint is tricky because it can be hard to gauge how true it is. But the crux of the matter is this: If a vendor isn't responsive to your feedback, isn't updating their platform, and isn't quick to provide technical support, they aren't allocating enough resources toward product development and customer support. They need to change their business model, full stop.It can be hard to tell how devoted a company is to customer service and development until after you've already signed a contract with them, and by then it's too late to reevaluate. Ask them these questions before you sign to avoid making that mistake:• Do you provide technical support to our users, or are we responsible for providing user support?• What is your average response time to a technical support ticket?• What features are next on your product roadmap?• What kind of say do we as customers have in deciding what features you develop next?• What features have you built at the request of your customers?• What were the last three features that you added to your platform, and when did you add them?

THE TAKEAWAYVendors you talk to will try to meet you where you are. They talk to you using your vocabulary, address the concerns of your field, and read what you read. But remember that they are also tech companies with their own vocabulary, their own concerns, and their own research. The more you know about how tech companies build their products, the more empowered you will be.

About Switchboard From the beginning, Switchboard has been our passion project. We started as a group of alumni and students with a simple purpose: to bring true engagement to student and alumni communities.

Since its inception, Switchboard has spread to schools across the United States and Canada. The connections that Switchboard has forged have launched careers, changed lives, and strengthened the bonds between students, alumni, and their alma maters.

On Switchboard, students and alumni ask for and offer what matters to them—jobs, advice, and connections. They get what they need. You earn their gratitude and boost their likeliness to give.

We partner with over a dozen institutions—from small liberal arts colleges to large universities—to generate meaningful, recurring alumni engagement.

We’d love to hear what you’re doing to engage your community and share what we can do to help. Visit our website or contact us using the information below to learn more.

mara@switchboardhq.com switchboardhq.com