In last few months, we interacted with 220 University Alumni Offices across North America & 42% of them quoted Alumni Volunteer Participation as one of their major challenges.
Alumni Volunteers are one of the key pillars stone of any alumni office. Be it Batch Coordinators Chapter Coordinators or just Event Volunteers, Alumni Volunteers bring tremendous strength to alumni relations.
Hence here we bring you 5 Ways to Boost Alumni Participation in your alumni office:
Keep Communicating to the alumni community: Many of the time, the Alumni offices look up to a fraction of alumni, who appear to be interested in volunteering initially. As the activities pass, alumni volunteers start becoming inactive. Hence maintaining communication with the whole alumni community and sharing the volunteer requirements with them can get you, new volunteers, to fill the deficit of the inactive ones.
Decentralize their Responsibilities: In our study, the average span of an Alumni Volunteer is 27 Months. In this period, they get involved in numerous activities which leads to fatigue. Hence decentralizing the responsibilities among the volunteers can help you grow their average span and hence boost their participation
Maintain Transparency: One of the major drivers for the alumni volunteers to get involved in alumni relations is the major impact that they believe they can make on the alumni community and on their alma mater. They look forward to learn about the outcomes of their effort. Hence, keeping them up-to-date gives them a larger motivation to continue their involvement
Eliminate Hierarchy: Usually, the younger alumni are more willing to get involved in volunteering activities. When they receive any discriminatory behaviour, being compared to senior volunteers or their contribution is shadowed by senior members, these energetic volunteers lose interest in activities, which eventually breaks the ‘Volunteer Evolution Cycle’. Hence treating all the volunteers equally not only creates a healthy environment but allows every volunteer to do more than what is expected from them
Recognize their efforts: Many of the times Volunteers get judged by their peers that when they could do many other things, why would they want to go back to serve their alma mater. At times this can discourage the efforts of the volunteers and lead to their inactivity. Recognizing their efforts or giving them tokens of recognition that they can flaunt among their peers can be highly motivating and can influence their peers as well to get involved.
The basic idea here is to think from a ‘Volunteer’s’ Point of view and what shall drive them to continue their involvement. The incorporation of the above-mentioned ways can generate results for you in just 30 Days. Feel free to write to us on [email protected] to share your outcomes, any other ideas or challenges that you face and we will make sure, it gets addressed and shared with the ecosystem of alumni officers.
February 16, 2023
