Designing an alumni engagement scoring model to measure relationships and raise more money

You have probably heard the saying, 'Engagement leads to giving'. We also know that data should help us make better decisions. So how can we use our internal data to deepen our understanding of alumni engagement and raise more money? The Alumni Relations and Development team at Trinity University spent about a year working on a plan for measuring alumni engagement. Why did the Trinity team spend a year developing this? Because a well-planned alumni engagement scoring system can be a reliable tool for identifying and ranking major gift, leadership gift and annual fund prospects. It can also provide a useful tool to measure and track the level of engagement within the alumni base. While studying examples of engagement models, the team conducted an alumni survey and spent a year in active listening mode through a presidential tour to visit alumni chapters in 22 cities. The result from the planning process, survey analysis and active listening is a scoring model that measures alumni engagement based on giving and non-giving support of the university. This paper will share the Trinity experience in developing the model and provide some of the behind-the-scenes discoveries of what really matters.