Alumni Database

Judith Renfro

Cleveland State CC is about to build our first comprehensive alumni database in Blackbaud.  In addition to data elements such as name, address, phone, e-mail, unique student ID, date of birth, years attended and/or graduation date, and degree attained, what other data has it been your experience that we should use?


Thanks for your input!


Judi

Admininstrative Coordinator

Elaine Tucker

Engagement information such as Sorority/Fraternity, any sports teams or intramural activities.  Did they receive any scholarships - especially those scholarships supported by Foundations or other Alumni. When I was at University these helped us when we wanted to target appeals and newsletters. Knowing about the scholarship awards allowed us to connect the donors with the student recipients, which allowed the donors to really see what an impact their support made to the student.

John Molloy

Details like the Faculty/Department etc are useful as we often find that we need to segment by particular areas. We also find that the Post Nominals can be handy. We store those in the Suffix 2 field to give users the list of qualifications received "at a glance" rather than having to navigate to the Relationships tab.


If people are likely to have more than 1 qualification it might be worth coming up with a hierarchy and/or rules to define what qualification will become the Primary.


Another thing that is useful, and you've probably already thought of this one, is to identify where family members have attended the College, e.g. a son has completed the same course as his father etc. This helps build a better picture of the people in question.

Christine Cooke 2

You are setting this up in the Education Relationship correct?


Yes, the basics of Address, phone, email, degrees and major/minor, but also the individual relationships like parents, siblings, aunts, uncles cousins, grandparents etc. so that you can establish if you have legacy families. 

It is also good to know where they go after they leave your school, either off to another school or internship, or a job.


And, as mentioned already, sorority/fraternity, clubs, some schools will even note whether they are scholarship recipients and what awards they may have received.  All of these things can be set up in Education Attributes.

Judith Renfro

Thank you Chrisitine for your response.  This is helpful info.  To clarify, we are striving to identify which data fields should be the platform for our alumni database beyond the address, phone, etc. as to import the database into excel for mailings, etc.

We appreciate any insight you can share.


 

Christine Cooke 2

Judith Renfro:

Thank you Chrisitine for your response.  This is helpful info.  To clarify, we are striving to identify which data fields should be the platform for our alumni database beyond the address, phone, etc. as to import the database into excel for mailings, etc.

We appreciate any insight you can share.


 

Judith - I mentioned in my post, Education Attributes for Clubs and Awards, Relationships, employer, other school(s) attended and degree(s) earned, family members that are already in your RE.

All of this info gathered is utilized for strategic fundraising purposes.  Those basic fields (address etc.) are just output fields in an Export for a mail list.

Betsie Chilton

I worked in Development in Higher Ed for nearly 15 years.  We found it useful to know what college events or activities alumni participated in after graduation.  Volunteer activity scores high on the list of 'need to know' as this is a great predictor of some of your best donors, whether it's hosting an internship or networking event for students, or serving on the Alumni Board or Board of Trustees, you'll want to know who your most loyal alumni are!