A vibrant, global community of all university alumni.
Our mission is to inspire lifelong engagement with the Tufts community. Through connections, shared experiences, and opportunities to give back, we empower alumni to make an impact on each other and the university.
We are thrilled to share our Strategic Plan for Alumni Engagement, a new framework shaped by a six-month collaborative process. We are truly energized by what this plan guides us toward: a shared vision for a more vibrant, global alumni community across all Tufts schools.
Our strategic planning process was an opportunity to reflect on our work and imagine a bold future for alumni engagement at the university. Over a series of retreats, we brought together leadership from the Alumni Association, the Office of Alumni Engagement, our professional schools, and other key partner offices on campus. We tested our initial recommendations in focus groups with dozens of alumni volunteers and staff. Along the way, we incorporated and amplified many concepts the Alumni Council has discussed in recent years. Throughout all our conversations, we were guided by the university’s mission and a strong desire to enhance the entire Tufts experience for generations to come.
This plan is intended to be a living document—an overarching roadmap that will evolve as our alumni community continues to evolve. Woven throughout the five priorities is a commitment to understand our increasingly diverse alumni community. We want to learn what matters most to you so that we can build more meaningful and fulfilling engagement opportunities. And, above all, we want to empower you to have a profound impact on each other and the university.
We look forward to working together in the coming years to make this vision a reality.
Please join us!
BILL GEHLING, A74, AG79, A05P |
JENNIFER COVELL, J86
|
Actively integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion in alumni engagement.
We aim to engage a diverse range of experiences, identities, and perspectives across the alumni community—not only to create opportunities for all, but to enrich the lives of all. Through our first priority, we will amplify underrepresented voices and ensure that all alumni feel a deep sense of belonging.
Enhance our connection to current students and inspire them to be engaged as alumni.
We want current students to experience the value of the global alumni community from the moment they apply to the moment they graduate. To develop a culture of lifelong engagement, we will build relationships between students and alumni that foster meaningful growth and allow students to imagine their future as active alumni.
Provide alumni engagement opportunities that reflect evolving needs and interests.
Increasingly, we see that alumni are looking for more personalized experiences—and that their interests change over time. We acknowledge that traditional alumni programs alone will not be enough to grow our community. Through ongoing dialogue and assessment, we will discover the best ways to offer personal and professional value to alumni, wherever they are in their journey. We will build unique experiences that motivate more alumni to engage and give.
Create a meaningful and fulfilling experience for all alumni who want to volunteer.
We believe that all alumni who want to volunteer with Tufts should be able to do so. We want to offer a greater range of volunteer opportunities—whether ongoing or short-term—and make them easily accessible to all alumni. By doing so, we will build a stronger community of proud ambassadors who are inspired to support the university with their time, expertise, and financial resources.
Build the infrastructure needed for excellence in alumni communication and engagement.
We want to take our engagement efforts to the next level and be the program that peer institutions look to for inspiration. To meet our commitments, we will invest in a variety of infrastructure, from enhanced technologies and systems to increased staffing and financial resources. We will also measure and communicate the impact of alumni engagement across campus.
Tufts University has measured alumni engagement annually since 2011, using a model that includes the total number of event attendees, volunteers, and donors. We know that there is a clear link between engagement and giving: event attendees and volunteers give at more than twice the rate of all Tufts alumni.
As we move forward with implementing this strategic plan, we will expand our use of metrics to clearly demonstrate progress toward our goals, and the overall impact of alumni engagement. Across the university, we will implement the industry metrics established by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), which now include four categories of engagement:
1. Build a new reporting mechanism to track these four categories of engagement in real time and set goals for each.
2. Analyze and set goals for engagement in the same four categories by school, class year, region, and affinity group.
3. Understand the engagement trends of our underrepresented alumni communities, including but not limited to Black, Asian, Latinx, LGBTQ+, and First-Generation alumni.
4. Expand our use of the Net Promoter Score (NPS)—a tool that measures the loyalty of constituent relationships—across the University Advancement division and all Tufts schools.
5. Use data to show the impact of engagement on giving.
