Beyond Participation: What Alumni Volunteering Reveals About Engagement and Giving

When an alum gives you an hour of their time, what does your institution do with that information?

They may mentor a student, speak to a class, join a career panel, serve on an advisory board, or volunteer at an event. Those activities are important measures of alumni engagement. But data from the 2026 National Alumni Survey Supplemental Report on Volunteering raises another question: What else might volunteer activity tell us about the alumni relationship?

According to the report, alumni who volunteer with their alma mater are 8x more likely to feel very connected with the institution and 5x more likely to feel very informed than those who have never volunteered. Among alumni volunteers, 70% gave to their alma mater in the past year, compared with 25% of nonvolunteers.¹

The timing of that volunteer activity is also notable. Alumni who volunteered within the past year averaged $180,768 in lifetime giving, compared with $63,479 among alumni who had volunteered previously but not within the past year, and $13,002 among those who had never volunteered.¹

I explored the broader shift in alumni giving in another article, Alumni Haven’t Stopped Giving. They’ve Stopped Giving to Us.

This data gives alumni relations and advancement leaders another lens for understanding engagement and considering how volunteer activity fits into the broader alumni relationship.

I recently joined National Alumni Survey co-founders Sarah Kleeberger and Howard Heevner on a webinar to discuss what these findings could mean for alumni relations, advancement, and institutional strategy.

Watch the webinar replay to hear our full conversation.

Four ideas from that discussion have stuck with me.

1. Alumni Volunteering Can Add Context to the Alumni Relationship

Volunteer participation can provide another useful dimension for understanding alumni engagement.

The supplemental report found differences not only between volunteers and nonvolunteers but also based on how recently alumni had volunteered.¹ For institutions, that provides a reason to consider volunteer activity alongside other measures of engagement and to pay attention to when that participation occurred.

    2. Some of Your Next Alumni Volunteers May Already Be Saying “Maybe”

The National Alumni Survey team analyzed open-ended responses about how alumni wanted to volunteer and identified four personas: Intellectual Contributor, Connector, Builder, and Conditional Participant. The Conditional Participant was the largest group.¹

Their responses suggest that willingness to volunteer may depend on the circumstances: whether alumni have enough information, whether the opportunity feels meaningful, whether virtual participation is possible, or whether expectations are clear.¹

That means the difference between participation and nonparticipation may just be finding the right opportunity, format, or level of commitment.

An alum who isn't ready to join a committee might be interested in answering a student's career question. Others may prefer to speak to a class, review a résumé, make an introduction, participate in an industry panel, or mentor a student. The supplemental report identifies opportunities including career panels, industry roundtables, résumé reviews, mock interviews, and short-term mentorship as potential ways for alumni to participate.¹

That flexibility may be especially relevant for younger alumni. Among Gen Z alumni, 31% said they are likely to volunteer with their alma mater in the future, the highest percentage of any generation surveyed.¹

    3. Build Alumni Engagement Around What Alumni Care About

Volunteer programs need to support institutional priorities. The broader 2026 National Alumni Survey also gives institutions another useful place to start: what alumni themselves say they care about.

The report found interest in supporting scholarships and specific academic programs across generations, while younger alumni showed greater interest in priorities tied visibly to student success, including mental health services, first-generation initiatives, and student emergency funds.²

Those findings relate to philanthropic priorities, but the interests behind them can also prompt institutions to think more broadly about engagement.

If an alum cares deeply about first-generation student success, for example, the next interaction doesn't necessarily need to be a request for a gift. They might be interested in mentoring a first-generation student or participating in a career program. An alum who wants to support their academic program might be interested in speaking to a class or sharing professional expertise.

That gives institutions another question to consider alongside “Where do we need volunteers?”

“What does this alum care about, and where does that intersect with something our students or institution need?”

For alumni relations and advancement teams, that can create opportunities that are more relevant to individual alumni. For deans and provosts, it can also create more ways to bring alumni knowledge, networks, and experience back into academic programs and the student experience.

    4. Your Alum Doesn't Care Which Department Owns the Interaction

An alum may mentor a student through Career Services, speak to a class at the invitation of a dean, attend an alumni event, and later make a gift.

Those activities may be managed by different departments and recorded in different systems. But from the alum's perspective, they're all interactions with the same institution.

If each team can see only its own interaction, no one has the complete picture of how that alum is choosing to participate.

Build a More Complete View of Alumni Engagement

Connecting that information can help institutions understand alumni engagement across programs rather than viewing each interaction in isolation. It can also help alumni relations, advancement, career services, and academic leaders see the different ways alumni are contributing their time, expertise, networks, and financial support.

This is an important part of the strategy behind PeopleGrove's alumni engagement software. PeopleGrove’s Engagement Hub helps institutions create and manage opportunities across mentoring, volunteerism, communities, events, and career connections while capturing participation and engagement data over time.

Bringing those interactions together can help teams ask more useful questions than participation counts alone:

Who is engaging? What opportunities are they choosing? What topics and programs interest them? How frequently are they participating? And where might there be a meaningful opportunity to engage them again?

For advancement teams, that provides additional context for understanding alumni relationships. For deans, provosts, and other institutional leaders, it can also make more visible the ways alumni contribute beyond philanthropy, including through student mentorship, career development, and participation in academic programs.

From Alumni Participation to Long-Term Engagement

According to the 2026 National Alumni Survey, higher education has not lost alumni goodwill, but it has lost its default claim on alumni generosity. The report recommends that institutions lead with clear, values-aligned opportunities, elevate volunteering as a strategy for connection and insight, listen continuously, and understand alumni relationships as dynamic.²

The findings about volunteerism add another dimension to that conversation.

When an alum mentors a student, shares expertise, answers a career question, speaks to a class, or gives an hour of their time, they've chosen to contribute something valuable to the institution.

Volunteer participation can provide another opportunity to understand what alumni care about, recognize the value they're already contributing, and consider how the relationship can continue in ways that are meaningful to both the alum and the institution.

If your institution wants to connect alumni engagement across programs, create more meaningful opportunities to participate, and better understand the relationships behind that engagement, speak with a PeopleGrove expert about your alumni engagement strategy.

Sources

¹ 2026 National Alumni Survey Supplemental Report on Volunteering, National Alumni Survey.

² 2026 National Alumni Survey Annual Report, National Alumni Survey.