"By hiring employees we make an investment for the privilege of staying in business.”
Every organization requires some employees who dedicate their time for the successful working of that organization. Keeping an organization sustainable for a very long time without any full time employees is very challenging and could over burden the volunteers too.
A very common notion is that an alumni association is run entirely by volunteers.
It comes as a surprise to most people that in the United States some alumni associations have as many as 120 full time employees working for the alumni association.
An alumni association does have a lot of alumni volunteers who work for the smooth functioning of the association but it is never just the volunteers, there are always a bunch of full time paid employees involved who bring in a complete professional feel to the association.
But there always arises one question, does an alumni association really need full time employees for itself. In this article we shall emphasize on the importance of full time employees for an alumni association. We shall also try to get the idea of how professionally an alumni association is run.
Why Should an alumni association hire full time employees?
A research conducted on top 50 colleges with the best alumni associations reveals the following:
Over 45% colleges have 1000-3000 alumni per staff member of the association.
Over 36% colleges have 3000-9000 alumni per staff member of the association.
Over 19% colleges have 9000-12,500 alumni per staff member of the association.
The numbers clearly show that a majority of top colleges have a very small ratio and just 1000-3000 alumni members per staff member. This itself emphasizes the importance staff members have for a strong alumni association and it's smooth functioning.
Learning from the model of top colleges, let's see what full times employees work on:
The employees work towards handling the finances of the association.
They handle the day to day working of the association.
They market and grow the association as an individual entity.
They handle the technical aspects like building and maintaining the association website, database and more.
They keep the entire alumni community bonded and are the go-to people in case of any issue that arises in the association since they are always available for the association.
Volunteers can run an alumni association but they would always have their other engagements and they won't be committed to the association full time. They also aren't bound to cater to each problem that might arise. This is the biggest factor which pushes for having full time employees for the association.
On which positions are the full time employees hired for an alumni association?
There could be a bunch of positions on which full time employees are hired for an alumni association.
On doing a research on 50 top colleges with top global rankings, we have categorized the the broad departments which employees are hired for alumni associations as follows:
Executive Administration Department
Information Systems and Operations
Business and Finance
Alumni Engagements
Now, a lot of departments are similar to that of a regular normal company except one, which is alumni engagements. An alumni engagements department is a very important department for an alumni association.
Our study suggests that the alumni engagements department consists of around 30% of the work force of the association.
The following pie chart represents the median distribution of work force among the various departments of top 50 alumni associations of the world.
This factor makes the alumni associations differ from regular companies. In most other companies business, operations or technology departments are the most important ones.
The other category which makes up about 20% of the work force of an alumni association is the operations department.
Now, most people wonder, what would an alumni engagement department do and why does it even need full time employees.
Importance of alumni engagements department in an alumni association
The alumni engagement department has the highest strength across all the departments of an alumni association, this itself highlights that it must be the most important part of the association.
Here are a few purposes of the alumni engagement department of an alumni association:
It works to keep the alumni network active by facilitating various events for the alumni community.
It works to increase the strength of the alumni network by helping in getting more and more alumni on board.
It works to make a good online presence for the alumni association by conducting various virtual events.
It works towards increasing fund raising events and finally increasing the funds raised from the alumni each year.
The alumni association thrives only when its alumni engage and network.
A low engagement community is as good as not being there!
If the alumni community is active, it can help numerous people and hence, the first step to building a strong alumni network is having a strong alumni engagements team with dedicated full time employees.
What do we learn from the alumni association of world's best colleges?
There definitely are some key takeaway points from the way the alumni association of top 50 colleges from across the world function.
Here is the cumulative data of alumni-staff distribution of the top associations from the world to give a deeper insight into the way they work:
We can make some recommendations for alumni associations which are looking to flourish and grow into a strong network
Every alumni association must have a certain number of full time employees to run the association smoothly.
There must be a ratio of about 1000-5000 alumni per staff member in every association at least since this is the case with most of the best colleges and best alumni associations.
Every alumni association must have a good and strong alumni engagements department with the best and maximum workforce to keep the alumni network active.
The above recommendations if followed, will surely make your alumni association and your alumni network a very strong one!
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