Apr 1

Written by: Myra Norton
4/1/2008 8:55 AM

As I leave Denver, I am energized by all of the great learning I was privileged to be a part of this week.  In the last two days of the Academic Impressions conference on Alumni Affinity Groups, we talked a great deal about what “affinity” means to different institutions.  For some, the term refers to alumni groups defined by their ethnic affiliations.  To others, it is the various interests of the alumni that define affinity (athletics, music, business networking, etc.).  And then there are those institutions who define affinity in terms of affinity programs – license plates, credit cards and other merchandise branded by the school.  As this new approach to engaging alumni emerges, it is clear that we need to nail down some common language – something that will take some time.

One of the interesting conversations I had was with an alumni relations professional who has been tasked with creating an “alumni affinity model.”  When I reviewed the draft model prepared by the consultant hired by her school, there were four pages and more than 100 inputs.  When I asked what the purpose of the model is, and how the various alumni relations and development offices intended to use the outputs of the model, it became clear to me that no one had asked or answered that question.  Needless to say, this was incredibly frustrating for the staff member who had been tasked with developing a model for which she had no concrete application.  My intuition is that the purpose of the model is to assess the level of “affinity” an alum has for the institution; but the recommended model combines entirely too many inputs that actually indicate different aspects of affinity, involvement and support.

This raised an issue that we talked a great deal about for the remainder of the conference – the importance of “beginning with the end in mind.”  The Stephen Covey mantra is very applicable in the world of alumni engagement.  So often we think if we can just measure some stuff, we’ll come up with some magic bullet to get all of our alumni to rally around our institutions; but all of us know this is silly.  Should we measure alumni involvement?  Absolutely.  Should we develop success measure to gauge the value of our programs to alumni?  You bet.  But we should develop those metrics with a clear sense of what we plan to do when we have such metrics.  If we develop an elaborate model, and find that Jane Doe scores an 87, what will we do with that?  How will that inform the way we interact with Jane?  How will that change our programming?

Something to think about…

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