Updated 2021
This whitepaper updates The Napa Group’s regular insights on Alumni Relations and on Advancement over the past several years. Now that the intense phase of the COVID-19 pandemic is subsiding, new data can be coupled with previous trends to provide a high-level view of trends in these organizations.
As we wrote in January 2020, before the pandemic temporally disrupted higher education and society, no longer can alumni associations stake the claim of “gatekeeper” of connections between alumni and of alumni with the institution. With LinkedIn and other social media, alumni can directly connect with each other and the institution easily and efficiently. This is forcing alumni organizations and institutional “advancement” programs in general to position and articulate their unique value propositions for their alumni and their institutions in new ways…