Start Before Graduation: Building Alumni Loyalty Through Student Connections-Recording

Video Transcription

Video Summary

This webinar, led by Karen Davey of the University of British Columbia, focused on building alumni loyalty by connecting students with alumni before graduation. The session argued that student-alumni engagement benefits everyone: students gain mentorship, career support, and a stronger sense of belonging, while alumni enjoy meaningful volunteer opportunities and a renewed connection to campus. Institutions benefit through stronger long-term affinity, loyalty, and volunteer pipelines.<br /><br />Karen shared UBC’s strategic framework for making this work scalable and sustainable: assess current efforts, define a clear purpose, simplify the mission, maximize ROI, use student-led programming, keep governance lightweight, rely on templates, and make data-driven adjustments. Two major examples illustrated the approach.<br /><br />First, UBC launched a campus partnership and micro-grant program that supports student groups running events involving alumni. This shifted work away from staff-heavy central planning and dramatically increased engagement while reducing budget and staff time. Second, UBC retooled its social media strategy by empowering students to create authentic short-form content, resulting in huge growth in reach, views, and interactions.<br /><br />The session concluded with Q&A on student recruitment, alumni volunteer engagement, funding, branding, and adapting programs for smaller institutions.

Keywords

alumni loyalty

student-alumni engagement

University of British Columbia

mentorship

career support

micro-grants

student-led programming

social media strategy

volunteer engagement