The Alumni Giving Signal: 2026 National Alumni Survey Volunteer Report

Good afternoon, everybody. I am so pleased to welcome you to our webinar today, the Alumni Giving Signal, the 2026 National Alumni Survey supplemental report on volunteering. I'm Sarah Meixson here at PeopleGrove. I'm joined by two wonderful colleagues that I'm super excited to be speaking with today, our cofounders of the National Alumni Survey, Sarah Kleiberger and Howard Huebner. I feel so lucky, Howard and Sarah, to be talking with you today considering the supplemental report on volunteering was first published this week. So for all of our guests and our attendees here, consider this hopefully your first look and first insights from our survey cofounders on elements of volunteering that came through in the 2026 survey. I'm gonna start with a little bit of housekeeping just to kind of give a context to what we'll be talking about today. Obviously, we'll start with a quick welcome. Again, thanks to Sarah and to Howard for joining us. We will start with a discussion of the key insights from the 2026 National Alumni Survey. For context, this survey was published in March. So many of you may have seen some of the results, initial findings, or discussion that happened in the spring about this survey. We think it's important to level set and understand the background we're coming from until we pivot to the new supplemental report on volunteerism. Here, we'll hear some live insights from Sarah, from Howard about these new insights that are coming forward from the results of this year's survey. Finally, we'll close with how we can activate some of those traits for volunteerism within your PeopleGrove platforms for all of our current customers on the call. It wouldn't be a good PeopleGrove webinar if we weren't ending with Q&A. I'm sure we will have many questions coming through in our chat function today. Please don't hesitate to drop a question in. We will have time at the end for questions. If we don't get to them all, we will make sure to answer as we go through. With that said, I'm pleased to turn it over to Howard to tell us a little bit about the National Alumni Survey. Howard, please go ahead. Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you, Sarah, for having us and hosting this and the opportunity to have a conversation. And I think the other thing that I have to do is just stop and really thank PeopleGrove for being sponsors of this year's National Alumni Survey. As those of the collected audience may know or may not know, we offer alumni survey based institutions at no cost. And we're able to do that because of people — because organizations like PeopleGrove who underwrite that cost to allow us to actually show up in this way. And so we are incredibly grateful to partner with you on this, and the partnership is so wonderful with you all. Also, always have to recognize some of our presenting partners, Seamac and Washburn McGoldrick and Paris Leaf, who help us to actually execute, design, and bring these reports to life. And so we are incredibly grateful for the partnership and just kind of the belief in what we're trying to do and the story we're trying to tell. So I just wanna make sure I really express that appreciation. Thank you, Howard. Of course. But let's jump into, like, what's in the report. And so the first thing we're just gonna do is on the next slide here is just really look at the to kinda give you an idea of the volume that we're talking about. And so if we click into the actual data on the slide, what you'll see is that we had 31 participating institutions and over 82,000 alumni voices represented in this year's survey alone. Across the three years of the survey now, we have more than 155,000 alumni voices that are informing this work and helping us to really think about what is the relationship of alumni to their institutions when it comes to philanthropy and engagement. And I think that if you go back to some of the genesis of the project, you know, Sarah Kleiberger did a lot of work with the Schuler Foundation survey on millennials and their relationship, and this is kind of, like, this next phase of that conversation. And for me, it came from this moment of just kinda saying, like, we've been sitting in these rooms together as practitioners and saying, something's weird. Something's not working. And for ten, fifteen, twenty years, we kept having this conversation over and over again. Like, at a certain point, I was like, well, maybe we should actually ask the people we're trying to move. And so that is really kind of the starting point of why we've really kind of dedicated so much of our time to the creation of this and the ongoing partnership of this. And so we're excited to bring this to you. I think a couple of quick insights that aren't necessarily in these slides, but just that, like, the representation in the population has a pretty even distribution among those who have given recently versus those who have given ever and those who are not donors, and relatively equal, slightly skewed to female-identifying populations. And, actually, I think a pretty fair amount of Millennial, Gen X populations, a little lighter than Gen Z, but all pretty strong. So, anyway, that gets us started, and I think Sarah Kleiberger's gonna jump us into, like, some of the actual data and the actual insights. Absolutely. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks, Howard. As Sarah mentioned, the annual report was published back in March, and it featured nine insights or takeaways that really surfaced in our analysis of alumni responses. I think today, we're gonna touch on a few of those. And then, again, as Sarah mentioned, really turn our attention to volunteer activity and data from the supplemental piece. First up here, alumni are generous, just not necessarily to their alma mater. So if we look at the data from the analysis, 82% of alumni volunteer their time and/or make financial donations. Many are engaged with multiple causes. But among those who donate, it's a smaller subset, 35%, that report giving to their alma mater last year, and that drops to 16% among recent grads. The next point here is really powerful. Two-thirds, 67% of alumni who report never donating to their alma maters are actively supporting other causes. So 67% of our nondonors to the institution, and 86% of lapsed donors, support other charities. So sort of let that sink in. Those are big percentages and really tell us that most alums are giving, but higher ed isn't attracting their support. We see that 42% of alums don't view their school as a philanthropic priority. That, again, jumps north of 50% among younger generations. So as we step back, really think about what this slide tells us, there is a lot of hope in the data. There's a lot that's encouraging, but it's also a reality check for institutions. We've seen the steady dramatic decline in alumni participation, and we've been doing this. We've been at it for three years. Three years of NAS data have told a consistent story that, yes, alums are generous, and, yes, they're giving. They're engaged, but not with their alma maters. Alumni are directing their support and activism elsewhere. As a former fundraiser, I'll just say that final point is very sobering. When we think about who makes up our population of our alumni body now and who's going to make up our alumni bodies five, ten, fifteen years in the future. Sarah, I know when you and I were talking about this for our April work, that kind of both stopped us in our tracks a little bit. So, shared agreement that this is something we all need to be internalizing as fundraisers and people who work closely with our alumni. And if I could just add one quick thing too, like, thinking about — I mean, we've all been part of those conversations or institutions about why Millennials and Gen Z aren't giving to us, and that story has mostly been about we're not educating them or they're not educated in philanthropy. And this broad-based assumption that it was ignorance around philanthropy, this kind of blows that up. Right? Like, this is actually an issue about what we're marketing and they're not picking up. And I just, it just — this data point for me changed how I do my work completely. There's a little bit of hubris there. Right? There's a little bit of that's kind. So, anyway. I think this also leads to sort of a second insight we wanted to feature, which is that connection and information are among the strongest predictors of giving. So strengthening that sense of connection matters a lot. We asked this year in the survey how connected do you feel to your alma mater. We also asked a new question. How well informed do you feel about your alma mater and its strategic direction? And if we click down, we see that the feedback isn't all bad. There are positives. Overall, 50% feels somewhat connected. That was actually an improvement. We've seen that improve since 2024, and 42% feel somewhat informed. You know, it's a much smaller population. 10% you see here represented by the pink columns that feel very connected and very informed. And that's certainly an interesting audience to consider. You know, do you know who those 10% are in your alumni base? You know, our bet is probably many of them, but maybe not those youngest alums or most recent grads. And in the survey data, at 14%, more Gen Z alums feel very connected than any other generation. So there's a subset of those recent grads that feel a strong sense of connection. If we don't nurture and really invest in that, the connection will diminish over time, which is what we've seen play out in the data. On the next slide, we see that investment matters because when alums feel connected, when alums feel well informed, they are much more likely to give, to give frequently. And if we click down here, we see to prioritize their institution over other causes. So we see that 81% of alums who feel very connected, 75% who feel very informed, rank their alma mater as a top philanthropic priority. On the flip side, when alums feel disconnected, when they don't feel informed, it's a really small percentage who rank their alma mater as a top priority. That does not mean that those alums are disengaged. It doesn't mean they aren't philanthropic. If we flip to the next slide, we actually see the opposite. So 75% of alums who feel disconnected or very disconnected from their institution, again, they're financially supporting other causes. 50% volunteer their time with other organizations. So they are philanthropic, just directing their time, their talents, and their financial support elsewhere. Thanks, Sarah. When we were talking about this, Howard, I may have mentioned to you, it's not this idea of if folks aren't engaging with their alma mater, they're sitting and twiddling their thumbs. Right. When we think about, you know, terms like the attention economy, what we're seeing here in the data is that our alumni have their attention captured elsewhere. Other organizations have grabbed that time. And I think that was just a different way of thinking about this when we were looking at that data, that it's not a binary of yes or no to the institution. We're competing with other priorities. And I thought this put it into really stark relief. Yeah. I mean, I think that, to kind of further that point, right, is, like, we have been behaving in transactional ways, and the reality is relationships are on a spectrum. And all of our thinking and tracking internally is almost always in the binary. Are they donors? Are they not donors? Versus what is the spectrum of the relationship? And that is a shift that I think is gonna take some time. I think to follow on to this conversation, right, is thinking about the different generations functioning in our population now, and we have these differences, and Sarah's kinda highlighting some of this as far as, like, those information and connection kind of make this sense. But what is their relationship to us, and what do they prioritize? I think really gets into this looking across generations. And so this year, instead of, like, doing Millennials and Gen Z and Gen X and then blah blah blah blah — right, all the things — in fact, I think Pew has gone away from those generational profiles altogether where you said age demarcation above 45 and under 45 because that's technically where Millennials kind of end and begin. And some of that was inspired by the New York City mayoral election. When you look at how that played out — if you look at Cuomo through the lens of the traditionalist-party candidate and you look at Mamdani as a values-based candidate — when you dig into the data, the under-45 population broke really hard for Mamdani, and the over-45 population broke really hard for Cuomo. Right? And so that's the same thing we're seeing in higher education. We think about this. And so we go into this next slide. We start to kind of, like, break down some of that nuance of it. And so, you know, I think that's an important thing. So if we go ahead and pull up all that data on the slide, you know, there are several differences. So we did this slide in under-45, over-45. And I always like to start on the right in the slide, which, you know, naturally, we started on the left. But I always like to start on the right in the slide because I think this is a really interesting anchoring point. Those over-45, 30% said they were likely to support area of greatest need. Basically, half of that said they were likely to support area of greatest need for under-45. Right? You go into the next kind of piece here, and it's 38% say they think about giving in an annual or fiscal cycle. They're making a gift once a year based on that kind of, like, cycle giving. So 38% of the over-45 crowd — a 20-point difference between that and the under-45, who are only 17% saying that. So I think these are just really key, like, dynamics we have to be thinking about. The next one is really kind of the, like, part of the question. Right? So a third of those over-45 want to give to higher ed, maps up with some of the giving data we have here. Right? 13% of the under-45 said that is a thing that's important to them. And that is, again, kinda back to this thing. They're giving elsewhere. They're engaging elsewhere, but they're not valuing this. I thought this left-hand side really got into kind of what the under-45 are doing in some ways, right, more of the technical pieces of it. You know, 32% of the under-45 say they give as needed. It really puts the success of crowdfunding and giving days into kind of, like, a different context when you think about the give-as-needed aspect. I mean, you know, the over-45 is also doing it. Right? So, like, it's actually those kind of give-as-needed strategies are actually speaking to the entire population in a way that you can see here not a lot else is. And I think that's really where you find that unification in the population is really important from a kind of just like, how do you manage your program. Right? And then you get into, like, you know, eWallet. And, you know, in our practices, direct marketing practices through time, one of the things we talk about is reducing friction, right, making it easier, making it, like, requiring less, etcetera, etcetera. Well, eWallet is one of those things, right, where, like, providing the ability for people to do that, particularly for those under-45, dramatically different than those over-45. You need both options, but that over-45/under-45 category is more reliant on that. And then, and this is also interesting, particularly juxtapose this against give to higher ed likely support area of greatest need is make contributions to individuals like a GoFundMe. Right? You're starting to get a different picture of what the transactional nature of this is — like, what structural changes we have to make to align with it. Not even getting to — we're gonna go to next, which is: what are the messaging changes, or where are we asking people to go? When we kinda get into this and get into the data again, once we pull all the data up, we kept the area of greatest need number here on the right-hand side as an anchor point. Right? Like, this is our benchmark. Fascinating. The only place for over-45 is or kind of overrepresented versus and all these other categories is area of greatest need. 30%. Right? That is pretty high for what they're saying here versus these other pieces. The good news is if you go back to the left, scholarships always ranks high, both populations, almost universally. Right? So, like, those type of funds, which makes sense. Giving to individuals, individual impact, what does that look like, you know, to a specific area? And I always kind of am curious, and, when time allows, I wanna go deeper on this. But, like, these next kind of some of these next ones to me kinda make me think about two things. One is how the pandemic impacted our understanding of the necessity of mental health services and crisis, acute emergency kind of funds. Right? That's ranking really high at that under-45 crowd. And then second, the internship career services, I think that also kinda speaks to how we have commodified higher education on the enrollment side, and made a much more transactional experience versus the transformational experience that was sold to those of us who are a little bit longer in the tooth, because it has changed. Right? Because we've got kind of this arms race of trying to get students to enroll because of the enrollment kind of cliffs, a lot more different focuses. And so you kinda see that start to play out in some of that as well and what that really speaks to about loyalty versus values, etcetera. Howard, I know I think we were chuckling about this when we were looking at the data. On the previous slide, I think — if any annual giving officers or annual fund teams are on this call, I think we were talking about this. This data should be your call to recognize it's time to retire that term. It's not reflective of donor behavior, and I don't think it reflects what your institution's trying to do. Yeah. You know, for many of us, we're at a happy new fiscal year. We're kicking off July for many folks who start their new fiscal. It's time to make that change if you haven't already done so. And reduce your messaging around your annual contribution. Right? Like, if you go back and look at any letter in any annual giving shop, I can almost — I'd almost put money on it — it's leaning high on loyalty. It's leaning high on your annual support. It's leaning high on a lot of ideas that are really speaking to a generation that's not the majority of our population anymore. We need to start kinda thinking the framework of how we are conduits to impact, not where the impact resides. Right? Right. When you go into the other kind of data, when you look at Pew data and Gallup data, etcetera, like, trust in institutions is at an all-time low, including in higher education. Even if a little bounce back, it's still at a dramatically low spot. Right? And so you have that societal context, and we actually start thinking about — back to hubris — like, one of our, us being the focus of the philanthropy, is hubris. It's not what people are giving to. People wanna give to humans and the impact to humans. And so how are we conduits to impact for students, the region, and the world? And that subtle shift in messaging, I've seen, has a pretty big impact in how people think about their philanthropy. We're gonna also see that reflected in the data that we see on the slide in front of us, the idea of area of greatest need as an institutional choice, whereas you can see the individuals or groups of individuals reflected in scholarships. Yeah, biology students, first-gen students. You can see the individual in that, and where the trust lies with those groups. Thanks for discussing this one. Yeah, one more thing, though — because it's one of my go-to rants in the world — is one of the things that has always started to really confuse me, and I've done this, is that we have continually gone to people who have demonstrated the least amount of trust through their behaviors, whether it be engagement or giving, and asked them to make their first-ever gift to the fund that requires the most trust, which is the area of greatest need, an unrestricted fund. And then we all act as if there's something wrong with them for not giving to that. And without ever stopping and seeing that kind of false connection between asking people of low institutional trust to give to a high-trust fund. So, anyway, I just — yeah, it just blows my mind. I think that speaks right to the next data point that we've seen highlighted. So I think that's a great segue, Howard. Sarah? Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is our final sort of takeaway from the main report before we shift to some of the volunteer data and information. But another finding, alumni don't feel known by their alma mater. So this was also a new question. We asked how well does your alma mater know you. Again, in the spirit of sobering truth, it reveals that most alums don't believe their alma maters really know who they are. And if we click down into that, it's really across every dimension measured. So we asked about intellectual interests, career and life stage, personal interests, and philanthropy. And you see well over half of alums report feeling not very or not at all known. We found those feelings were pervasive. They weren't limited to a specific demographic group or a specific segment. They were really felt pretty much across the board. So really interesting, and hopefully a powerful finding as we think about our work and how we're messaging and engaging and highlighting opportunities and telling stories and really, again, listening to our constituents, to our alums. Next slide. Feeling known isn't just an emotional metric. It can absolutely be a predictor of giving as we move from feelings to behaviors. So here we see that alums who feel extremely well known, if we click down into the data, have dramatically higher lifetime giving, drawing your attention to the $500,000 here. Dramatically higher lifetime giving than those who feel the opposite. It's $26,000 for those who feel their priorities are known moderately well, so a big drop between those two levels, and $3,700 for those who feel their priorities are not known at all. The differences are pretty striking, and, you know, we need to get serious. Again, in the spirit of the last part of the conversation, really thinking about what helps alums feel known, how we're using tools and technology to record and track those things, because they aren't soft engagement tactics. They're not sort of secondary or maybe fluffy metrics. They can actually be central drivers of giving and generosity. Really important to pay attention. Now, that's a very $500,000. That's a powerful number. Anybody who is in a campaign, planning for a campaign, or closing a campaign — so let's call that 95% of fundraisers — those on the phone with us today should be looking at this and thinking about how your strategy kind of reflects that metric of knowing. I know that's something that we've talked about, this idea. Again, we're talking about institutions versus individuals, metrics of outreach versus relationships, and I think that's presented very well here. Thank you. Absolutely. And if we can work to really close that known gap — yeah, there's a lot of potential. So, hopefully, helpful to see that here in the data. Thank you. Sarah, Howard, thanks for walking us through, again, kind of the key highlights from the 2026 survey. I think it's always powerful to center on what we know and the findings from the major release earlier this year. Now I'm excited to kind of get into that supplemental work. Again, I think when we're talking a little bit about the report, some of the signals around volunteerism came through strongly this year in this year's survey. So I am so excited to kind of introduce this supplemental report and some of these findings to a wider audience. PeopleGrove is pleased to be part of this introduction. So, again, you know, as we noted in the chat earlier, the National Alumni Survey report is available on the website and posted in the chat, as well as the supplemental report on volunteerism. So following this call, we invite everybody to review the findings and kind of dig a little bit deeper after this conversation. Thanks, Sarah. Yeah, we're excited. And I know that you're particularly interested in volunteerism, and PeopleGrove has been a big supporter of this work and this supplemental piece. So thank you again. If we look, again, at some of the findings, most alumni share their time and talents, but not with their alma mater. So, again, alums are generous. 82% support charities through their time and financial donations. When we asked about activity with their alma mater, 61% report making a gift. We see it's a smaller group, 36%, that report volunteering. That shakes out to 26% at some point since graduation and 10% in the past year. We asked alums, if we look at the next slide, what types of causes do you currently support through volunteering? They're directing a lot of their activism to religious or faith-based causes. You see that's number one on the list at 28%, followed by social service organizations and K-12 education. Higher ed, if we click one more — I think higher ed ranks number eight, maybe that's captured on the slide, I'm not sure — so closer to the bottom of the list. And I think important as we think about where folks are ranking their allocation of time and extra energy and support with their volunteer activity. The next slide, we took a look at the generations. Younger alums indicate they're more likely to volunteer with their alma mater in the future. So 31% of Gen Z — that's a positive and important to see and pay attention to, again. And I think, you know, that matters because if we flip to the next slide, volunteering does certainly signal engagement and giving potential. Volunteers, even those who aren't current donors to their institutions — so we looked at that volunteer activity — volunteers feel more connected and more informed. So alumni volunteers are, what, 8 times more likely to feel very connected to their alma mater. And if we kinda click down on this data, 5 times more likely to feel very informed about the institution than those who have never volunteered. So, again, some pretty dramatic differences when we take a look at volunteer activity and status. On the next slide, we see that alumni who volunteer with their alma mater are extra philanthropic. So these folks were among the most philanthropic alums across the survey set. 70% gave to their alma mater in the past year compared to 25% of nonvolunteers. More than a third, 37%, rank their alma mater among their top three philanthropic priorities versus 9% of nonvolunteers. And more than half, 53%, indicate they are very likely — not just likely, but very likely — to give in the coming year versus 16% of nonvolunteers. We see average lifetime giving — that was something new this year. We collected from our participating institutions giving history so we could take a look at average lifetime giving, and we see that average lifetime giving is significantly higher for recent volunteers. So if we click in, north of $180,000 compared to those who have volunteered at some point in the past but not recently, it drops to $63,000, and then drops to $13,000 for donors who have never volunteered with their alma mater. So, again, sometimes, or at least in the past, volunteer activity may have been seen as a little bit separate, a little less important, but it can be one of the most effective levers that institutions have. If we can tap into and sort of convert that volunteer energy into meaningful engagement, it's a great way to build connection, to build trust, as we've touched on how important that is, and really to help cultivate the next generation of engaged donors. So we're big fans of volunteer engagement. I love this. Sarah, thanks for walking us through some of these key highlights over here. You know, again, pardon me, for everybody on the call, I'm recovering from a little bit of a summer cold. I'm gonna take a quick sip of water. Pardon me. When we were first talking about some of the insights coming from, specifically as it relates to volunteers and that time-to-giving potential, Sarah, I think we were talking a little bit around that idea of "recently volunteered" and "volunteered in the past," like, kind of connecting to that idea of what somebody sees themselves as. Like, do they see themselves as a volunteer with their institution? And one of the things that I think you had talked about was this idea of, you know, volunteering doesn't have to be three years of sitting on a board. It doesn't have to be, like, being a member of the board of trustees. The idea of the umbrella term of volunteerism can mean a lot of things to different individuals. Can you talk a little bit about that, whether it's, like, reflected in the survey, and some of those pieces, or even as it relates to past survey or past National Alumni Survey results? Absolutely, Sarah. And I think we're also gonna touch on — we developed a few personas as part of the supplemental piece, and Howard will touch on that. But you're spot on. I mean, we need to pay attention to — and we asked alums through the survey this year the kinds of volunteer opportunities, engagement opportunities that would be of most interest. And those long, sometimes vague commitments really didn't resonate, especially among our younger generation. So one of the ways to help us think about different audiences within our base and different needs, different life stages, different wants in terms of volunteer opportunities — it really helped us to develop the four personas, and we did so from all the open-ended responses. And, again, Howard will kinda walk us through those, and I think that's helpful in answering some of your questions. It's also helpful as a practitioner in making some sense of the data and applying it in practical ways to how we might begin to adjust our volunteer programming. So important. And, Howard, thanks for speaking to the personas a little bit. I know I've opened up this slide. I'll pause here and let you talk a little bit, again, about the personas developed as part of the supplemental report. Yeah, go ahead and put them all up there. So, like Sarah was saying, what we did is we actually took — as part of the survey, there was a question about, like, how you want to volunteer, and we had an open-ended kind of "other" option. And so there was probably close to 14,000 responses in that. So what we did is took that and did sentiment analysis on that to really begin to figure out, like, what are the buckets? Right? What's the framework we can start to develop for people to be able to think about how they position these volunteer opportunities? Because, to Sarah's point, it's sometimes a matchmaking issue — if you think about higher ed and the way we present these, it's often scattered. Right? And you gotta kinda hunt for what you're looking for. And so there's four kind of buckets. And let me also say, so much of this is not rocket science. Like, if you sat with anybody who's been doing this work for a while and ran through these personas, they'd be like, yeah, that makes sense. But it's like putting data behind it, and I think that's really the magic — it's, like, the validation of our instinct beyond just what's in our own datasets. And so there's four kind of primary personas based on that kind of "other" category. One is Intellectual Contributor. We all know this person. Right? They are an expert at something, and they want to be engaged in a way where they're showing up on campus and sharing their knowledge in a way that is helpful to students and helpful to the community. They're guest lecturers. Right? They want to be featured. Honestly, if we did the math on this — I mean, we really looked at it — these Intellectual Contributors probably have a pretty strong overlap with those who are high capacity. Like, if you really think about it, that's probably — there's probably some one-to-one. Now we also know that sometimes Intellectual Contributors have kind of an overestimation of what they can offer. But it's still true that this is a way that they wanna be engaged, in the different ways that we can do that. So the Connector kind of space — right, I think, again, pretty obvious — as far as, like, they want to help interview prospective students. They want to help make those connections after graduation. They want to help the students, or help the community, connect to others and help them create those networks for themselves. Builders are exactly that. And, again, we've all had this volunteer where you have to give them pretty clear guide rails and clear expectations about what is and isn't in scope for them to be doing. But they wanna build something. They wanna start a program. They wanna start something in their community. They wanna create community where they are, and they wanna create community for the campus in a way that is helpful and sometimes can go unhelpful. But the intention is always good. Right? And that takes a lot of management. And then the largest category — and not gonna be shocking — is the Conditional Participant. And I wanna read some of the quotes — the types of things they said. Their responses sounded like: "It depends." "I need more information." "Maybe later." "I would if it felt meaningful." "If it were virtual, I would." "If I knew how to, I would." Right? They probably — like, this is actually, in some ways, like, the Conditional Participant kind of has all three of the others within it. There's probably a secondary persona. Right? And these are the folks that I think Sarah, a second ago, was talking about — just the folks that, like, are looking to find their ways. Like, right, they're looking to — like, how do we give them better kind of wayfinding? And, actually, I just recently heard Cornell, who participated last year, took all the people who said they were interested in volunteering and put together, basically, just an email with links to different volunteer opportunities across campus. And then, oh my goodness, they just sent them an email. Like, the lowest overhead, lowest, like, kind of like, to get to these Conditional Participants. Right? They just literally sent an email. They didn't create anything new. They just sent it to those folks and said, "we heard that you were interested — here are different ways that you can get engaged in volunteering," and they've seen great success in doing that. Right? And so it's like, how do we listen and be reflected by that listening? So, there's a question in the Q&A. I'll just kinda quickly, because I think it's an easy one to answer — Manta, these are brand new; they're based off just this data, and it's pulled from the data across all institutions in the set, and they're based on this year's survey. So I don't know that people are using these buckets currently. We would love for people to be using these buckets and to be thinking in these ways — and how do we check these boxes for our constituents? So, I think that hopefully answers that question. So, I encourage you all to take a look at the volunteer report. We're very proud of being able to add that supplemental report this year because it was in the first kind of iteration of starting your lease report. I think it's the thing we heard most often — people are like, what about volunteerism? What do you do with volunteerism? And so wanted to make sure we were providing folks with a little bit more of a framework, based on the data and, obviously, our own experiences. So there's a little bit of both of them there. So data, and then, like, what we would do with that data as practitioners. And so, yeah, so that's volunteerism. So we can either move on, or if there are some other things in the chat we want to cover, we can do that as well. I have a couple of questions that I've seen come in on the chat and a couple that are directly to me. Sarah, Howard, are you okay if we do a couple of questions specifically about volunteering? I think we covered it. You know, there was a question that came in about, you know, these personas. Are these new? Are these being used? And, again, reiterating that this is part of the supplemental report. So this is kind of a new piece that is being presented. As a former practitioner, I think — I love these. They really resonated with me, with some former colleagues that we've worked with, but I would advise everyone to make sure that these work for your institution. I'm sure there's always, you know, that framework of, you know, let's take this as a sample or as a template, and then make sure that they're fitting in with the work that you're doing. Yeah. Another question that I'm seeing that came to me — and, Sarah, Howard, I'll let you decide how you want to, who gets to answer. Maybe it's a tag team. It's talking about maybe that connection within your organizations. The question is, people who manage alumni volunteers and people who manage kind of fundraising are often different. So, any suggestions or feedback on how to align goals when it comes to managing volunteers and managing donors? I mean, I can just speak from my current situation — I manage much more the giving side, and I have a colleague who manages more of the alumni relations side. And I think it's a thing we can be better at. You know? I think one of the things we do is first we start with the data. What are the overlaps in the data to kind of understand the offerings versus who's giving, etcetera. And I think that clarity of, like, what the actual behaviors are is, like, our first step. And then, we've kinda come to an agreement around, like, three types of volunteer experiences: a micro experience, which is, like, one to three days; a meso experience, one to three months; and a macro experience, like, multiple years — those more traditional things that we offer. And so I think it's starting to just, like, put together some of those things into a framework, and making sure that you are just having some of those conversations together about, like, what does that look like. We have more work to do, as far as what we're doing at Berkeley. Like, the philanthropic volunteer side for us is kind of in a reboot, nascent stage. We had a reunion program for a long time. Big schools, reunions aren't really working. And so we are rebooting it around kind of more using digital giving as a conduit for volunteerism. And so we have work to do, as far as, like, how do we make sure we're coordinated and connected to that alumni relations side. But I think, to me, it all starts with the data. And what does the data tell us about what opportunities are resonating, and how do we package this all together? So, that's just — sitting in one institution — Sarah Kleiberger, I'm sure that you've got many different experiences to add to that. So, I mean, I would just echo that division, or those silos — whether they're within advancement or even outside other key areas on campus — it's not helpful. And moving forward, continuing with a lot of those sort of silos, and people doing really good work but separately, probably isn't gonna get us where we wanna be, and doesn't reflect how our alums think of the institution. You know, alums have a relationship with the institution, not necessarily with 18 different departments. And so, you know, it just feels really important to hopefully help break down some of those silos or barriers. And I think we've seen more and more of that recently. And, you know, if I reflect especially on some of the institutions that are really trying — to Howard's point — around tracking data and different kinds of data, leaning into some of the, you know, CASE modes or categories of engagement, for example. That really helps naturally — teams sort of come together, and leaders look at a set of metrics that isn't just about, you know, financial contribution, for example. So, yeah, I mean, it feels like we're shifting, and that feels like a good thing. Would agree with that. If I could interject, I think one of the things that I thought about when I saw this question come through — it's not about who's managing the volunteers and who's managing the donors. It's about who's managing the data and how that data is being used to inform, help make decisions, and help inform strategy. So, I think — Howard, you and Sarah both said the word "data" in your answers. I would just kind of call that out, you know, and thinking about how activity, giving behavior, whatever that is, is being tracked to create a more holistic picture. Going back to the terminology that Sarah, you, and Howard used in the survey around demonstrating being known — how do you showcase that? It's not just, you know, a check-off — "this person gave last year" or, like, you know, how much the dollar amount was. It's painting that picture and making it a holistic view. So, thanks for letting me add to that. I think this is one question — sorry. You just, you — like, sorry. This is — I think you're right. You, like, say a thing, and it, like, sparks a thing for me. Right? Like, I think you're hitting on a thing that I think is the fundamental change we have to make in higher ed engagement and giving. Right? It's like from a mechanical view of the work, which is the pipeline terminology. Yeah. Right? Like, it is a leveling up, but that's not human. And so, it's hard to measure, and, in fact, I'm still personally working on how we're gonna measure this idea, but it has to be more about thinking about individual trajectories — people accelerate through their trajectory, or they decelerate, or they stagnate, or etcetera. And, like, how are we creating moments for people to leverage the tools we have to help them in that acceleration, or kind of make that experience that they're wanting, and moving away from kind of the more mechanical view of this? Which — if you're part of the annual giving culture, you know this. Right? Like, we're all about the mechanical. It has been about the mechanical for years, and each thing is a tick in the box, etcetera. And it's like, how do we start thinking in more longitudinal ways? And it's less of answers and more kind of challenges, and saying, like, we all have to rethink this. We can't just sit in the comfort of our mechanical measurement and ignore the impact we're having on the relational process, because that's what we've been doing for years, and it's gotten us where we are. So, just — like, what you said just sparked for me, like, kind of that idea about that move from that mechanical thought process. That — Howard — not treating, like, recognizing people as individuals. Yeah. And treating their behavior and their pathways. It's not one funnel. It's not one pipeline. Maybe at Berkeley, you've got 500,000 alumni. 650,000? 650,000. So we're talking about 650,000 individual journeys, not one pipeline. And our traditional way of approaching it — the way we approached it at Berkeley, and when I was at Penn State, or Michigan, or UC Santa Cruz — like, we've done it everywhere. We've treated everyone in monoliths and acted as if it's homogenous, that everyone's on this exact same journey. And if they don't comply with our journey process, then they don't have value. And it's like — what I'm suggesting is not, like, an easy thing. Like, we built this structure we have over 50, 60 years, and all the systems are built toward that kind of monolithic, homogenous structure versus this. But the tools are coming. Right? The tools are rolling out more and more often that allow us to actually have these more personalized relationships. And so one of the questions I've been asking in my own institution is, what if we had 500,000 authentic relationships? Which, by the way, the first thing everyone asks is, what is authentic? And the reality is, we have to have the flexibility in the system and structure to have authentic be personal, and stop trying to fit it into an artificial box that we constructed because it makes it easier for us to feel good about what we're doing. And so, anyway, we've now engaged some of my more ranty system-destruction stuff, so I'll stop. No, Howard, I think that's a really nice segue — and I know we have some additional questions in the chat, which we will get to. I think that's a nice segue to kind of what's next, and some of the insights that you and Sarah have as to how we're going to pull this together. With duct tape. No. With partnerships. Right? I think that's true. So, let's go ahead and just roll them out. So, you know, I think one of the things that's really become important to me in thinking about this is Higher Ed has been really good at performative listening. We — I mean, we've all done it. We do a survey. It goes on the shelf. We're like, we did a survey. We're really good. And so, how are we actually being changed by what we're hearing? Right? And how are we reflecting back to people that they're heard from us? Like — right? Like, we have to be able to illustrate that their opinion matters to us. Something that comes up a lot because suddenly, somehow, Sarah and I became the survey people that, you know, people worry about survey fatigue. And I did some reading on survey fatigue, from kind of out of the HR world. And what that really talks about is survey fatigue is not from being asked. It's from nothing being done when they are asked. That's what survey fatigue is. It isn't the asking. The asking is a great engagement activity. So, how is it as a listening infrastructure? Right? We have to move to values-aligned — whether it be, like, giving opportunities, or volunteer opportunities, or etcetera. Like, how are we speaking to people in ways that meet the values they have versus, again, the arbitrary structures that we lean into, you know, for our audience and for you all. Right? Like, how many people were a psychology major? Probably more people than we can count, because it was the most popular major for many, many years. Whereas psychology majors who are now doing things with, say, ecology — even though we continue to ask them and push them to give and engage through psychology — it's unlikely that they're actually doing that at this point. Right? So kind of finding our way to aligning with their values. Volunteering is a key infrastructure piece, just like listening. Right? Volunteer is such a huge driver, and it can no longer be a secondary or complementary piece, at least in the annual giving space. And I think people who are in kind of the more major-gift space would say this too. Volunteerism is an amplifier of giving. People who volunteer more often, as Sarah showed in the data earlier, are more connected and more informed, which leads them to be better donors, and volunteering has become a key strategic part of our programs. This is also one of those ones where people like, what does this mean? Earn trust continuously. Right? We have to move from the idea of a loyalty-given culture to a loyalty-earned — or, sorry, a trust-given to trust-earned culture. Particularly, these — drives and generations are coming up in a time where, contextually in society, there's less trust to go around, and we have to constantly be re-earning that trust. And we can't lean on those loyalty constructs we have from the past. We have to really think about what it means to earn trust, and then re-earn that trust. And how — a success measure. Right? Thinking about those trajectory things, or those things that indicate someone's moving closer to the institution, or kind of accelerating the relationship. And that could be volunteerism or answering a survey. I don't think it's clicking links. I don't think that actually means as much as we want it to. I think it's actual activity and actual reflection. So how do we build into the messages we're sending a feedback mechanism? Did this message resonate? Does this make sense to you? Did you like it? Right? So, like, kinda building those things into it. And this is, again, back to my kind of the mechanical versus the relational — moving from pipeline thinking into the relationship kind of thinking, like, how are we building this relationship with them over time, and every activity and everything that they do and don't do is a signal to where we are in that relationship. And we only track in binary — typically, we track in binary, and we only track the positive. They did respond to this with a gift. They did click on that link. We don't track: they did not respond to this. They did not click on that link. They did not make this gift. Those are all signals from them of what they care about, and our industry is not built right now to listen to that. And that is that move from pipeline to relational that I think is part of all this listening stuff. So, that kinda gives you — here are the things I would do. I would also just add quickly, because this is a question that always comes up: if I was a small shop, party of one, what would I do tomorrow to make a difference using this data? I would change the way my messages are in everything, and I would go from institutionally focused messages to relational messages that focus on us as a conduit to where the impact's gonna be. I would look at my giving day and look at the ways in which I can engage more volunteers in that process and the type of things I'm offering giving day, and I would open it up to the community so that more people can be involved. And then, finally, I would absolutely build listening into my program, even if I'm not fully ready for it — like, what's one thing I can do to make sure I'm reflecting to people that we heard them? Right? But I would build surveying and listening into almost everything we're doing, to kind of make sure that we are at least showing them that we're interested. Right? Those are three things I would do that don't take a ton of extra resources, that are really just about how do we operationalize simple things to make a difference in our program. So, that's the rundown. Howard, I love that you are driving with some specific actions. Like, what can people do next Monday? What can somebody do today? I think that's so helpful when I think about the breadth and depth of the work that we're responsible for. There are a lot of responsibilities on everyone's plate, and I think it's important that we always kind of come back with some tactical opportunities, which — for all of our PeopleGrove customers on our webinar today — I hope that this conversation has been, in some ways, validating to the really important work that you're doing with your alumni, with your students, through your PeopleGrove Engagement Hub platform. Because the outcomes that we're seeing, the impact that volunteering has on engagement, on your alumni feeling known, on your alumni feeling connected, and alumni philanthropy, starts with the work that you're doing. And so, similarly, in the same vein, Howard, I want to kind of pause for our customers on the call and say, what are some things that we can take action with right now? When we're thinking about all of those insights that you shared, opening up additional opportunities, bringing forward opportunities for those personas, like the Conditional Participants — how do we make it easy for them to find those areas to participate in? I just wanna make sure that all of our customers on the call know that you can do this right now in your platform. So, a couple of things to highlight here is this idea of making that first "yes" or that first activity frictionless. One of the things we're really excited about is that Ask Anything functionality in the platform. So the idea that an alum or a student has a professional question that they want to connect with somebody in a specific career field, in a specific range — they're like, "I don't have time," or, "I'm not sure how to approach this" — our Ask Anything tool facilitates those questions to the right connections who can answer them, providing that student or that alumnus with a frictionless experience. The person answering it gets to offer that advice, gets to offer the insight, gets to offer that one-time quick mentorship opportunity, and it's done in a way that allows it to be fast, supportive, and easy for the participant to be part of that process — helping students, helping alumni. You're leaning into those value-aligned opportunities. So everyone knows our backbone — our PeopleGrove platform — is our mentorship work, whether that's through structured mentoring programs or even our flash ones. But the idea is that when we are looking at some of those opportunities where alumni are telling us, these are our values — I'm a builder, I'm a connector, I wanna facilitate community — I think that was the terminology you were using. You can do so right through the tools that you have through PeopleGrove. The next piece, and I'm smiling, Howard, because we're just talking about terminology with pipeline. Bringing volunteers, bringing that volunteer work into whether it's your pipeline or your relationship tracking — whatever terminology we're using, whatever tactics we might be adopting in fiscal 2027 — is making sure that information about your volunteer population, so for many of us in our Engagement Hub, is getting right back into your CRM or your tool of choice. So the idea of augmenting that picture of who your alumni are — what do our institutions know about our alumni? There's rich data in your Engagement Hub that can help inform and help showcase to your institution who your alumni are, what they value, and what they care about. So that can be accomplished right through whether it's data syncs, APIs, or a connection right back to your database. We can make sure that happens. And, again, meeting those personas that we talked about — again, that's a quick preview. Like, that's newly released information that Sarah and Howard so kindly shared with us today as part of the supplemental report. But I know many of our colleagues are already working on some of those volunteer personas. So I'd strongly recommend taking that idea and tying those metrics back to activity in your PeopleGrove platform to make that informed decision-making about who your volunteers are and how they track in that activity. Finally, prove the impact. We have robust tools and platform, including our CASE-aligned reporting, that can tie back to those activity metrics where volunteering showcases opportunity to feel known, opportunity to feel connected, and that opportunity to increase lifelong philanthropy with your institutions. I apologize that I'm losing my voice a little bit here. We're going to move on for just a minute of Q&A. Sarah and Howard, I am just scanning the chat really quickly to see if there's any questions we can add before we move to our last slide. There was one question in the chat that I wanna make sure we acknowledge, which was: is there any way to distinguish the volunteerism for the university versus with other alums or alumni of the university — or are they both accounted for the same way? Great question. Really, as part of the survey instrument, the question was asked about volunteer activity with the university. So we didn't capture kind of that secondary thought, which is a great thought, but just wanna be clear on that — we're really accounting for alums who are volunteering with the university, but important nuance there, and thanks for the question. Just wanna make sure we covered that. Thank you. I don't see any others. Howard, are there others in the chat that we need to cover? Okay. No. We answered both of them as we went along. So, perfect. Sarah, Howard, I was gonna say, this has been a wonderful session. I wanna pause and make sure Howard has time to talk a little bit about our upcoming 2027 National Alumni Survey. So it's that time of year already, which I think shocked Sarah Kleiberger and I the other day when we really realized that we're gonna turn to building the next cohort. We have, I would tell you, an unprecedented amount of interest this year. Like, it's just — the trajectory is exciting and a little scary. So if you're interested, please fill out the survey now so that we can get your spot in the population. We're gonna try to accommodate as many schools as we can, but I think at this point this year, we have double the expressed interest that we had at this time last year, if not more. And so, we wanna make sure there's representation. We wanna make sure a lot of schools are involved — we wanna make sure everyone's involved who wants to be involved — because I think we deeply believe that the way we move forward, the way we grow giving, regular donor counts, is through the active listening process and being actually impacted by that listening. So, if you're interested, the poll's up. Also, you can go on the page where you can get the 2026 report. Also, the freshly released — hot off the presses, is that even a thing anymore? — volunteer supplemental report is also there, so please take a look at those. We'll also be doing some work to get those pushed out through a variety of pathways. You can always follow our LinkedIn page — we put a lot of that content through there as well. It's easier to have it just show up in your feed instead of coming hunting for us. And then, also on that page, there's another interest form you can fill out. But if you click the one that was just up, that's probably the best way to get the information. And thank you. Thanks for being here, and thanks for being interested. And, yeah. Thanks. Yeah. And I would just echo a big thank you and real gratitude. You know, again, the survey is free — no expense for participating institutions — because of sponsors like PeopleGrove, and we are just super, super grateful. So big thanks to Sarah and the team at PeopleGrove. Yeah, absolutely. Sarah, Howard, we are exactly at time today. Thank you so much for bringing forward this conversation to our PeopleGrove community, specific to volunteerism and how it fits into the National Alumni Survey results. For those of us who are fundraising practitioners, I am personally grateful for the work that you're doing to advance the work in our space and activating alumni philanthropy. So it has been a real pleasure, a professional treat. Thank you for your time today, and thank you to our PeopleGrove community for joining us for the conversation. Have a great day, everyone. Thank you so much.