Congratulations, you started working in Alumni relations. Maybe you’re a communications adviser, a relations officer, data manager or digital marketeer. Or maybe you’re doing all those roles as one single force of nature, who knows! Regardless, everyone can use a bit of help when starting out a new role. So, in this post I want to take you along in how your first 90 days in Alumni Relations could look.

Expect some practical tips, some must-reads and some ideas to run your first campaigns to (re)connect with your alumni community. Every situation, community and university is different in terms of culture and mission/vision of course. But some principles are universal when it comes to maintaining your alumni’s details, alumni engagement and data management. I’ll hit each of these three topics in this post. In the future I will go even deeper into each of these topics as well!

I know what it’s like to start a new job. Having worked for several start-ups after graduating, I started my alumni relations career at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University Rotterdam. After five years there I recently switched to another faculty, the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences. In all these roles I always had to start from scratch, figuring out what to do, where to go and how to get there. I learned that having a little bit of help is never a bad thing, so I hope this post does that. Let’s get started!

Get your data organized

When starting out at a new job, everything is interesting and exciting. You want to launch and participate in every project you can think of or hear of. Mailing campaigns? “Let’s go!”, or organizing a job-fair? “Where do I sign up?”. All of that might sound amazing to do, but what will the result be if you rush in without knowing your alumni base and community?

One thing I always practiced, before starting any role, was understanding the target audience. In this case, the alumni community. And I mean understand it on a practical, numerical level. How many are there, in what region do most reside, do we know their current jobs? No matter how large or small your alumni community is, you need to base your strategy on these kinds of data.

New to Alumni Data Management? Check out this post on two must-read books I recommend to get you into the mindset of data-driven working.

So start compiling the numbers. Gather information from wherever you can. Start out with checking LinkedIn for example. How many alumni can you track just by searching for educational institutes. What industry or company names do you see recurring there? Checking in with your faculty or program managers is also a great starting point. Often they’ll have some collected data or reports lying around for accreditation purposes, even if it’s a bit dated.

Checklist for your first 90 days in Alumni Relations

• Month 1 – Internal data audit and investigation
  • Check with Program managers, faculty and marketing or communications teams for any existing reports, numbers or sheets.
    • Often accreditation submissions and audits require alumni data, try locating these reports first.
  • Policy advisors of your institute often sit on piles of data and reports as well, it’s worth a check!
  • Is there a central alumni or relations CRM? If so, get familiar with it and launch some queries!
    • Need to brush up on your database vocabulary? Check out the Data DMBOK guide.
  • Gather everything you can find that is relevant.
• Month 2 – LinkedIn and online investigation
  • Check out your institute’s LinkedIn page, see if any groups already exist and do a search on profiles that graduated from your institute.
    • You can also do this by applying some educational filters via the people search page.
  • University LinkedIn pages also have a “Alumni” tab, which comes with some nice graphs on their current career and location.
    • It’s not 100% complete, but it’s a good start!
  • Check out your university’s webpage as well as any affiliated existing alumni clubs.
    • Again, gather everything you can.
• Month 3 – Audit and compile the numbers
  • From all your sources, try and lift the numbers that you need the most. Get those in an overview, like Excel, and unleash some graphs on it. My advice is to focus on the below metrics:
    • Total alive alumni categorized by
      • graduation year
      • program
      • city/region
      • Employer, role or industry
    • Total contactable alumni, like those with a postal or email address who are still alive and reachable.

A pattern will start to emerge once you start bringing these numbers together. And that pattern is what will help you define a strategy or direction. Maybe you see that the majority of your alumni have graduated in a certain year or time-span. Or perhaps one program, city, region or industry is more represented than the other. Knowing these kinds of metrics will help you focus.

Usually the low-hanging fruits are to try and tailor your strategy to the majority of your alumni-base. Think of industry-related workshops or lectures, a perfect fit for alumni working in those sectors. But it can also mean that you might want to offer a bit more support to the less-represented groups. Think of alumni abroad by starting local chapters, unemployed alumni. Or what about the more senior or almost retired group of alumni? They have a wealth of knowledge and experience that your younger alumni might benefit from immensely.

Bonus: The toolkit that got me through my first weeks

Before I started my current role, I treated myself to a few small things to stay organized. Nothing fancy, just tools that made the job of getting organized a little easier. Not everything has to be digital these days, and I often find that taking notes helps me stay focused on my goals. Of course this is a personal preference, so feel free to ignore these ramblings!

A good notebook. I know, everything is digital. But my first weeks were a blur of names, half-finished ideas and quick scribbled numbers from meetings. A notebook that survives being dragged across campus beats a Notes app you never open again. I use these plain and simple black notebooks, can’t beat a classic. I must have filled five of these by now.

Planner templates. The honest truth about my first 90 days: the plan only worked because I broke the months down into weeks. Month 1 was intimidating with all the ideas, meetings and introductions being thrown at me. I used a few planner templates to keep me on track and to cross off tasks. I made quite a few templates that are printable, but also work on tablets and in popular note-apps, over a year ago. You can find them on my Etsy store.

A whiteboard. For mapping out the community: cohorts, regions, industries, ideas. There is something about physically standing in front of your data that makes patterns click. Mine is covered in sticky notes and it’s the best mess in my office. I assume your office is well-stocked at a university. In case it’s not, this basic whiteboard will perfectly serve your needs. And at worst it’s always useful at home!

None of this is essential. A pen and paper and a laptop will get you a long way. But if you’re going to make the data-gathering phase comfortable, these are some tools to help you stay on track!

Your first 90 days in alumni relations should focus on gathering metrics and data. These insights will be your greatest ally and asset when shaping your strategy. The choice ultimately is yours. It’s the data, however, that will help you make these decisions and direct your strategy.