Alumni Management Software

What are the common features of alumni management software?

• Event management: Plan, organize, and manage alumni events and other gatherings. This feature enables creating and promoting online and offline events with details such as date, time, locations, attendees, and other relevant details. Users can also manage registrations, send invitations, and collect payments. 

• Member directory: Maintain an updated database of every alumni member with details such as name, email, and phone number. Members can also use the tool to search and connect with others in the alumni network.

• Membership management: Capture and manage the details of the alumni network in a centralized database. The details include contacts, membership year, programs attended, and other relevant alumni data. This feature also tracks membership status, including their active or inactive status, membership levels, and payments due.

What are the benefits of alumni management software?

• Improve communication: Using an alumni management system improves communication between the organization and its members. Update alumni members on important gatherings and events in real time via text message or email. Additionally, members can use a centralized alumni directory to find and connect with others. Some tools also offer email campaign creation and social media integration to boost outreach and increase the impact on the community.

• Access to a centralized alumni database: You can access the alumni system’s centralized database to look for alumni information such as contact details, educational history, engagement history, and more. This helps you maintain relationships with the alumni members and encourage event participation. With a centralized database, you can access alumni information anytime and anywhere.

• Streamline event management: Alumni management software provides a centralized dashboard for event creation and management. You can also use the dashboard to accept and record registrations and payments, send out invitations via email or text message, and track the attendee engagement. The tool helps users automate event management processes, reducing errors, effort, and costs. This lets you focus on increasing outreach through invitations and enhancing attendee engagement.

• Increase fundraising: Using alumni management software, you get access to a targeted platform for creating and managing fundraising events. You can create campaigns with engaging elements, such as videos, polls, etc., to ensure alumni engagement. Furthermore, the tool lets you track and capture donor information to maintain a database and target future fundraising campaigns. By targeting existing and potential donors, you can optimize donation growth while managing your campaign budgets and reducing the overall business cost.

• Monitor alumni engagement: You can monitor alumni engagement using the tool’s analytics dashboard. The dashboard lets you track and monitor fundraising campaigns, membership programs, and other alumni events. In addition, you can track and analyze communication with the alumni community via email, text messages, and social media platforms. This data can be used to create reports and dashboards to gain actionable insights to improve alumni engagement strategies for greater impact.

How much does alumni management software cost?

Most alumni management software products on the market are priced on a per month basis, with entry-level pricing plan ranges from $29 to $403+* per month. An enterprise product that’s priced higher may include additional features such as unlimited members, job boards, and a self-service member portal.

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offerings found on vendor websites as of March 30, 2023.

How to choose the right alumni management software

• Look for an alumni engagement dashboard: Your selected alumni management software should let you analyze the events and campaigns for activity and engagement. The metrics to track include the number of registrations, actual attendees, donations received, active participants, and other relevant data. These metrics help you identify the areas of improvement and re-create your engagement strategy to reach alumni members. The tool should let you create reports with specific metrics and use preferred visualization elements such as graphs and charts for detailed and clear analysis.

• Assess the communication and collaboration tools: Verify the communication and collaboration abilities of the selected alumni management software. These abilities include built-in chat, email, and automated reminders. Additionally, you should be able to integrate third-party chat applications and social media platforms for increased outreach. Also, the tool should let you share dashboards and documents with your team members using role-based access for quick and secure access to information.

• Consider built-in payments platforms: Most alumni management solutions allow for managing event registrations and receiving payments. Opt for a tool that offers a built-in payment platform with multiple options for members to select based on convenience. The options include debit cards, credit cards, and internet banking. Having a built-in payments platform speeds up the capturing and tracking of registrations and donations. You can refer to the payment data, send membership renewal reminders, or export it into spreadsheets for external sharing without switching between applications.

• Check the social post history: Check the level of engagement and impact of the previous events and campaigns hosted on social media. This requires access to the history of posts along with the engagement data. Most alumni management software providers cap the number of days for which the history is stored, ranging from one month to 12 months. You need to check this cap for the selected software subscription plan and ways to increase the limit, if less.

• Opt for customizable reminders: Alumni management software lets you automate sending payment reminders and event invitations. You can select from a range of templates; however, it should allow you to customize with your choice of message, brand logo, images, font type, and other elements to match your brand. This helps recipients resonate with your message and remember you for future events and gatherings. 

What are the common questions to ask alumni management software vendors? 

• Can the tool manage alumni for multiple organizations? An ideal alumni management tool should let you manage alumni profiles and activities for multiple organizations. You should be able to track different types of alumni engagement data, campaigns on multiple platforms (website, social media, etc.), and other relevant information. Additionally, the tool should allow you to manage separate databases and profiles for the unique requirements of each organization. You need to check the tool’s ability to manage alumni for multiple organizations and whether there is a limit on the number of organizations that can be managed.

• Does the tool integrate with social media platforms? Your alumni management tool should let you track alumni engagement on multiple online platforms, including social media. Some alumni management solutions provide built-in social media capabilities to link your accounts while the rest enable integration. With social media platform integration, you can track alumni engagement on posts and capture their details such as name and phone number. Additionally, this integration allows sharing important updates and sending reminders to the alumni community instead of individual members. 

• How does the software handle alumni contact management? For a tool that also serves as an alumni relationship management system, it is essential to offer a comprehensive contact management system. This includes managing a database of alumni contact information such as email addresses and phone numbers. Additionally, you should be able to create alumni profiles with details related to their engagement with events, donations, and other relevant participation data. Also, the tool should automate the process of capturing and updating alumni contacts over time based on recent interactions. 

• Does the tool allow generating polls and surveys for alumni feedback? As an important aspect of maintaining a community, you should be able to create and float survey forms to gather alumni feedback and opinions. Check whether your selected tool gives you the ability to generate polls and surveys and share them in the alumni channel on multiple platforms. Email, social media, text messages, and chat applications are some of the communication platforms that can be used. 

Sources

Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from Capterra’s alumni management software directory. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in Capterra’s directory that offer them.