A clear plan helps your team build an alumni community around shared goals, secure organizational support, and launch 360Alumni with confidence. Use your organization’s Strategic Plan if you have one, or create a practical Year-One Roadmap before configuring your new alumni engagement platform.
Start with your organization’s strategy
If your organization has a Strategic Plan, use it to guide your community priorities. Identify the goals 360Alumni can support, such as career connections, event participation, fundraising, lifelong engagement, or better alumni database management.
If you do not have a Strategic Plan, use the questions below to create a focused starting point. You do not need every answer before launch—your goal is to agree on the priorities for your first year.
Define your community priorities
Work with the teams who will contribute to or use the community, including alumni relations, advancement, career services, communications, membership, chapters, and event staff.
- Set community goals and structure.
- Identify your top engagement priorities.
- Decide who will participate, such as alumni, students, donors, staff, parents, or friends of the organization.
- Outline how the community should be organized, including affinity-based Groups, regional or chapter communities, class years, programs, and shared interests.
- Plan the features you will use.
- Match each 360Alumni feature to a community goal.
- For example, use the alumni directory to help members find one another; Events for annual gatherings; Opportunities for an alumni job board; Asks & Offers for career support and mentoring connections; Campaigns for fundraising; and Email Marketing for regular communications.
- Decide what to launch first and which alumni engagement tools can be introduced later.
- Outline your engagement strategy.
- Define how members will participate after they join, and how this activity will be encouraged.
- Consider what content, events, Groups, opportunities, and communications will bring members back.
- Choose measurable signs of success, such as profile completion, directory participation, event registrations, job postings, donations, email engagement, or Asks & Offers activity.
Answer key planning questions
Document your team’s answers to these questions:
- Who will be part of the community: alumni, donors, staff, students, or other audiences?
- What member data would be valuable for engagement and alumni directory searches, such as program, education history, employment history, hobbies, extracurricular activities, location, or interests?
- Which affinity Groups are important now? Which regional, chapter, professional, identity-based, or interest-based Groups may be needed later?
- Which events take place every year, and which should be managed through 360Alumni?
- What are your career priorities? For example, do you need an alumni job board, career advice, networking, or mentoring through Asks & Offers?
- What fundraising efforts are ongoing, and how will Campaigns support them?
- What news, resources, and announcements can be shared in 360Alumni so it becomes a central community hub?
- Which communications are sent regularly, such as a newsletter or event invitation? Which departments own Email Marketing and other member communications?
- Who will manage the community day to day, including member data, content, approvals, Groups, Events, and member support?
Create a Year-One Roadmap
Use your priorities and answers to build a rollout plan for the first year.
- Choose your launch priorities. Start with the features, data, and content needed to deliver value on day one.
- Set measurable goals. Define targets for member activation, completed profiles, directory participation, event registrations, email engagement, fundraising, or other priorities.
- Assign owners. Identify the team or person responsible for each activity, including data management, communications, Events, Groups, and reporting.
- Schedule phased releases. Plan when you will introduce additional features, such as Opportunities, Memberships, Campaigns, Showcases, or new Groups.
- Review progress regularly. Use member engagement analytics and feedback to adjust your roadmap throughout the year.
Action items
- Review your organization’s Strategic Plan, or use the planning questions in this article to create a guiding strategy.
- Document your decisions about community structure, platform features, member data, and engagement activities.
- Draft a Year-One Roadmap with owners, launch phases, and measurable goals.
If you would like help shaping your strategy, reach out to the 360Alumni team to discuss your plan.
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