Case Studies

A Small Liberal Arts College

Harford Survey Research was approached by a private. small liberal arts college to survey their alumni. Although the College had existed for over a century, they never had surveyed alumni. They had a vague idea of the questions they wanted to ask, but little understanding of how they were going to ask these questions. However, the alumni survey was one of four strategic goals which the College President had charged the alumni board with completing. The survey had the full support of the Office of the College President.

We formed a survey design committee that included key stake holders from faculty, staff and the alumni board. We did this to obtain their feedback on the alumni survey we were developing and to garnish campus support for the overall survey process. These persons participated in focus groups, suggested questions, revised items and discussed and worked with survey results. Committee members were also very instrumental in securing campus support for the alumni survey.  The College was not sure about the type of alumni feedback they would receive, and we wanted all departments to be prepared to hear and use this feedback.   

Survey results were insightful. Some things the College knew, but many they did not. Alumni feedback had described what the College was doing well, as well as where improvements could be made. Alumni indicated the types of events they wanted to attend and talked about why they do or do not attend events and participate in giving. Survey results drove the recommendations we made to better engage alumni and increase alumni giving.

Our final report coincided with the school hiring an additional alumni advancement executive and staff. These individuals took our recommendations and ran with them. They had the full support of the College President and campus community.

Since completing their first alumni survey, the College has made many changes in alumni programming, communications and outreach. Local alumni chapters were developed and local alumni events are now planned and hosted by these chapters. The College makes much better use of social media platforms, plans events that target the needs and interests of individual alumni groups, tracks the student organizations, clubs and teams to which alumni belonged and uses this information to bring classmates and friends together. The College started an alumni travel program, and now holds events around the country with the College President that are very well attended. Most importantly, the College now regularly surveys the attitudes of recent graduates.

The alumni survey turned out to be a tremendous success for the school. It changed how the College relates to alumni, and survey results have driven the strategies used to engage alumni. Alumni survey results are now a part of the College's strategic planning process. The alumni survey had the of support of both the College President and campus community, and this helped make this survey a success. Obtaining that support was much more art than science, but there are steps that can be taken to garnish this support.  Give us a call.  We will help you make your next alumni survey a real success. 

Contact us at 410.893.5152 or info@harfordsurveyresearch.com to find out more about our survey services.
 

A Women’s College

A Woman’s College asked HSR to update their alumni records system. They wanted HSR to build a Web survey that replicated a paper survey they had used a decade ago. We worked with the College to improve on this earlier survey.  Still, the final Alumnae Profile was quite long, collecting alumnae contact information, career outcome data, information about the student organizations, clubs and teams to which alumnae had belonged, and data on alumnae attitudes and interests. It used rating items, open-ended questions and rank-order type items.

Updating the College's alumni records was easy to accomplish. However, we also provided the school with some very insightful information regarding alumnae experiences, attitudes and interests. One alumnae concern was that when they visited campus during the application process, they felt that admission counselors did not present a realistic preview of campus life. Alumnae wrote that a large number of students transferred in their freshman or sophomore years because they were disappointed with campus life. These concerns were prominent and underscored the need for the College to give applicants a more realistic preview of campus life.

We also asked about alumnae interests, and identified several interests that were quite different from those we had observed on other alumni samples. Unlike other samples, the women were very interested in attending family-oriented events and participating in a book club with other alumnae. In fact, the number one interest of 95% of alumnae was participating in a book club with alumnae and faculty; an interest we had not observed at other schools, and certainly not to this extent.

This experience underscored how important it is to provide alumni with open-ended questions to write about their campus experiences, attitudes and interests. We used a linguistics program to analyze the comments alumni wrote and to describe what was truly important to alumni. Open-ended questions can provide a wealth of information, if you have the tools to analyze these data and make sense of what alumni are writing.

Contact us at 410.893.5152 or info@harfordsurveyresearch.com to find out more about our survey services.
 

A Career University

Sometimes alumni advancement executives just get it. They understand how important it is to seek alumni feedback and evaluate their satisfaction with the education they received. They are committed to allowing survey results drive their strategic alumni initiatives, and they have a clear vision of what they want their alumni community to be.

The Career University with whom we were working had a list of questions it wanted to ask alumni and a host of variables it wanted to evaluate. We spent considerable time talking with them about the data they wanted to obtain, discussing how they planned to use this information, developing questions and revising individual items. We spent a considerable amount of time insuring that our client obtained all the information they needed. 

The final survey was fairly long, but very comprehensive. It evaluated alumni experiences, attitudes and interests. It collected data on alumni use of social media platforms, the student organizations, clubs and teams to which alumni had belonged, employment data and their interest in career services. The survey evaluated alumni attitudes toward giving, and obtained feedback on why alumni make or do not make financial gifts to their alma mater. It used rating items, fill-in-the-blank formats and open-ended questions.

To offset the length of the survey, we used a very strong communication campaign to urge alumni to participate. A letter was mailed to all alumni inviting them to participate in the survey. An email was sent to alumni, and as many as four follow-up emails were sent to alumni who had not yet completed their survey. An article about the survey was published in the University’s alumni magazine, advancement staff talked about it on Facebook and a link to the survey was placed on the alumni Web page. A second letter was mailed to all alumni thanking them for completing their surveys and encouraging those who had not to do so quickly. The University truly went out of its way to communicate to alumni how important it was for alumni to complete their survey.

Another important aspect of this alumni survey was the fact that alumni advancement executives started working with their survey results right after data collection had begun. Using the Vovici Web survey platform, we were able to perform analyzes and develop tables and graphs while the school’s survey data were still being collected. We began sharing these preliminary results with alumni advancement staff two weeks after we had started data collection. We first looked at alumni attitudes toward the University in general, and then began looking at how these attitudes varied across campuses, colleges and alumni groups. Our focus was identifying what was important to alumni, and looking at how these items varied across different alumni groups.

We identified three variables that related to alumni attitudes toward the University – quality of education, focus on students and sense of belonging. There were twenty Likert-type rating items that related to these three variables. We also used three open-ended questions to obtain written comments from alumni about what they felt the University did well, where improvements could be made and why alumni do or do not make financial gifts to the University. Much of this written feedback related to one of the three variables we had identified with the rating data. A few additional variables were identified with these open-ended questions, and much actionable information was obtained. The rating data allowed us to objectively compare alumni attitudes across alumni groups. The written comments gave us considerable insight into the meaning of these rating data and the actionable information that was needed to support change. 

The rating data told us that alumni felt very highly of faculty, but were not as satisfied with how they had been treated by the University in general. Advancement staff had expressed some concerns about Career Services, and many alumni wrote that they were disappointed with the career services they had been provided..

Alumni felt admission counselors and the University had not been totally honest when they had promised students a 95% rate of employment upon graduation and career services for life. This was a promise the University had been able to keep before the economic downturn of 2007. However, when this survey was being conducted, jobs were very hard to come by for recent graduates, and many alumni found themselves unemployed or working more than one temporary job just to make ends meet.

After analyzing the written feedback we had obtained, it was very obvious that many alumni wanted help from the University. They wanted the school to set up job interviews, offer career fairs, provide resume and job interview workshops and offer networking opportunities with employers and other alumni. They wanted to have faculty and other experts talk to them about the employment outlook in their fields. A very large number of alumni wanted some form of career service or help finding jobs.

This presented the University with a problem. The University felt that no matter what they did for alumni, the jobs were just not out there, and the expense of offering free career services to this many alumni would be considerable. The school felt it just did not have the staff or resources to provide career services to the large numbers of alumni who now needed help. It had decided to tell alumni it could no longer provide these services to alumni; acknowledge to alumni that the promises of 95% employment and career services for life were unrealistic in today’s economy, and stop including these promises in their communications with students.

However, HSR viewed this situation as an excellent opportunity to address a primary alumni need that had been identified by survey results. There was just no getting around it, many alumni were unemployed and needed help finding jobs. This had to be one of the most meaningful, value-added opportunities that the University could offer its alumni community. However, there was the concern that the jobs would just not be out there.

We recommended that some form of career services be offered to alumni, and that these career workshops be planned and hosted by the local alumni chapters the University had been developing. The University would provide direction, structure and support for these workshops, but much of the legwork would be performed by local alumni chapters. Alumni chapters would also be responsible for recruiting classmates, friends and alumni to attend the event. We felt it best that alumni chapters have considerable input into the design, format and content of these workshops because we expected that alumni needs and interests, as well as employment opportunities, would vary across chapters. In some areas of the country, the employment outlook might be good, and job fairs, networking events and presentations from industry experts might be appropriate. For other alumni chapters, the employment outlook may not be as good. In these cases, the career workshops might focus on resume writing, job interviews or using social media platforms to conduct the job search. A reception or presentation by a favorite faculty member could be planned and this could be followed by a social reception.

We suggested that the University start out small and offer career development workshops at those local chapters and campuses where a strong interest had been expressed. We recommended that the University work with individual alumni chapters to design, plan and host these events because these leaders would have a good understanding of the needs of alumni and some knowledge of the employment conditions in their region.

One of the most important aspects of this survey was the University’s willingness to share survey results with everyone - advancement staff, University executives, the Board of Trustees, campuses, the alumni board, alumni chapter leaders and the alumni community in general. Our consultants made numerous presentations discussing survey results, and an article was developed for the University’s Alumni Magazine that discussed survey results and presented what the University planned to do with these results. The University made a very substantial effort to share these results with the University and alumni communities, and this went a long way towards making this project a success.

The second most important thing that the University did to make this project a success was to quickly begin to put their survey results to work. Early on in data collection, we had noted that alumni were interested in attending local events. The University quickly developed local alumni chapters, trained alumni leaders and began working with chapters to plan and host local events. Local events are now being hosted by alumni chapters and networking opportunities are being offered to alumni by these chapters. Events are being held that target individual alumni groups, and alumni are being invited back to campus to speak and work with students. Survey results are now driving many of the strategies being used to engage alumni and the University’s alumni leaders are very much involved in this process.

The alumni survey provided this Career University with much actionable information, and it was a good first step toward building a more engaged alumni community. However, what the University did, in terms of sharing results and putting their alumni feedback to work, really made a difference in how much more engaged their alumni community has become. Alumni could see that something was being done with their feedback, and they wanted to be involved.

Contact us at 410.893.5152 or info@harfordsurveyresearch.com to find out more about our survey services.