From Graduates to Advocates: Empowering Alumni Engagement

The Benefits of Encouraging Former Graduates to become Active Alumni

When your graduates put on their cap and gown, listen to their name being called, and walk across the stage to get their diploma, they are officially a graduate of your school and no longer an active member of the student body. However, by no means does this mean that they are no longer a member of your school’s community. As an administrator or alumni coordinator, it’s crucial for you to encourage your former graduates to stay active in your school’s community. The transition from student to alumni can be complicated and is a time that is filled with the many challenges that come post-graduation such as finding a job, moving locations, and starting a family. Being an active alumni might not be on the top of their priority list, but it is your job as an administration to keep them informed, engaged, and active in your community. Fortunately, that process is now easier than ever.

Here at Campus Abuzz, our mobile app platform gets launched at schools to help deans, HR personnel, alumni coordinators, and other administrators to keep their former students connected with our full student life cycle platform. Today’s article will discuss how it works. Let’s dive into it!

What Does Alumni Engagement Look Like?

GIVING – giving directly on the app can help your alumni community to be engaged and involved. On our mobile app, we break down the different categories of alumni engagement in relation to the many different features that are provided within our product specifically for alumni purposes. According to Alumni Access, 97% of college graduates own a smartphone. Additionally, 99% of all Americans between 18-29 years old also own a mobile phone. This means that the vast majority of both your students (who will become alumni in the future) and your current alumni have smartphones with access to download and communicate through mobile apps.

Abuzz is proud to offer our Alumni connection platform that acts as an all-in-one alumni management solution, allowing your alumni community to easily connect with their graduating class and gain access to the different features of engagement. Here is what alumni engagement looks like:

• Giving: The simplest way for them to be active as an alumni is to give. Supporting scholarships or other fundraising efforts by your school is a great way to show your support.
• Networking: They can browse profiles, filter searches, direct message, and save contacts to network on our platform with other alumni from their alma mater.
• Messaging: They can find and message other active alumni from your school in order to stay connected and engaged with other members of the community.
• Events: Attending alumni events is not only a great way to network with fellow alumni, but also to meet and mentor current students by sharing their knowledge and experiences.
• News: Stay up-to-date on the latest news of your school. Campuses, curriculums, and other aspects of schools frequently change, so news allows them to stay engaged and informed.

They might have graduated, but they are still part of your school. Increase your alumni engagement efforts to create positive experiences for your entire alumni community from every class.

Help Them to Navigate the Complex Journey from Student to Alumni

Emotions can run high and anxiety can run rampant when they turn their tassel from the right to the left. It is symbolic of a change happening and of them moving into a new chapter of life. Many students live on their school’s campus, or at least commute and spend many hours a week there for years. Even if they feel ready for what’s next, there is likely a part of them that is scared of the change and sad to be leaving. This is exactly why using our platform is beneficial for them!

As an administration or alumni coordinator, encouraging alumni engagement from the get-go is the best way to keep those new alumni active for years to come. If your school joins Campus Abuzz and allows your alumni to connect with one another, they will immediately feel a sense of connection and feel less alone as they depart from your campus. After all, most recent graduates are likely feeling a similar sense of school pride and fear of leaving, and might also want to connect with their fellow alumni. Not only can your newest alumni bond over the common ground of their alma mater, but our platform also allows them to network with people of different graduating classes, majors, and careers. One never knows what a simple message might eventually lead to. Here is a helpful list of the steps that you can encourage your latest grads to take as they make this major transition:

• Remember your roots, but continue to grow
• Branch out by growing your network
• Download Abuzz to stay connected
• Use what you’ve learned at our school to thrive on your own
• Stay informed on school news and news about our community
• Wherever life takes you, find your way back to our campus

Encourage your recent community of alumni to find their way back to campus from time to time. Whether they are attending a formal alumni event or simply going for a stroll past their old dorm building or favorite dining hall, it is a nice reminder to remember that their school is still there and that other students are getting to experience it just like they got to.

A visit can also serve as a reminder of all the skills and knowledge that they learned along the way that have prepared them for where they are in life now.

One action that you can personally take as a school administrator to help your alumni with this transition is to schedule a demo of our full student lifecycle platform in order to see it for yourself. When you schedule a demo, you’ll get to see all of the powerful tools that came with our software and you’ll understand the scope of how our software will impact your alumni engagement efforts! Turn former students into active alumni.

Become an Active Alumni Today

Help remind your graduates that being an active alumni at your alma mater is a rewarding experience for many reasons. Alumni engagement allows your administration team to easily connect with your alumni community, and allows them to connect with each other. The Abuzz platform is a full student life cycle platform that is revolutionizing campus alumni engagement efforts nationwide.

Send us a message with any questions and a member of staff will buzz you back as soon as possible. Thank you for reading!