Measuring alumni engagement

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how best to measure alumni engagement, which I've found to be trickier than it might seem. Coming from a media relations background, though, makes one used to the concept of measuring the immeasurable.

I used to think of alumni engagement as a straight line, from disengaged to engaged -- pretty simple. Too simple. There are all kinds of engagement -- some visit regularly, some volunteer, some give financially, others glow with pride and spread the word, as it were. Each of these, and many others that I didn't list, are important elements of engagement and impossible to stick at the endpoint of a single straight line. For that reason, I'm not starting to think of engagement as an inverted pyramid (again with the media relations, I know).

The bottom point is disengagement. The top line represents the many points of measurement of engagement that are specific to an institution. Here's an example:

Once categories are established based on institutional priorities, you could then map individuals or groups based on their participation, drawing lines from disengaged to fully engaged in each area. Are certain class years or eras highly engaged at reunion but not giving financially? Are certain groups of graduates giving generously but not engaging with campus life? This diagram, I think, could help us get to some answers.

The next logical question, then, is what to do with it. That's the fun part. Talk with people. The pyramid and any other measurement is a good way to mine data, but the only real way to get to good answers and potential solutions is through conversation. See if you can draw some dotted lines between trends based on what you're hearing. Show folks what you've found and see if they can help you figure it out.

I'm going to keep thinking about the pyramid and other models for measuring engagement, as I'm fully aware that there is no silver bullet. I'd love to hear what you're up to.

Update: Jan. 2
Well, it's a new year and I already have a lot more to say about this particular post and topic. Most of my new observations and thoughts come as a result of a great exchange I've had with Andy Shaindlin of Alumni Futures. I'll paraphrase our back and forth here:

Why can't you do this with a regular graph?
Good point. This comes from how I was thinking that the relationships grow -- which is outward. I think there is a zero point for engagedness -- the point at which people just don't care, or think about you, at all. From there, they can get more engaged along a specific line (say, they start volunteering for admission), but it's important that you have the ability to separate that single element of engagement out from the others (say, reunion attendance or annual giving). Again, each institution has to decide what is the most important part of engagement.

Still not convinced it needs to be a pyramid (actually, Andy points out it's a triangle).
Well, I also like the triangle because you can define how broad of a band at the top you want each element to have AND you can rank the elements of engagement, left to right. So, ideally, you're moving people to that upper right point of engagement. "What?" Okay, that was a little much for one thought. Lemme 'splain.

In reality, though, it should be a radar chart -- the "zero" point in the middle and progress toward each point going out from there. When you have enough data, you should (remember this is all hypothetical) be able to generate some examples of what types of charts do and don't produce results for particular people or groups. This allows you to do some basic modeling of your programs AND see what is worth pulling back on and what is worth investing in more significantly.

Comments

[Andrew Shaindlin]

Cool stuff Charlie! I'll post some comments about this on Alumni Futures on Monday, Jan. 7.

[Dori Sonntag]

Wow - this is really great. What I would do with this is pick a good sampling of our major donors, map their engagement and see if there is any consistency. This would then allow me to have sort of a predictive model example in order to set goals of how we want/need to engage current major gift prospects to get them to ultimately commit.

[Holly Peterson]

Dear Charlie,

This is great. I've been pointed to you by Andy Shaindlin (who I met via the HEBC) and I've shared this with my team at the University of Exeter. We want to try this to measure engagement with our alumni. Any suggestions for how to actually graph the data? Would love to talk more with you about this.
Thanks for the great ideas!

[Charlie]

Thanks for your comment Holly...

In terms of moving towards graphing, I've been hammering away at this and I think the best way is to identify your categories and use a radar diagram in Excel. It's not as colorful as my original pyramid/triangle concept, but it's practical.

What I like about the radar is that you can develop a best case model and then apply your findings to that model to see where you need to stretch a bit.

Keep me posted -- I'd love to hear what you're doing with your program!