The university’s platform, Saint Connect, aims to connect current students and alumni through volunteering, mentoring, and various networking opportunities. This move comes after the University of St Andrews faced challenges with a previous platform provider, prompting them to seek a more reliable and future-proof solution. We had the opportunity to speak with Edward Findlay, Alumni Relations Officer, Karen Hall, Assistant Director (Opportunities) and Jenni Turnbull, Opportunities & Events Coordinator to delve into the motivations behind this decision and the benefits of Aluminati’s platform.

Photography credit and copyright: University of St Andrews

The Importance of Mentoring

One of the primary considerations for the University of St Andrews was the emphasis on mentoring within the platform. Recognising the immense value of connecting alumni with current students as well as alum-to-alum mentoring, the university wanted to foster a culture of mentorship and support. The Saint Connect platform offers robust mentoring features that allow alumni to share their professional expertise, guidance, and insights with students. Through this mentorship program, students and alumni can benefit from the experiences and knowledge of their alumni network, enhancing their academic and career prospects.

“We are now able to have a really interactive community where alum and students want to connect through volunteering and mentoring, combining development and careers departments”. – Edward Findlay – Alumni Relations Officer

Future-Proofing the Platform

Aluminati is an innovative platform that aims to align with the university’s long-term objectives. In today’s dynamic digital environment, it becomes paramount for institutions to select adaptable platforms capable of keeping pace with technological advancements. With Aluminati’s flexible and scalable solutions, the university hopes to effortlessly integrate emerging features and functionalities, thus ensuring an engaging and forward-looking platform for its alumni community well into the future.

Enhanced Visual Appeal

Aluminati not only addresses the functional requirements of the university but also offers a visually appealing and user-friendly interface. The platform’s intuitive design and modern aesthetics create an inviting environment that encourages alumni and students to actively participate. With visually appealing profiles, easy-to-navigate menus, and attractive event listings, Aluminati’s platform enhances the overall user experience and fosters a sense of community among its users.

Photography credit and copyright: University of St Andrews

Creating an Interactive Community

The University of St Andrews aspires to cultivate a highly interactive community where alumni and students actively connect, collaborate, and engage with each other. Through Saint Connect, the university aims to facilitate meaningful connections that extend beyond traditional networking. The platform’s advanced features, such as volunteering opportunities, enable alumni and students to collaborate on various projects and initiatives. By promoting these interactive experiences, the University of St Andrews encourages lifelong engagement and reinforces the sense of belonging within its alumni community.

Aluminati’s Track Record

Another significant factor that influenced the University of St Andrews’ decision to partner with Aluminati was the company’s impressive track record and experience in the field of alumni engagement platforms. Aluminati has successfully implemented its solutions at prestigious universities worldwide, building robust and thriving alumni communities. Their expertise and understanding of the unique needs of higher education institutions make them an ideal partner for the University of St Andrews.

Conclusion

The University of St Andrews’ partnership with Aluminati marks a significant step forward in enhancing alumni engagement and fostering a dynamic community. With a focus on mentoring and a commitment to creating interactive experiences, Aluminati provides the university with a future-proof solution that aligns with its long-term goals. By addressing previous challenges, offering an appealing visual design, and benefiting from Aluminati’s extensive experience, the University of St Andrews is poised to create a vibrant and engaged alumni community that extends well beyond graduation. Through Saint Connect, alumni and students alike can connect, collaborate, and forge lasting connections, enriching the University of St Andrews experience for all.

For more information why not get in touch with our team today to book a demonstration?

The post The University of St Andrews Chooses Aluminati to Deliver Saint Connect Platform for an Engaging Alumni Community appeared first on Aluminati Network Group.

Cheltenham Ladies’ College (CLC) is an independent boarding and day school for girls aged 11 to 18 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. Consistently ranked as one of the top all-girls schools nationally, the school was established in 1853 to provide “a sound academic education for girls”.

CLC partnered with Aluminati to build and launch their brand new engagement platform, built using Aluminate Community Builder.  The platform ‘CLC Connect’ was launched 9 months later to great fanfare and the college was quick to see a large cohort of registrants soon after launch.

I sat down with Heather Eggelton, Development Services Manager and Louise Townsend, Development and Alumnae Relations Officer to chat about their Partnership with Aluminati, their journey so far, and their hopes and aspirations for the brand new engagement platform, CLC Connect.

Building Something New.  Building Something Better.

Heather, Louise and their colleagues had been discussing the idea of a dedicated engagement platform for a long while. Their existing external facing portal was clunky and never worked in the way they had hoped.  Areas of the system were limited, often needing refreshing and were difficult to edit and brand. CLC came to a point where they wanted to expand, reconnect with their Guild Members (alumnae) and offer a better user experience for their community.

Heather decided that the time was right for a change, and put the project out to tender.  The team also visited colleagues at other institutions who already used community engagement platforms and discovered that some other platform providers on the market had not developed their products enough over time which meant the institutions in question were unable to build their community effectively.  Heather also experienced frustration when some sales teams employed multiple sales staff when a single point of contact would have been preferable.

Taking this into consideration, weighing up usability, functionality, strategy and support, and with engagement from a group of stakeholders, CLC chose Aluminati as their platform partner. Heather was also pleased by the level of care and attention she felt she was given by the company’s sales and client success teams.

“Aluminati’s staff could not be more helpful and approachable, even through the tendering process.  The sales representative was lovely and we were reassured of the depth of service when invited to meet with Daniel Watts, the CEO.  We realised very early on that Aluminati was very much going to be a part of our own team throughout this project – a real and meaningful partnership.” – Heather Eggelton.

Building Blocks

CLC requested all the modules offered by Aluminate Community Builder including People & Dashboard, Mentoring, Groups, Events, Digital Library, Opportunities and Social Media and planned to gradually phase in the increased functionality of the platform over time, rather than try to build the entire ecosystem all at once.

This allowed Heather and the team to focus on one particular user group,  Guild Members, and deliver a superior user experience for them before rolling the service out to other user groups such as their current pupils, staff, parents and staff alumni.

Heather noted that the rate of progress was rapid and that her knowledge of community platform building is now much greater than when she started the project and that she was in a much better position to build out the platform for these groups in the future.

Building Confidence

Heather noted that when the platform launched, it enabled her to think more about the metrics and key performance indicators once the team were able to better understand what it is that drives people to go and register on the platform. The CLC team quickly identified areas where mentoring programme sign-up rate could be improved.  From this, Heather brought in the Head of Client Success at Aluminati, Rebecca Whitton who was able to offer some bespoke consultation.  

Rebecca and Heather’s team were able to look at the language used to invite alumnae to the platform and developed a method of personalising their communications to deliver more individually crafted platform invites in order to increase mentoring programme participants.  The messaging was targeted at building the alumnae’s confidence to understand that their knowledge and experience will always be useful to their current pupils, even if they didn’t feel that it was.

Building Buzz

Heather’s team started the communication process in the Spring before their September launch with articles in their two annual publications to Guild Members.  Information pieces also went out in their monthly e-newsletters and on their social media platforms.

From this, they were able to build a buzz around the launch of CLC Connect and even bring in alumnae volunteers to test the platform’s user experience and gain valuable early-stage feedback.

For the big launch, a mass email was sent out to their opted-in mailing list of Guild Members with follow-up emails sent to non-registrants a few months after.  This follow-up email saw more registrants to the platform, which showed Heather, Louise and the team that their communications seemed to be getting to people at times that suited the alumnae, which meant they were able to register in their own time.

Aluminati’s Client Success Team were also able to show the CLC team how to identify incomplete registration forms and target those specific members with communications to remind them to complete the registration process.

Enthusiastic Guild Members and year group volunteers took to their own social media channels to demonstrate their excitement and the college quickly saw its platform membership swell to over 1,100 users in just over 2 months.

Building Benchmarks

When Heather and Louise began their journey with Aluminati, the platform was such a departure from their previous one that they found it difficult to set goals.

“For us, it has always been about the quality, both of the content and of the interactions on the platform” –  Louise Townsend.

When asked what quality meant to them, Heather stated that they were measuring the number of engaged mentors, the number of platform interactions, the number of completed profiles and making sure that each alumnae year group was as engaged and relevant as could be. One content area they found the most engaging for their members was the catering department’s recipes!

“We could have rushed out the functionality of the platform to allow all users to post their own content but we wanted to hold back to see what our members actually wanted first”. Heather Eggelton

Heather and the team are proud of their platform and they have achieved a lot in a short period of time from having no idea about how to build a platform to grow a member base of over 1,000 is a testament to their dedication to the project.  With a great user experience and branding, their user numbers are growing every day.  And the team’s goal now is to keep the platform and the content relevant, so that members keep returning.  Heather has a plan for the future.

Building a Brand

CLC Connect will be the focal point of all communications for Guild members. Soon, the team will be opening the platform up to other user groups such as pupils, staff, parents, staff alumni and parents of Guild Members.  

With a big Guild reunion coming up in the diary, the team will be ensuring that CLC Connect is the place to go for event information, photographs and other relevant content.  They also have plans for a business directory which will offer additional alumnae benefits.

Activating the additional modules offered by Aluminate Community Builder in the future will also help CLC Connect expand its resource offerings, increasing member retention and encouraging further engagement through general communication and mentoring programmes.

“One of the best features of Aluminate Community Builder is its potential to reduce the communication time between alumnae and College, which means we will be able to increase our productivity and be more effective when creating connections” – Heather Eggelton.

Conclusion

Cheltenham Ladies’ College now has a fantastic platform in CLC Connect thanks to the great work from Heather and Louise, alongside the partnership that Aluminati offers throughout the whole project.

The platform has a bright future ahead of it and we look forward to checking back with them later down the line to see how their community is thriving.

If you would like to see Aluminate Community Builder in action, get in touch today and we will happily arrange a bespoke demonstration and let you see behind the scenes of the world’s most customisable community platform.

The post Partnering to Build CLC Connect with Cheltenham Ladies’ College appeared first on Aluminati Network Group.

Stellenbosch University (SU) is a research-intensive public university in the Western Cape in South Africa. The University is spread over five campuses, with the main campus situated in the picturesque town of Stellenbosch in the heart of the Cape Winelands.

The vision of SU is to be Africa’s leading research-intensive university, globally recognized as excellent, inclusive, and innovative, where knowledge is advanced in service of society.  SU is committed to the idea of an inclusive world-class university in and for Africa.

In support of SU’s values of excellence, compassion, and equity, and with a focus on being an employer of choice, various projects support transformation, staff development and academic leadership development.

I sat down with Dr Margaret Orr and Almene Potgieter, both full-time internal leadership coaches at the university.  They serve as a resource available to leaders and managers to support their personal and professional effectiveness. As part of their mandate, Margaret and Almene were also involved in the creation of an online mentoring platform – SUNMentor –  for all SU staff.

SUNMentor offers a space where individuals can both offer and seek out advice, support, and wisdom across a range of professional and personal challenges.  It aims to create an informal mentoring community for generally shared wisdom and experience, while also offering a range of very specific and more formal mentoring programmes where staff can look for a mentor around specific skills or roles. We are thrilled to be part of this journey.

Knowledge is Power

Before the SUNMentor platform, there was no single system in place where a staff member could find a mentor.  Although various formal and informal mentoring offers were available, these were hosted on various small platforms, often using spreadsheets and administratively cumbersome manual processes.

Margaret and Almene wanted to bring all these formal and informal mentoring programmes under one roof and extend the mentoring offer to all staff – thereby creating a mentoring community that brought everyone together.  This became even more important during the loneliness and isolation of remote working during the recent years of the Covid pandemic.

“Lockdown emphasized the isolation that staff felt, and they did not know who to turn to.  We wanted to offer a space where people could feel supported and have a sense of community” – Almene

The way the SUNMentor platform has been conceptualized is that it is open to all staff, a place where people can freely admit when they don’t know something; a place where wisdom is democratized, inclusive and accessible.

“Everyone has something to learn and everyone has something to teach. And sometimes you just need to be able to ask the dumb questions!” – Margaret

Since the pilot launch of the platform, various formal mentoring programmes and discussion groups have been added – with a breadth of scope ranging from psycho-social support to academic career mentoring.

Bespoke training and delivery

Aluminate developed a bespoke training package for Margaret and Almene.  This allowed collaborative training sessions with our client support team but also incorporated ‘sandbox testing’ to allow them to streamline the platform build and delivery timeline.  They also ran various pilot projects with internal stakeholders and groups.

Margaret and Almene also worked with our in-house consultancy team to develop a bespoke set of KPI metrics and are developing a gradual launch process.

They hope to have the platform open to all staff by mid- 2022. We will be checking in with Margaret and Almene later in 2022 to see how the SU mentoring community and the SUNMentor platform is developing.

If you would like to know more about how our in-house consultancy team can help with your community management, get in touch today for a free strategy session.

Our team will be more than happy to show you how Aluminate Community Builder can help your organization grow and manage your community more effectively.  Book a demo today to find out more!

The post Knowledge is Power: How One Institution is Using an Online Mentoring Platform to Create an Inclusive Community appeared first on Aluminati Network Group.

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) is the global non-profit membership association dedicated to educational advancement—alumni relations, communications, development, marketing, and advancement services—who share the goal of championing education to transform lives and society.

In 2016 CASE partnered with Aluminati to build a membership platform that would connect their staff and members in one secure, online space and enable them to facilitate their learning opportunities and over 140 conferences and events each year.  We met with Leigh Cleghorn, Deputy Director & Graduate Trainee Scheme Manager and Christina Powis, Membership Services Manager to discuss how the platform has enabled their members to engage and grow with each other since launching it five years ago. 

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The post A Membership Platform Transforming Lives and Society appeared first on Aluminati Network Group.

We sat down virtually with Craig Doyle, Project Manager, and Amy Icke, Online Learning & Innovation Manager, at the Girls’ Day School Trust to discuss the progress of their community platform and the importance of user experience.

The Girls’ Day School Trust is a family of 25 schools across England and Wales, made up of 23 independent schools and two academies. As a specialist in girls’ education, the GDST tailors its teaching to the way that girls learn best – an approach that encourages its students to be confident, happy and fearless with the belief that there is no limit to what they can achieve.

In 2020, the GDST partnered with Aluminati to create a community platform – called GDST Life. This space is there for students when they join the sixth form, giving them the opportunity to connect with others across the GDST family of schools. And it connects alumnae in one social space, opening the door to a host of new networking opportunities, mentoring support, events, news and resources, and much more.

For alumnae, this meant that, at the click of a button, they were able to find mentors, events and friends; something that previously had all been channelled through their former schools and the GDST’s alumnae team. By giving alumnae the means to tap directly into their 70,000-strong community, the potential to optimise the power of their network became clear.

One location – two communities

As plans for the new community platform were being discussed, the GDST team realised the potential value of expanding the reach of the platform to sixth formers too. Through GDST Life, sixth formers have the chance to network across the GDST family of schools, form cross-school groups, societies and study groups, find new resources and join GDST-wide events. It also makes the transition from student to alumna much easier and ensures the GDST is able to continue to support its students after they’ve left the physical school gates.

“GDST sixth forms offer the very best of independent learning, supercharged by our powerful network of schools and alumnae, and having access to GDST Life is central to this,” Amy Icke, the GDST’s Online Learning & Innovation Manager, explained.

She continued, “During the pandemic, there has been an even greater sense of collaboration across the GDST. Over the last year, we’ve had to find a way of pooling our resources and harnessing all of the great work that was going on in our schools across the country. GDST Life allowed us to do this – to share events, a library of resources and a safe, informal space where girls could connect without needing staff facilitation, allowing for an increased focus on student well-being.”

Flexibility and personalisation

To do this, the GDST required a highly personalised platform build to allow for the organisation’s complex structure, with the ability to segment their community into staff, sixth formers and alumnae with ease. “This was just not possible with other platforms we considered, which made Aluminati a clear choice for us”, Craig Doyle, the GDST’s Project Manager said.

A helping hand

Being a new venture for them, the GDST team was able to draw on the professional expertise of Aluminati’s consultants.

Maria Gutierrez, Strategic Consultant at Aluminati focused on the user journey mapping of the platform to better understand the potential requirements and pain points that the users may have.

“The close connection between Maria on the consultancy team, and Rebecca Whitton, Head of Client Success at Aluminati, allowed for minor changes and alterations to our platform set- up to be made to be made easily”, said Craig, “Plus the ongoing feedback we were receiving at this stage was helpful, too – such as the positive response we got, for example, to the resources section.”

GDST Life has been up and running for some nine months now. With this, the team is currently in the midst of taking the next steps to build its online offer. Moving to the latest version of the Aluminate Community Builder by next month will enable greater customisation and functionality across the platform, and give the GDST the opportunity to build its online presence and communities even further.

Find out how the Aluminate Community Builder can help your community thrive, whatever its needs and scalability requirements.

The post How GDST Put 25 Schools on One Platform appeared first on Aluminati Network Group.

CodeVA is a non-profit organisation, based in Richmond, Virginia, USA, that partners with schools, parents and communities to bring equitable access to computer science education to students across the state.  It is founded on the principle that “anyone can code, and that every Virginia child has a fundamental right to computer science literacy”.

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The post ACS International Schools partner with Aluminati to power their online community appeared first on Aluminati Network Group.

I am the Senior Development Officer here at ACS International Schools and I only started six weeks before lockdown, so I am fairly new to the role.

Although 50 years old, ACS is considered a new international school. It started as the American school community with campuses in Wimbledon and Knightsbridge, and then moved over to Cobham. Now 50 plus years later we have 3 UK sites; Cobham, Egham, Hillingham, and a new school in Doha with students representing over 100 nations. Cobham is the largest of the 4 schools, with 1,400 students aged 2 to 18. It offers both the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma and an American curriculum, including the Advanced Placement.

Can you tell me bit about your alumni community?

We have between 30,000 and 40,000 records on our database, which we’re trying to narrow down and see how many are contactable. As our school is transitional, we’ll have students that leave at different phases throughout their schooling, so we may have students that leave when they are 12 or 13 years old, but we still have them on our records.

As they’re still alumni, once they get to 18, we could activate their accounts if they get in touch with us with their current details. There is a large contingency of alumni that left 30, 40, 50 years ago. Back then, we didn’t have school records as we have now, so we are in the process of  encouraging people to get back in touch. Therefore, getting our year 12s and historical alumni to sign up for our community was our primary reason for establishing our Community Builder platform.

How did you decide that you needed a platform?

It was always clear to me that the way forward in building our community was to have some sort of platform or CRM. At my previous schools, we used Potentiality. This had a number of features and was like a website/web front, where you could share news, events, etc. A bit more like a CRM. 

As we already had an alumni website, we found that instead of making things more efficient, we were duplicating our work. We updated things like alumni news and school stories onto one, and then duplicate these onto another. It was not user friendly. We implemented it before understanding the purpose of the solution or what problem we were trying to solve.

I also found that it lacked the features of a fully-fledged community platform, such as the networking features, so when I left my previous school I started looking into Graduway because before joining ACS, I had not heard of Aluminati and colleagues at IDPE were using it.

Global Connect Platform in Numbers

Why did you choose the Aluminati solution for your platform?

The platform has been up for about a year, and my colleague Alex and I have been here since January, so the decision was made before we started, probably based on professional advice from other schools and universities. When I was introduced to Aluminate, what I really liked was how alumni could link their LinkedIn profiles to their profile on the Community Builder platform. This meant that there was less admin work, as contact and work information is kept updated by users and it was easy to see who I wanted to connect with. 

If I’m fundraising, I can quickly identify  the people I need to reach out to on our platform and make that personal connection. 

It also means that I can promote opportunities for our students to find someone that works, or has been to a university, for example, Exeter, and reach out to them. It is a powerful networking tool for them.

How do you get students and Alumni to sign up to your Community Builder platform?

We are keen to bring our community together and really add value to the whole ACS community through this platform. So, we are saying things like, “come back and join our alumni community, you can get access to this global network where you can get in touch with old school friends, or network with other people, join events and local chapters, etc”. So, it’s a good motivation to join, and we are hearing from many people who have not been in touch before. It is super exciting!  

At the moment we have just over 2,500 users sign up.

Each month on average, we receive an average of 62 Alumni registering to the platform, and that’s done by posting on our social media channels and sending out a monthly newsletter.

There’s a wide variety of content that we share; from showcasing our alumni, sharing news on campus, taking images from the digital library. A picture of an old school bus created a fun engaging conversation online and brought a lot of traffic to the Community Builder, as did clips from our alumni events. Everything we share online is about the call to action and how can we increase sign-ups.

We reach out to our students by virtually attending leavers assemblies and graduations. The Alumni Relations team worked closely with the grade 12 careers councillors and Head of Year. Before COVID, we provided the councillors with iPads that allowed our students to sign the leavers form easily, and as a result we receive 75 students sign up to Global Connect every month.

How are you using the platform functionality to increase signups?

An example of one of the modules we use to increase engagement and sign-ups is the Digital Library where we can store, organise and share our content with platform users. Within that, we’ve got a couple of different sections. We’ve digitalised all our ACS publications; all the yearbooks from each campus are on there. Currently, we have 106 yearbooks scanned so far. We also have a magazine called The Dormitory, which we share through the platform and our newsletters. 

There is also a section called ‘Alumni and Friends’ where we profile alumni, and instead of putting things on our website like we used to, we put them on the platform. This is because before, with our site, after 3 or 4 stories, that story would disappear from the feed but with the platform, it stays visible. With the Digital Library, you can scroll through them, and read all the alumni profiles or former staff that are linked. Additionally, things like the virtual Zoom events that we ran are on there, and members can watch the recordings.

Can you tell me about some of the events you ran?

One that has worked really well is a series called Tea with a Teacher.

The first one was with our former Athletic Director, where he talked to the students about his time teaching at ACS and what he’s done since. He collaborated with one of his former students, and they’ve created a sort of running app. In the session, they talked about how they got the business going, developed the product, plans etc. It was great, we had about 15 alumni sign up for that one. 

The second event was with the former high school principal, Mr Baker who was with the school for over 30 years. Being with the school for a long period,  he had a big following that had many generations attending, and between 30 – 40 people signed up. Attendees were signing in from Australia to New York to the West Coast, Thailand, Dubai etc. 

I was strategically trying to organise time differences to accommodate everyone. It’s always a bit difficult when you’ve got the west coast of America and then say, Sydney, Australia…and organising everything from the UK!

We learned from the first one, knowing this time we were going to record sessions, and structured them so that we could create sound bites. With this in mind, we did the first 45 minutes of Mr Baker talking about his school experience and how education changed over the years, then students got to ask him questions. After this, we went around to each alumnus and asked them one-on-one how ACS benefited them and shaped them. 

So, we’ve got this wonderful video of people sharing their stories about ACS making great case studies, so we’ve been able to share that really effectively.

We also did a virtual event with our younger alumni at the university. They presented to our high school students, and we invited all high school students from the four campuses…I think about 50 to 60 over the two days attended, plus 14 alumni. It was a mixture of presentations, Q&A, and breakout sessions so everyone could mingle and discuss ideas.

This was an opportunity for the students to hear first-hand from our alumni about what to expect when they attend university, as well as for our alumni students to have experience presenting to a group of people talking about their own experiences.  

Daniel Watts, MD of Aluminati was our keynote speaker. He did a brilliant talk on the benefits of forming connections for professional and personal growth entitled ‘Talk to Strangers’ which was well-received by students and alumni.  I think his angle, talking to strangers, don’t talk to strangers…now you can do this within a safe platform… was really important. 

It’s a good message for ACS as well because you’ll have a student from Hillingdon and a student from Cobham – they don’t know one another, but they both go into ACS and have that mutual connection. They will be in the same graduating year and could end up being at the same university or working in the same company one day, so the relationship could be really beneficial.

What I did not realise is that we had some parents listening in the background, and we had some really positive feedback from them.

At the end of the event, each one of those alumni said,  “Here’s my email address, please get in touch with us!”  

So, it was them learning that they can help and network with other students. That’s how we want to build that relationship with our young alumni; that if they need any help, they’re going to come to us, especially via the Aluminate Community Builder, to get the networking and mentoring help that they need.

It is the sort of event that, beyond the current situation, we plan to continue doing, because our alumni are across the world, and this is a great way of supporting them and bringing them together!

We have recruited chapter presidents to promote these events in their cities as well as fundraising initiatives. 

You mentioned local chapters. Can you give me an example of how you are building those local groups and how your alumni are helping with fundraising initiatives?

Yes, sure. So, what we have done up until recently, is wait for people to join the chapters, but nobody willingly joined. So Alex spoke to Rebecca, your Client Projects and Service Manager who told us something we hadn’t realised we could do; automatically migrate people into the chapters, which is what we’ve done. Alex pulled a report from Aluminate, saw where people’s addresses are, and put them in regional chapters based on location. 

Now that we’ve done that we expect to see more interaction on those groups, and this is where it’s up to those chapter leaders to post things and to encourage more sign-ups.

Our American chapter presidents are there to drive and promote fundraising, and they are leaders and donors themselves. They will hold events, and try to encourage alumni to allow other scholars and students to have the same experiences and opportunities as them.

This week alone, we created 3 more chapters in the Gulf and South-East Asia regions.

If all your content is on the private platform, how do those who are not signed up see it?

We put snippets or reduced versions on social media. If readers or viewers want to read the full story or to watch the full video, they have to join the platform to do so. That way it’s driving traffic to our platform, and getting people to sign up. This way we can measure engagement on social media and correlate this with our sign-ups. 

It also means that members are notified when new stories are published.

We use the same method with our newsletter which goes out to around 5,000 alumni and friends, where again we will put those stories, but they will stop at a certain point, and to read the full story or watch the video, they have to go to the platform. 

How do you manage and validate the sign-ups?

Since the beginning of lockdown, and with the combination of the social media posts and mentions of the Platform, we are getting more people coming to us through word of mouth, and either signing up directly or sending an enquiry via email or other communication. So, if they sign up via our portal we get their consent and their email addresses, then validate and approve it. If they email or call we will validate them first and then send the link to sign up.

This is working really well.

What are your goals with the platform?

We want to increase the signup to an additional 500 students per year.

Our target is to get an 89% sign up rate from our grade 12 students from across the 4 campuses. As I mentioned, over the last year, we had around 72%, so we have a bit of work to do, but bear in mind COVID-19 happened and has been a bit more difficult. 

What we really want to see more of is interactivity on the platform. We set up the digital library, regional chapters, and have posted in there, but so far there is little interaction. I want this to become a platform where alumni are going to use it and I want it to be alumni-led, with people saying things like, I’m from the New York chapter, let’s meet for a virtual coffee etc. 

I realise that this needs more work, we need to build awareness, and as a team, this is what Alex and I are busy working on.

Beyond your student alumni, who else are you inviting to join your platform?

This summer, we are going to be inviting our former parent community on to the platform. 

This is because their journey with the school is probably just as important as that of their children. Parents have formed friendships amongst themselves as well as professional networking. 

We are setting up regional chapters, especially in America. New York, Houston and Chicago are our biggest chapters which will help a lot with our philanthropic giving. 

If we can encourage our former parent community to join these chapters, they can become involved in events, or even host events for us. This will really help us with our end goal. 

When and how are you launching the parent initiative?

That’s going to happen in the next couple of weeks where we will open it up to parents, probably starting with our grade 12 graduating class parents. We are testing it out with 200 parents, and then opening it up more widely over the summer if there is an interest. 

Why is getting parents involved important to you?

I think it’s very important to involve parents because, if you have those working for some of the top banks, or big engineering firms, and you’ve got a young student at university wanting to network or speak to somebody within a very similar industry, they are an invaluable resource! With that common connection through ACS schools, I hope those parents would want to give another student, who’s had a similar education to their child, that opportunity. 

But also, for parents themselves it is super valuable. We have incredible stories of people bumping into each other all over the world, complete strangers who, through random conversation, found they have that mutual connection through our schools. That bond has led to friendships and opportunities that would have not otherwise existed.

That is incredibly powerful.

Are you going to open the platform up to your wider community? 

At the moment we are still trialling our approach. We are not quite ready to roll this out to current parents, but certainly to former ones because they fall within our alumni and friends community. Then we will start thinking about whether we’re going to open it up to staff, so that  alumni can reach out to former teachers. Regardless, if we decide to do that or not, this platform gives us the flexibility and control to set up these various user groups and create personalised experiences for them.

Finally, how has your experience of working with Rebecca and the Aluminati team been?

Oh…fantastic! I know that Alex interacts mainly through Monday.com with your team, and I mean the responses are immediate. We get requests for information answered really quickly!

Having your MD Daniel on board with our event the other week was just fantastic, and being able to work with a company that really appreciates what we’re trying to do and get the message we try to promote with our students is amazing. You guys are happy to be collaborative, so I couldn’t ask for a better working relationship!

END

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Bath’s Ambassador programme was rolled out in 2018 to postgraduate taught international offer holders using the university’s engagement platform (powered by Aluminate), which is also used to run mentoring programmes.

International students at Bath come from 85 countries across the world, with the majority coming from China, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, and India. Alumni ambassadors on the platform span 46 countries, and are especially important for the university in cities where they don’t usually travel to for academic or recruitment purposes. 

The Ambassadors module allows prospective students to connect with graduates from around the world. It also allows them to browse alumni ambassador profiles to see where the qualifications gained might take them.

Chris said: “We started in April 2018, so have had a two-year cycle, and we’ve had huge, huge success with it. We have had over 400 ambassadors enrol, which is great engagement for our alumni”.

Data collected over the past 2 years has concluded that postgraduate taught international offer holders who access the platform are twice as likely to convert into students of the university.

“This is a great advert for it, and the results have helped us make the case for continued funding. It has also helped gain support from across the university, with recruitment managers and the admissions team really getting behind this.”

From the programme they found that:

• there is a huge opportunity to engage online
• passive engagement (e.g. viewing ambassador profiles) has a very positive effect beyond conversations
• offer holders like browsing and seeing what the degree can get them

Q&A with Chris Tickell

What does the programme look like?

On the platform, there are different types of interactions: student to alumni as mentees and mentors, alumni to alumni and the ambassador to offer holder relationships. Applicants get a unique link to join the platform integrated into our applicant site (through a Single-Sign-On integration), and once we get confirmation of registered students, we deactivate the access links to the platform for those that did not come to Bath. 

No one on the platform can see the offer holder, not even between offer holders. The offer holder profile becomes visible when they contact an ambassador and the ambassador accepts the request. But their profile is only visible to that ambassador and no one else.

What about vetoing ambassadors to participate / safeguarding considerations?

At the beginning, ambassadors would need to apply and be accepted, but now, staff in charge just keep an eye on data and interactions. Bath has never had a problem with an ambassador, as people that volunteer to do this are great advocates of the university.

Maria, Aluminati’s mentoring consultant contributes her experience from working at a leading UK University:

Providing terms and conditions when signing up to be an ambassador on the platform that are also accepted by the applicant is a good way of mitigating any risks. 

Would it be possible to be stricter with ambassadors?

Back to Chris: Yes, you can use the account type of a user on the platform to filter who is able to join as an ambassador or potentially run application forms and require approval before they are able to become one.

The platform allows you to create set questions for offer holders, and direct their conversations at ambassadors (avoiding common questions that usually go to the admissions team, for example about immigration requirements, thus saving admin time). 

Are the same people mentors and ambassadors?

We target specifically alumni 0-5 years out to be ambassadors, that are yet not mentors themselves, but any alumni is welcome to be an ambassador and can join by turning on their ambassadors feature on the platform. 

Was the setup process simple?

Yes, it was fairly easy to set-up, but with staff turnover, priority had shifted down. With the current crisis, it is back up as an essential project. 

What are the day-to-day resources required to manage an ambassadors programme?

For the Alumni team, this varies week to week – it can be an hour daily during peak times. For example, now, this is increasingly needed because of the COVID-19 crisis, where we need to generate engagement opportunities with both alumni and offer holders. There are also meetings with the Communications teams to plan campaigns. 

The Recruitment team handles most of the offer holder activity. The Alumni team share the data from the platform for them to take actions and analyze. The relationship with Admissions is also very positive. 

How to measure impact and conversion rate for offer holders within the ambassadors’ programme?

• Have informal ambassadors go to events and speak to students.
• Calculate the conversion rate for all offer holders vs. the conversion rate for offer holders that were part of the ambassadors’ platform.
• Include offer holders that use the platform that do not have access to any other engagement activity in their cities, and use the online solution as a way of connecting. 
• Open up geographical locations that are not easily visited by the Admissions Team. This adds value to the offer holder experience. 
• The first cohort of offer holders that participated in the programme graduated in January and will be asked to share their experiences.

Want to find out more about how Aluminate Community Builder can help grow and support your community?

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About The Author

Andrej Dethlefsen
Marketing & Communications Officer at Aluminati

He is passionate about education, communications and community.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

The post University of Bath finds online Alumni Ambassadors programme doubles chances of postgraduate offer holders converting into students appeared first on Aluminati Network Group.