- Recent private school graduates do everything online.
- You can encourage communications and build loyalty with alumni portals.
- You will increase your donations significantly over the long term.
Your recent graduates do everything online.
Your younger graduates are accustomed to doing everything online anyway. They bank and pay bills online. They shop online. They contribute to other charities online. The web offers THE easy, efficient way to handle the majority of day-to-day transactions. So why not let your school make giving to its worthy cause easy and secure with online contributions? Another advantage is that it is very easy to set up recurring monthly donations online. You want to encourage that. It will encourage larger gifts too because the donor can spread the payments out over several months. Think of the way public radio and television do their pledge drives. They love to encourage and are very successful at getting regular monthly payments for large gifts.
You can encourage communications and build loyalty with alumni portals.
Set up a web portal just for your alums. Give them their own log on and restrict access to alums only. Populate it with news of interest to them. Everybody loves to know where Jodee is now or what graduate school Jared ended up getting into. Encourage newsy updates from your alums with simple web forms or perhaps a blog. Your alumni portal will quickly become the place where your graduates can catch up on school news and find out what their classmates are up to. The alumni portal will also become a focal point for your online fund raising message. (See the example below of how to let your alums know about your portal.)
Tip: be sure to personalize every fund raising email to suit the recipient.
You will increase your donations significantly over the long term.
Get a recent private school graduate in the habit of giving to his school right after he graduates and you lay the foundation for a lifetime of giving. He will think of the school when he reviews his finances, realize how much it means to him and can easily be encouraged to increase his level of support. As his income grows, so will his support for his school because you got him in the habit of giving regularly. Then it is much easier to ask him for a major gift and/or bequest when he is in his 50's and at his earnings peak.
Get professional advice.
As with so many things today you need professional advice and help in planning your online fund raising. There's a bit more to it than setting up a website with a 'donate' button on it! Contact these firms which specialize in fund raising for non-profits.
Example of an Alumni Portal Email Solicitation.
Here's the email I got from my university graduate association. It's a great model for you to use when you ask your school's graduates to sign up.
Sign up for Alumnilife and get your McGill Email for Life (ELF) account
Dear Mr. Kennedy,
This is a great way to reconnect with classmates and old friends!
***If you are already a member of Alumnilife, please disregard this email***
Alumnilife, McGill's new Alumni Online Community, now has nearly 10,000 members, and it's growing every day. The website gives you the latest news about the University, complete event listings for branches around the world, and the ability to enter a personal profile and look up other graduates' profiles. All in a password- protected environment!
To sign up, please go to
http://www.alumni.mcgill.ca/alumnilife
Click on "Go to online form" and you will be taken to the registration page. The personal signup code that you will need to register for Alumnilife is
00000
Type your signup code into the "Alumni ID Number" field, and enter your Class year
(19xx)
and Faculty or school attended
(Arts)
During the registration process, you will have the option of choosing either Email for Life or Email Forwarding for Life. Email for Life gives you an actual mailbox with the @mail.mcgill.ca address. Email Forwarding for Life allows you to give out the @mail.mcgill.ca address to your correspondents, but emails sent to this address are forwarded to another address of your choosing.
Please note that your Email for Life (ELF) account will take 24 hours to activate.
We hope your Alumnilife experience is worthwhile and fun.
Enjoy reconnecting with McGill!
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One last suggestion
Keep your website fresh and updated. Think of your website as an electronic display case like that display case in the main entrance to your school. Don't let things get stale and tired looking.
