We are pleased to present the 2021–2025 organizational plan for the Indiana University Alumni Association. Built on the foundation of our 2015–2020 plan and our 166 years of history, it reflects our values and sets a path toward achieving the vision that all who love IU are advancing one another and the university. As we undertake our mission of activating and supporting the global alumni network, we declare three priorities. Each of these priorities is supported by strategies that will guide our efforts in the years to come.
Priorities
Cultivate belonging
To ensure a welcoming, equitable, diverse, and inclusive community, we will challenge discrimination and our inherent biases.
Deepen alumni loyalty
To build the alumni community, we will learn how alumni identify with IU and each other, and then offer relevant experiences that encourage stronger commitment.
Strengthen alumni relations across IU
We will collaborate with IU stakeholders and support efforts to engage more deeply with their alumni audiences.
Strategic Outcome
Our overall strategic outcome is to increase alumni loyalty to Indiana University. As we pursue this goal, we will regularly measure our progress against a range of metrics.
Strategies
Cultivate belonging
To ensure a welcoming, equitable, diverse, and inclusive community, we will challenge discrimination and our inherent biases.
Strategy 1
Strengthen the individual and collective cultural competence of our staff and volunteers.
Strategy 2
Identify and remedy perceived or actual systemic discrimination or acts of oppression and facilitate reconciliation, recovery, and repair.
Strategy 3
Recognize the diverse identities, perspectives, and experiences of our alumni and invest in efforts to represent all of them, especially those who have been historically underrepresented.
Deepen alumni loyalty
To build the alumni community, we will learn how alumni identify with IU and each other, and then offer relevant experiences that encourage stronger commitment.
Strategy 1
Understand how alumni identify with IU and how they are most likely to engage with IU and each other.
Strategy 2
Position the IUAA as a brand and content producer worthy of alumni trust.
Strategy 3
Encourage participation by delivering all members consistent, accessible, and culturally-relevant online and on-site experiences.
Strengthen alumni relations across IU
We will collaborate with IU stakeholders and support efforts to engage more deeply with their alumni audiences.
Strategy 1
Empower our partners to serve their alumni audiences by investing in scalable, enterprise-wide solutions.
Strategy 2
Work with partners to determine university-wide alumni-relations priorities and lead action on those items.
Strategy 3
Develop volunteer opportunities to support IU priorities and expand alumni engagement.
Strategy 4
Develop a process to manage and measure alumni-engagement activity and performance.
Tracking Plan Progress
The Indiana University Alumni Association will track the progress of the plan quarterly, based on measurable outcomes. Metrics will be applied to the plan’s strategies, with each having customized goal(s).
The Alumni Engagement and Annual Giving Leadership team will encourage collaboration and accountability among staff by assigning strategy leaders and teams beginning in winter 2020–2021. Strategy leaders and teams will lead efforts to finalize tactics—including assessing resource requirements and developing timelines—and execute on them.
Beginning in June 2021, staff will present an annual progress report to the Assessment Committee of the Board of Managers and at the annual meeting.
Measuring the Success of Alumni Engagement
Today, an alumni-relations program is not only about the breadth of engagement via event participation or the number of alumni and friends we see in hotel ballrooms around the world. It is also measured by demonstrating the depth of engagement. The deeper connections we are developing with alumni and the contributions we are making to the development cycle and fundraising outcomes of the university are now equally important.
At Indiana University, we have seen correlations with our work and philanthropic giving. During the next five years, we will continue to develop our capacity to measure alumni engagement and its impact on advancing IU priorities.
Since 2015, we have developed capacity to measure our work. As a result, we are now poised to develop goals and measure key performance indicators. We have adopted the metrics outlined below to support alignment of our organizational plan goals, the needs of our alumni, and industry standards.
We will develop a comprehensive view of factors that measure the success of alumni relations enterprise-wide, such as:
- We will begin the work of applying the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) standards and metrics to develop a baseline of activity, and then set goals in the following categories:
- Experiential
- Philanthropic
- Volunteer
- Communications
- We will continue the best practice of using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) methodology to measure alumni loyalty annually. Outcomes are measured globally and by appropriate segments, including member and non-member and alumni demographics.
- We will correlate these two metrics against each other to demonstrate the impact that engagement has on philanthropic support.