The Engagement Effect: Scaling Student and Alumni Engagement

Good morning or good afternoon, depending on where you find yourself today. Thank you for carving out time in what I'm assuming is a very busy day for you. So thanks for spending some time with us. I think it's gonna be an exciting hour where we learn a lot about some research that a colleague of mine, Scott Jeffy, has been working on over the course of the day. So with that, again, welcome. My name is Dawn Hiles. I'm the CEO of Peoplegrove, and I'm I'm excited about what we're gonna share with you in the next hour about thinking through in a new way how to solve for problems and challenges that we have on campus. So, Scott, why don't you introduce yourself, and then we'll jump into the topic. Well, it's great to be here. I'm Scott Jeffy, and I I often say I've spent my entire career doing doing research for institutions that want to better understand, fully understand, I hope, what they need to do to do the next thing. Often, that's student audiences and so on. And, this the the work that I did here was really fun, actually, because it was not survey work. It was talking to people. I spent twelve hours, maybe even more talking to some of, Peoplegrove's, just a wide array of their of their partners, and it was it was interesting and a lot of fun, and we're gonna share as much of it as we can with you today. That sounds great. I wanna start with why we, worked with Scott on this research. As I'm talking to campus leaders, whether it's large online schools, Ivy institutions, whether it's flagships, small privates, every time I'm on with a campus leader, almost always the conversation goes to a negative place. It goes to the challenges that they're facing. They have to do more with less. They have more expectations around using AI. They have students that are expecting more coming in. They have alumni that are wanting help with finding their second job. They've got pressures from an upcoming campaign. It just always feels no matter what, it kinda steers towards the challenges. And while I said that this was gonna be an exciting hour, I feel like, Scott, up until this point, I'm just talking about depressing things that we all would say, yes. That feels right for us. But we see these this pressure on campus to have better outcomes, to do more with less, to be more efficient, to be more effective, whatever that looks like. But everyone seems to be grappling with this. And what you found in the research is really this interesting tool that I would argue is very underutilized of engagement and how engagement is actually helping to solve most of these campus issues. And I think that's the exciting part because so many of us, we're looking for that one thing. I spent years on a campus as a vice president for enrollment and a vice president for alumni and advancement. And I've lived these pressures, and I don't think I ever thought sitting in my chair, I wonder how engagement can help me do this. And so I think that the reason I'm excited about your research is I think it's bringing a new lens to some of the same challenges, But it's doing this in a way that feels very much in line with how universities' missions are are driven and how they're thinking about their role as a higher education institution. And so that's the exciting part is is thinking through some of the challenges we've had for five to fifty years, but thinking them in about them in a very different way. So with that, why don't we start with a little bit about why this is important? So as we think about this, we know that students are wired. Alumni are wired in different ways. And thinking about why engagement, why belonging, the sense of belonging becomes really important to a campus. So we know there's a premium that students, alumni put on engagement in the sense of belonging, but it comes out in different ways. No one's really advertly saying, I would like to make connections. I would like to engage with other people. But when you talk to them as you've done with the research, this is the theme you're hearing over and over again. Can you talk a little bit about why what this new ROI looks like, the expectations they have, and why that is? Yeah. You know, I mean, it all goes back. It all starts with the experiences that both students and alumni have been having. Yes. They're they're different, but the students that are coming in have grown up in a customized, personalized world where they are connected, usually virtually, throughout their lives. And one of the things that that I I came up a thought that I had while I was writing the report writing up the report and so on was students have come to expect that their college experience is going to align with the rest of their lives, not be an aberration from it. When I first used the word aberration, we we had a funny dialogue about aberration. And all of us that were sitting there talking said, when we started to think, what were our college experiences way back when? And did they align with how the rest of our lives worked or not? They didn't at all. And today's students do. And where I'm going with this is they expect these networks. They're not looking at a virtual network, a virtual platform as something that is secondary of second class or whatever. That's how they've gotten they've they've grown up with this. And, oh, by the way, so have our alums having worked through the pandemic. We what we what I see in all kinds of research I'm doing, whether it be on online students or graduate students or whatever, they've come out of the pandemic thinking that virtual connections are not only required and okay, but we we they've demonstrated time and time again that they make real connection on them. Just think anybody that's in the room, think of two years of virtual meetings and then getting together with somebody like Don and I did after two years of virtual meetings at one of our national conferences. And, you know, everybody wants to hug because those weren't artificial connections. Right? And so we, you know, we put it this way. ROI is I'm sorry. Belonging is the new ROI. And and that comes out in the conversations I had with these eight clients and in the the whether it be the when I said, you know, what are the things you will tell your leader if you when when it's time to renew? Whether it be those qualitative kinds of indicators that we're gonna see in this or the or the the quantitative nuts and the the data nuggets. We're gonna see that again and again come back to the fact that they have to have colleges have to have networks like this today because the students and the alums prefer it almost. I I would go as far as saying they prefer it. Yeah. I think that's interesting, and we have a lot of we have a mix of people on the webinar today. Some are partners of ours at at Peoplegrove, and some are not. And I think for anyone who's thinking about this, this is important. Whether you're using Peoplegrove or something else, an engagement platform is now becoming at at something that students expect. They want to be able to and we're gonna talk about this some of this later in the hour. They want to be able to connect on their terms. They want to be able to connect with people that make sense for them to connect with. The concept of networking, Scott, you and I are old enough that we would have gone to networking event, and you hope you bump into someone, right, that that's helpful to you. And now networking is done with AI to say, here's the exact person you need to meet with. It's much more efficient and and in a lot of ways, effective at at some of those connections. So I'm excited to dig through and and unpack a little bit more of that. Two things that I'll mention for our attendees as well. One, if you have questions, please use the q and a tab on the on the Zoom form there, and we'll get those questions and and weave them into the conversation. And I would also request that you participate in the polls. So over the course of the next forty minutes we have together, we will pop some polls onto your screen and have you participate in this. And this is great for us to look at your thoughts on what we're talking about. And oftentimes, we'll do either blogs or white papers about some of the things that we hear from you on this call and in the Zoom in the Zoom. So thanks for participating in that as well, and you'll be able to watch for some of the research that would come out from some of the the responses that you'll make there. But I think this is a great setup, Scott, as to why this matters, and it sets the stage for what we're gonna talk about for the rest of the hour. So looking at this, and you mentioned some of the things you learned, like the key takeaways. I love that you've gone through and identified some data points too along the way of how this is useful or how this is being used at specific campuses. Because I think engagement's one of those terms that can be really broad. Like, we just want engagement. And in fact, I was talking to someone a couple of months ago who said, we do engagement for the sake of engagement. We want nothing else out of this. We just see the value in engagement. For most campuses, though, they are looking for something as a return to an investment they would make either in a platform, an engagement platform, or with staff time fostering engagement. I'd I am I love that you've got a couple data points here, and we'll talk about some later in the presentation as well. But talk a little bit here about some of the data points you've seen related to why this matters. Absolutely. I mean, this is where it starts to what what we've just said starts to come to life. And by the way, just on that engagement issue, I think this becomes all the more important now that CASE is putting out I mean, you folks will know better than I, but CASE is, has, or is just about to put engagement metrics out there. So engage measuring engagement, which I saw some great examples of, and we're gonna look at a few, that that that becomes even more important than for all the reasons that you just said. But let's start to bring this to life. Two stats I wanna share. One, fifty percent. Fifty percent of one platforms one platform has documented that fifty percent of the people that have signed up and are using their People Group platform have had no contact or no recent contact, and they they define that as not no documented contact within the last five years. That is as an in in the fragmented world, think of just how many platforms there are out there for all kinds of networking and so on. You know, LinkedIn to to something as customized as this. Fifty percent of the people what other initiative in an alumni office or an alumni association would attract fifty percent that have never been attracted to anything else? And when you when you come up with an initiative like that, it probably took a lot of time and effort to to do that. So that to me was really interesting. And, oh, by the way, I'm gonna tease something that's coming later. Among that fifty percent, which they they forward all the profile information over to their prospect research, and they found more than a thousand of those fifty percent were donor targets based on all the data that was there. So I I know I'm giving away something that's coming up, but here's the other one. You you one of our one of our client one of the clients that's that is in a career center reported to me that when they did their annual survey of students and they put a question that had twelve tech tools on a question and asked them to rank the effectiveness and their and and thereby their use of. People the PeopleGrowth platform came in second of all those twelve. And what he told me was by I didn't see the data, but he said by a wide margin between the second and the third. This is one of those proof points that says these students are not only glad to have it, but they they are finding it useful. So I just love those two. I know. And I think your quote up above around, the students have grown up in this world. We need to provide them access, on their business hours. I think that's a good call out too. So students can get and and, again, this is a theme throughout our entire presentation today, but they they want on demand resources in an environment that does not often provide it on demand. And so this you know, an engagement hub of any kind should be able to provide and close the gap between what they expect and what we have traditionally offered. And so, again, whether it's us or anyone else, having that engagement hub can help serve as a resource platform for them that isn't replacing what's happening in a career center or in the student in in in the enrollment office, but it's it's using it's using technology to make those better human connections and giving them access to things at the time they want to access them. You're extending their your service. You're not change you're extending your service, and you're giving it to them in a way that they're comfortable with. Yep. I mean, it's all win. It is. I also think on the fifty percent of alumni, that was when we first looked at the data together. That was really surprising when you think about those alum had nothing to do. Right? They were we would say completely disconnected. I think this speaks to the interest that particularly alumni have, and we see the data of this. We know the research on this, but they want to give back. But this is the way they want to give back. This can this resonates with them. It's not come to a reunion weekend, although there's nothing wrong with reunion weekends. But the the idea that our jobs have gotten any easier on campus, I I don't think anyone would buy into that because not only do you have alumni weekend, but you need to have an engagement platform for those who don't want to come to reunion weekend, but they want something else. And you still have to do all the other things that you offered for engagement. But this is you should think of this as more like an additional channel. Right? This is an additional channel to capture a part of your alumni base that might not want to engage in the other channels that are available, but you don't wanna miss out on them as targets for either alumni engagement, participation, volunteerism, giving all the things that we would want from that. Absolutely. Absolutely. So this is great. Let's switch gears a little bit to think about mentorship. So I think that's a good segue into looking at mentorship as the driver that really does resonate, as we said, with alumni, but also students are looking for this. What's interesting to me, though, is as I talk to university college leaders, there seems to be a movement towards experiential education and experiential learning. And what I love about the concept of mentorship, it was it's kind of the original. Right? Like, this was the original way of thinking through how do we connect students with people, whether they're alumni, whether they're industry leaders, what however that looks so that they can be asking those questions to get experiential education. And so I love the concept of tying mentorship into a broader umbrella that I'm so glad to see continuing to get traction in higher education around experiential learning. We're as a company, we're investing in this. And I just think this is when you look at the demands of a university, the pressure on outcomes, the the level students are coming in and then and what you want them to be doing going out of the institution. I mean, there there just needs to there there's this this vacuum a little bit where experiential learning can really help solve for this. So as you think about mentorship in this way, talk a little bit about what you found there. Yeah. Well, first, the other the other priority in terms of how those students today are measuring ROI is they're they're feeling more pressure than ever before to get a job. And so, yeah, the the ultimate form of engagement for them is that mentorship or the experiential learning that can come from this. I mean, there I I counsel colleges all the time to start putting stats up about job placement for their students. That's great, and the institutions need to do that. But imagine the power of greeting them from day one with and by the way, here's a closed, secure platform that where you can start interacting with alums that share your interests, your your academic interest, and potential career interest. I mean, it's just something the quote here from one of from one of the, clients is a is is a great one. It's not my stat. It's his, though. The number one way alumni want to engage from their own surveys is to engage with, students through mentorship. When they ask their students and their surveys that why they want to engage with alums, it's for mentorship, internship, or a job. And so there we have it in a nutshell and just a crisp quote from from what's driving one of the clients. I mean, that was their value prop for what for why they're using PeopleGrowth. But we've got some other really incredible stats with stories behind them that we can talk about too. I think that that's critical too because there's everyone's looking for this. Right? On a campus, you've got I'll talk to whether it's a dean of a specific college or school. You have different people across campus that are always saying, do we have an alum who's done this? Or how can we feature someone who's done that? And having that pool of people who have already self selected raise their hand to say, I am willing to do those things is really critical too just from a time saving perspective. And knowing what's out there in your alumni base to tap into becomes so much larger than just I know of this person or we always use that person. There's a lot of value there as well. But these data points are fantastic that you are uncovering in your research. Yeah. Let me, I mean, let me just tell you the little quick little stories about each one of these. One institution told us that they had when they after bringing in Peoplegrove, they were able to go from, like, twenty handcrafted mentorships to more than a hundred every semester. That was one institution had x x times of that. I mean, it was a massive university, and it's an outlier. But that's that's not only a point of the the the demand for engagement, but it's that it makes having a technological underpinning for this makes it so much easier to do with limited resources because we all have limited resources. Now so that was that's kind of an example where an institution is doing very formal mentorship opportunities. Another institution told me that sixty five percent of the alums that go that go onto the platform and and and seek to engage and with with an alum report back in in they have a they've set up a a reporting mechanism that they've had a they've had a, meaningful exchange, that with with that alum. Now at first, you might say, she's sixty five percent. No. We've gotta think we've gotta completely reframe how we think about a percent like that. And, again, I'm gonna use that fragmented world that we've got. What other type what other type of outreach could you get sixty five percent? Think of LinkedIn. I mean, think of anyone on the call could could could think of reaching out to somebody on LinkedIn, and it's if you're lucky, it would be a one in ten. And but the what the you know, when they were telling me about this, when other institutions were telling me similar stats, it was this closed secure network where everybody on there has basically raised their hand by creating their profile that they want to be there. They want and and linking it to the stat I just said, alums most the the thing they wanna do most in the networking with students is help them get a help them get a job, get an internship, help them craft their career, and so on. So that's that's really a great statistic. And then another institution told me that after they they moved they created a virtual professional development series that just they had they had tried periodic face to face professional development, alumni driven events. But, I mean, the the the workload of that, where do you do it? I mean, do you take them all over the country? Do you take them local and so on? But they started a virtual session. And by the way, it was open to alums and students, and they're getting fifty to seventy five people enrolling and coming, showing those those are the show up numbers to each one of those events. They this institution told me you'll see in the fine print there, they had a very timely issue because they can. Because, again, something about a tech tech platform is something big comes up in the news. Less than thirty days later, they could have or less than fifteen days, less than three days, they could put something out and have it, and they had two hundred two hundred plus attendees show up for that event. So that's just kind of three prisms of that that we start to see that people not only sign up, but they're engaging and they're finding it useful because it matches what they're doing in the rest of their lives. Yeah. I think you make a couple of really good points through some specific examples here. I think, again, whether you're using a PeopleGrove engagement platform and a or a different engagement platform, I feel like there's three things that you've said that that people need to use to evaluate what platform they use and how they use it. Right? The first one would be what you just said about the the ability to be responsive to the market. When you have when you're using a technology solution, when you're using an engagement hub like Peoplegrove or a different one that's on the market, you're able to respond to market conditions much faster. To your point, We had a a campus partner who has a lot of people that are employed by the government. And when major layoffs happened, they could respond within five days. They had a they had a group set up. They had an a way for people to engage with each other, help each other, and support each other through that, knowing these are our alum that are going through these issues. I also think that the other thing you mentioned is it's closed and secure. It's not the same as going to a LinkedIn. An engagement hub, again, whether it's ours or anyone else's, provides that whether you're a prospective student and your parent wants to know you're in a safe, closed, secure environment or you're an alum and you wanna go with someone who's much more likely to want to help you because you have this thing in common. You've been matched. Whatever the the reason, I think being closed and secure is is the other thing that someone would want to definitely look for as they're evaluating engagement hubs. And then I think the third thing you mentioned was just this concept of formal and informal mentorship as we as we kind of before we move on from mentorship, I think that's the key. As someone who you might have an alum who isn't interested in doing a formal mentorship program. But if a student can see that they they're working at the place the student's applying for an internship and can reach out with a very specific example to say, I am actually interviewing at the place you work. Any advice for me, tips for me? That's such a meaningful, like you said, meaningful connection where an alum can feel like they're supporting students without a huge investment in time. And so that that balance of any engagement in Hub needs to have that formal mentorship capacity, but also the informal with the AI matching on the back end. So that even if the student doesn't know who to ask, going in and being able to say, here's my question, who can help me? And we use AI, that's the other thing I would say to look for if you're evaluating engagement hubs. So let's shift gears a little bit to doing more with less. So this was another theme that I know came up, which is the expectations are growing, and people are using engagement as a way to scale an engagement hub to scale their effect. And we all know that we're probably you you know, you can ask for ten more people in the budget, but you're probably not getting that to manually go through and and help support students, prospective students, and alumni. But talk a little bit about how you found people using the engagement hub to do more with less. Yeah. There's a quote that I will never forget because it it it it it was so clear. One one of one of an alumni association leader at a massive university said to me, Peoplegrove is the only tool that I have in my toolbox that is almost universally applicable to our alumni base of more than two hundred and fifty thousand people. And at first, you're like, is there a hyperbole going on there? What but when you think about look. I mean, the the the entire population is tech savvy now, tech friendly. I I only need to look as far as Facebook and know that most of my friends are my parents' friends. They're not even my age. And so, yeah, the I love that that little just quip there that's that really think think of the man the the person power, I'm sorry, that it would take for any other type of thing. And I this is one where I just wanna go down a list of some of these u use cases. And for each one, what I'm gonna ask the the listener to think of is how many manual hours person hours would doing that probably take? And think about, and and then think about the context. But so, anyway, that that's what's coming up. But the I think that's a good a a good way to maybe think about this issue of doing more with less because it came up again and again and again. I also will add in a plug here for AI. I'm I, I'm not sure if all of the participants would agree with this. What I'm hearing, though, more and more is even, from some of our campus partners at a board level, boards are saying, we want you to use more AI. Tell us how you're using AI. And I feel like AI can help us with one of a couple things. Right? It can help us be better, faster, or cheaper. And so what are the things we're doing? And I think this is an area where we want to be better, and we want to be cost effective. To be able to make those one to one connections, to be able to scale engagement is actually a very time consuming process unless you have a platform of some kind. Again, whether it's us or someone else. Having that platform allows you to be able to scale. And I love what you have here, Scott, around scaling is the is is scaling smart is the new normal. I think AI plays a critical role in this. It certainly does from our perspective of how we're using this. And I think this also helps provide that proof point back to whether it's a president calling for this or a board calling for this. I just see this overwhelming request from presidents and boards of leadership on campuses and in colleges and universities saying, how are we using AI to do more with less or to do more with the same? You know, that even becomes the new normal of you're gonna have the same, but our expectations from all these people are increasing. So how do we do more with the same? And using AI, using a platform like this, I think, lets people spend time on the things that really matter. They they have time then to make those connections without having to do as much of the manual work or make those the make some of the intros that and and so I think that I know you heard a lot about this from campus partners as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, nobody was saying well, we had actually, there was one of your partners that sees so much power in in PeopleGrove that they are actually hiring a person that will be responsible for PeopleGrove full time. Not that it wasn't working, like, not that it wasn't already singing, but there's so much potential that they were I I just wanna tell that story because that that to me is the ultimate idea of an investment. But what we're gonna see on this next slide is five or six little vignettes that I wanna share where they it doesn't it doesn't necessarily require that. You can do that with proportional time in a in an office. And it's AI, but it's also just the nuts and bolts, the bones of the platform too. Yeah. I think that's a key. It's just the it's the bones of a platform having again, whether it's a platform that we offer or it's a platform someone else offers, that concept of an engagement platform allows you to do many of these things. Absolutely. Folks, think here were some really unique cases that all reflected that doing more doing more with less, doing the most you can with what you have and so on. Though my favorite story was one of the partners the primary partner is is from the career center. But to to to to pay for PeopleGrove, they wanted they they pooled resources the career center and academic department and actually their their first gen office all needed they all had distinct uses, but they found the use they found a joint use that they could all use Peoplegrove. And so I so they all came together. They're all using it slightly differently because they can customize it to what they need to do. But it's a single expense. It's a single tech tech thing to manage and so on, which is I loved that story. And their alumni office has been in transition for a couple of years, but now that's settled and so on. And they're now the alumni office is coming on. I love that kind of partnership. That's just such a great story. And then it's possible, I love also. Yeah. I think so too. And here I I don't know if anyone else feels this way. I hear a lot about people saying they have platform fatigue. There's so many platforms. And so our goal and any goal of any engagement hub that you would you would look at should be to provide as many resources in one place as possible. Not only is it a shared expense, and it's a it's a good way to do that, but also from either the student from the user perspective. I think students and alumni are much more likely to use resources if they know where to find them. Right? So even one of the stats earlier where they had students rank the twelve different platforms they use. Think about that. A student has to remember twelve different platforms. And what we're trying to build, I think, any good engagement platform any good engagement platform is gonna have as many people on it as possible serving as many different needs as possible so that they don't require twelve different platforms. Like, the goal would be to have one place for a student, for a prospective student, to an for an alum to go where they're on there the entire time. And what I loved about this story is the engagement platform wasn't just for one point in time, but the engagement platform serves all of these so that whether you're a prospective student, you're a current student in the career center, you're an alum looking for a way to give back, you're on the same platform. And it's not relearning a tool. It's something that stays with them throughout their entire university experience. And I love that for so many reasons, from a cost effective way, from a student or alumni experience perspective, and also just from preventing the platform fatigue that I that I hear a lot about. That's so true. I mean, we all experience that on a day to day basis. Let me just check to highlight a couple of these other things because, again, they they're they're powerful. One of one of your partners said that at any given time when they go and check the stats, there are seven hundred and fifty people engaged on the platform. Again, let's come back to that prism of what kind of staff time, expense and effort would have to go into some doing being able to do something like that. How about this one? One institution reports that membership has grown by forty percent in two and a half years. Another reported that in year one and year two, it grew by fifty percent each year. I mean, the kind of effort to make that kind of growth in any other thing is is astounding. There are sets, I think, you'll see in the report on those that were more profound. And, yeah, they don't continue maybe at those levels, but I know that it was for one of those two, it was still twenty five percent four years out. So that that's really amazing. Another institution told us that they had a career center had facilitated three hundred and sixty five long term mentorships in in just the first year that they were using it to do that. That's that's significantly above, not just doubling, what they had been able to do in the past just because of all kinds of things that can get in the way that don't get in the way when you're doing it, virtually. Another one is, one one institution when I I got real nuts and bolts with one, and they They said, look. We were able to completely discontinue and cancel our contract for an email provider because the way they decided to use Peoplegrove, which was they were gonna upload their entire their their contact their entire alumni contact list into PeopleGrove and then invite people to finish their profiles. So with all the records in there, they could use PeopleGrove as their email provider, and that just got rid of one of those platforms that they didn't have. I wanna tell you one more story. It's not here, but it's was told to me by two institutions, and it solved a real practical problem. And that was this. Once everything was in there, they were and they were both alumni offices. They were able to solve that old age old problem of departments and faculty and staff wanting access to their alums. And, you know, alum I I started I I shouldn't say I started my career. I worked in the alumni office when I was a student, and I know that alumni offices are need to be very careful about who they grant access to be con sending contact to e to alums. That's a very that needs to be very carefully held. They were able to create this in the subdomains access for the faculty of the business school or the engineering school or what have you to have contact uninhibited with their alums, but and also be just through that contact and the power of of the tool itself, those have become mini you mentioned it before, mini speaker bureaus, mini to say nothing of of setting up informal mentorships for students in the program. But, again, what a time saver to find a speaker for a a class session or a seminar that you're having or what have you. I just wanted to share that one because I just thought it was such a practical use time saver. And in this, it's it's more just you're finally able to meet that request that's been going on for years for that alumni access. So I It is. And it it's such a great story. I think also going back to the extended service hours beyond office hours. I feel like, especially for online students, they're not gonna maybe visit a career center, but they they still want the resources that would come from that. And they might not be able to get to campus on a certain day or time or even log in to something on a certain day or time. This becomes we've got a number of campus partners that use the engagement platform as really an extension of student services to online students as well, specifically. So I think that's a that's a really interesting use case that that campus partners have figured out to use. Again, if you're looking for an engagement platform or looking how engagement can help, thinking through it in terms of the different types of students you serve is really interesting as well. How can an engagement platform help with online? How can it help with first gen? These types of things are are are big problems and and and also big opportunities that people are trying to to address. Yeah. You know, I would wanna just tell a little bit more of that anecdote. That career center director said they are serving exponentially more students through twenty four seven Peoplegrove access than they ever had walk into their office, and it reminded me of something that I I used to say when I was talking about online education. An institution that doesn't have an online program is not gonna convert one person that wants an online program to come to their classroom program. But if they have an online program, they will attract they can attract and maybe do it better than other institutions. And that it goes to that story from that career center director when he said, I don't feel bad that we're serving those students off off hours because they would if we didn't have that, they would not the vast majority of them would not come into the office. They would just not do it. So his was the quote earlier that says we've gotta meet them where they are and how they want to access things. And that takes us back to our very first point of the day, which is we have to we have to align with what they've done in their lives up to that time. It's so true. It's so true. I think these are great, very tactical ways that people are using an engagement platform. I think you've got a couple more examples too that we can dig into. Yeah. I mean, when when we start this is where we start to me, this is the most interesting stuff. This is where it really starts to make a lot of sense, and I get really excited about this. But this we kinda turn the point a little bit here towards the the actual measurement, not just doing more with less, but getting so much out of it. Now so first, here's this here's the vignette I alluded to just a little bit. But among that fifty percent of the users that had had no previous contact with the institution, they packed up bad boy virtually, and they just shot it through to to their, prospect research. And they found more than a they qualified more than a thousand of those people that they had no previous information or intent on that they can they can go after, and it's resulted in lots of of donations. So there's a super practical, super, like, rubber hits the road kind of example. Another institution told us that from the profiles that that they that they set up and they're customizable. I mean, you could talk a lot about that, Don, how how you do it. But they've they've identified twenty twenty different variables that they are now including in all kinds of analysis that they're doing, and they wouldn't have those if if they wouldn't have those variables if they didn't have the platform. That reminds me of a related story, which is one of one of one of the partners said that when I said, what is the most powerful thing about your platform? What will justify you keeping it? They said, the data that we get out of it. And I said, tell me more about that. And they said, the fact that we have we have occupational data, we have we know when they change careers because there's something about the platform that he he said, we get more updates to peep people's records than we've ever seen. And by and it is so much more up to date. It is so much more vast than any past alumni survey or an analytics type of thing that they might have been trying to go harvest. You know, I think you can go to LinkedIn and try to get information on your alumni. It's all there. You own it. And so, I mean, talk about an incredible thing. And then in a very different way, back to that client where they pulled their resources, they told us that they they are they got a they they were awarded a title five grant in their first gen office for first gen to first gen peer mentoring, which they just customized their platform to be able to do that. And they credited that that the way they were able to describe what they were gonna do and people grow with that was was was a, instrumental in getting the grant. And on their quarterly reporting, they what the what got fed back to me was this is the easiest quarter. I think it was quarterly quarterly reporting that they do for any grant that they have because it's just I don't wanna oversimplify, but I'm gonna just say it's like just a click of a button, and they can get what they need. And you think about each student in that program. Right? Like, so if you think about first gen students and being able to have a place, never mind the grant and all the financial outcomes that it drives, which is fantastic, but you also see the impact that each that each student in this platform or in any engagement platform is going to have if it's well run. And I think I think even back to myself when I was in college, having that person, finding the person made such a difference in my life trajectory and being able to scale that here. It it's all of these things, but I love the this idea of engagement driving outcomes because the outcomes we see are financial to the institution. They're life changing for the student. Graduation. There there's all the things that we would see. And so I love the concept of looking at this first through the lens of some of the the ways that an alumni office would use this. And I also think going back to the success indicators that predict alumni behavior, we're seeing a lot of this. This definitely is a trend of thinking through how can we be more predictive about building our donor pipeline. Also, you mentioned, Scott, the case reporting that's required. You know, if you're gonna be involved in case reporting. Yeah. Everything that is if you're looking for an engagement hub, look for one where everything that's happening in that hub tracks back to a case report. So for us, we have a click of a button. You click a button and it downloads all your case reports. But I think even if you don't use us, look for something like that because it can help drive those outcomes as well, which is which is fantastic. Yeah. Absolutely. If we go on to the next slide, there's some some some more of these that I just love to share. One one partner has documented that fifty four percent of the the users, the people that have joined the platform and are using it, have made a donation since then. That that beats the the the alumni donation rate by by whip by by by by leaps and bounds. So that's just one of those where it is absolutely this institution has gotten very sophisticated at tracking who's on and and right down to who who may be giving. Another institution told us that in four years, because of the PeopleGo platform, they can document sixteen thousand meetings, mentor I think, in this informal mentorships between students and alums, that's an astounding number. If we think of those being the kinds of quality interactions that lead to warm feelings about the institution and warm feelings lead to all that. I remember going to the case institute and saying, you do friend raising before fundraising. There's that twenty four seven. I wanna I just whenever we talk about the outcomes, I I wanna keep on remembering that twenty four seven service that the platform remind offers and not just for the because that is a real outcome. That is delivering that service that brings us back again to my initial point of you've gotta simulate the life that they have outside, and they're used to twenty four seven service. And finally, that thirty thousand members that are that are on one institution's platform, they haven't had engagement of that sort in anything else that they've done. Yes. They've got a huge alumni network, but this provides them because there's now, you know, they're not all using it every day, and it wasn't the institution that told us that every moment at any given moment, there's seven hundred and fifty people active. But those are that's thirty thousand people that are engaged and have raised their hand. I wanna be a part of my university's community. And when you think about so many of us who the only time we hear from our institution is around the annual fund or a call from a student that's gonna tell you a nice story. Yes. It's a nice story, but it's gonna end with, hopefully, you're gonna give them some money. This is a totally different way, and it's a twenty first century way of bringing those alums in all the time, not in an artificial call. Not that those calls from a student. I did those calls. So I I I don't mean to disparage those at all, but we all know what those calls are for. It's hard to say. Yeah. And I think what's interesting about, specifically, the giving rate is that there is no ask on the engagement platform. So while other engagement platforms do make an ask and while we can set that up but by and large, no one does because this becomes the sacred place for engagement. Your engagement platform, by having that safe place where they keep coming and they keep engaging, you can actually drive outcomes in other channels. You can drive outcomes through those other things, but this has become the place where they go. They know they're giving back. They're engaging. They're volunteering their time and and and talents so that later when that ask for treasure comes in, it actually does make an impact. But I think it's worth calling out, you know, there if anyone the call is thinking about an engagement platform and thinking about having one, you might think, oh, I should have one, and then I should ask money for from people on the engagement platform. And we actually see the better results if you don't. They come back. They engage. They they're much more involved, which does lead to giving later. But it's almost counterintuitive of, okay. We're gonna have this, and then they're gonna engage, and we're gonna ask them for money here. But, actually, we found that it it works the opposite. If this is this if the engagement platform is a safe place for them to come and engage where there isn't an ask, they keep coming back. They get a stronger affiliation with the university, and then they are more likely to give, which is really interesting. I can't and that just makes so much sense after hearing all these stories. Every single one of the interviews at some point told me about something unique that they are doing, and they're typically using this group's function or the subdomains. I can't remember which it was. But, like, one institution told us that they part of their institutional mission is something about the whole person. And they decided to create a group, the whole person at work or some something like this. And they they used the platform to surface people that had unique and compelling stories to start an ongoing series for folks, and they're getting they're getting dozens and dozens of people that are, a, interested in saying, yes. I'd love to to do the speaking, and dozens and dozens and dozens of people that are attending those events, and it all links back to their institutional mission. I thought that that was a pretty unique way. Another institution told us that they're they've created a group kinda like this first gen, but it's all voluntary, and it's the nursing school because at this institution, each school has got a sub hub all on the same platform, but they have their little customized area. And they've created a group for first gen nursing students to interact with nurses out there who were first gen. And if they they say the contact is continuous. And so I I just I I I know. I I didn't they're not on the slide, but those kinds of examples add so much value. Today because, again, Everett and it's not just the students. It's all of us have come to expect customized experiences. Yeah. Absolutely. So I think there's one question that has come in that we haven't covered so far, and that is related to how schools are getting such high numbers of alumni jumping on the platform. I think we can circle back on that and dig deep into that because that's probably a whole another webinar hour, honestly, of of the strategies that you would deploy to do that. So we'll circle back on that. But I think just at a high level, Scott, you mentioned something earlier where one of the campuses, they load all of their alumni in and then invite them to come, but really clear with what the ask is. We're not asking you for money. We're asking you to give back to the student and be part of this. And so and I also think one of the schools that saw, like, the fifty percent year over year growth, it comes with word-of-mouth too. So when they are there and they realize this is not where you're gonna ask me for money, this is really where I can just connect with students, you see that. So we'll circle back, David, with you and and give you spend a little bit more time digging into that specifically because there are a number of tactics and strategies we can deploy. Can I just tell an anecdote that was told to me, though, about that? Yeah. Because, look, we're all overtaxed and have a lot on our plate. One institution that had a kind of a slow start because just because of all kinds of environmental factors said even with he described it as minimal minimal time and attention on the platform. They were growing at twenty eight percent per year over the last four years. And so imagine if if if the platform and all they were doing in that case is they were putting that it existed. They had given it a special name that rung, you know, with the institutional mascot or something. Yes. They were putting it in the the newsletters and things. But just with that, they were growing by a student I I they had a stat for students and for alums. One was twenty eight percent, one was thirty four percent. And so just that, that kind of thing, let alone a formal campaign that you absolutely can go into on a hold. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I think as we get ready to kind of close here, I think a couple key takeaways that we wanna highlight. And I I think for for me, again, if I was back on campus, I I didn't know engagement was a tool. I really didn't. I did not know this was this was something I should be leveraging in the way that I I see it today. And I think this is where I'm I'm hopeful that today we've sparked a couple of ideas from the listeners of how they can be using engagement as a tool to address some of the challenges that you're dealing with. We have one campus partner that put this in place for they had a a high melt rate in the summer, so they put this in place to help, and they saw their yield go up significantly. So as you think about whether you use a platform or not, and, hopefully, you use PeopleGrove if you use a platform. But regardless of all of that, think about how you can leverage engagement to help impact the things you're trying to move the needle on. And so I think that's one of the takeaways I hope everybody leaves with is just some ideas of how you could be leveraging and making engagement part of your your tactical toolbox of how you're addressing challenges. And then I also wanna make sure we leave you with this thought that engagement is I think it used to be a nice to have, Scott. Like, oh, wouldn't that be nice? Or it's great when these things happen organically and on their own. And if we heard about it once, we'd put it in a newsletter. But to be able to say, this isn't actually a nice to have. This is actually what parents and students and alumni expect now. They expect expect a way to engage that's a a modern way to do that and in ways that are that that's really relevant to them. And I think to your point earlier around, you know, platform connections are not artificial in any way. They're just as meaningful, and we see that time and time again. So I think be thinking about how engagement can help with students, with parents, and alumni, and their expectations in everything from career outcomes and preparation to if you think about who you know is part of your experience at a college, you need a professional network to get out into the workforce, and this helps create that. And so this is something that should be talked about as the proof point of we're not just gonna help you get a job. We're gonna help make sure you have the network that's gonna gonna help you get a job. And that, you know, that that's a whole new level of support that you can provide to your constituents. And then I think the last thing here is just to leverage outcomes to increase those out the whether it's yield, persistence, alumni volunteerism, how can you think about engagement as that driver and not just as an afterthought or, like I said in the second bullet, a nice to have, but thinking about this as something that can actually arm your institution with a new tool that we see in this research, Scott. You heard about it over and over again. It's meaningful. This doesn't feel like one more email to send. Like, oh, we need more of this. Let's send another email, or let's send a foam finger, or let's do these things. This is such a meaningful way to bring your campus mission to life. And I wish someone would have told me this while I was sitting in a cabinet meeting on a campus. I think we did these things without understanding really what it was, but to think about it as scale and to think about it first instead of last. I I hope this helps people who are listening think about the challenges they have and maybe a new tool they would have to to address that. Any other final thoughts from you, Scott? I I I echo all of that. It came through loud and clear that the users are thinking in in that way. And I would close with just an anecdote actually that from from one of from one of the interviews. Business school alumni had told us that one of their students won a very prestigious scholarship, the kind that gets national attention. And she had a speech at the college campus, and she did not she was not she did this she wrote her own speech. It's all her own. And in that speech, this the alumni center director was astounded to hear this woman say, my college experience at college x y z has been a fantastic experience, and I will mean I will stay in touch with this university for the rest of my life because I have this vehicle, and she named their PeopleGrowth platform. Yeah. Unaided, that just came out of this this student's mouth. She thought it was important enough that and she had the ability to say she was gonna be able to stay in touch with this universe for the rest of her life because of this engagement platform. Helping students and alum be successful is what we're all here for. Right? So that's great. That's a great way to end this. Thanks so much, Scott, for sharing your insights and what you've learned about this. Thanks for all of the attendees for joining us for the hour. Have a great day, everyone.