Enhancing young alumni engagement: Themes from four young alumni listening sessions with President Harris

Executive Summary

In January and early February, President Harris convened four ninety-minute virtual listening sessions with 53 young alumni who had graduated in the past fifteen years. These sessions were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed thematically.

Young alumni participating in the listening sessions were grateful for the opportunity to share their thoughts and be heard. They described six dominant motivations for, and paths to, engagement. These were the engagements of: reciprocity or gratitude, care, pride, service, connection, and habit. Alumni may simultaneously experience multiple types of, or paths to, engagement.

There were a number of practical factors described that cause young alumni disengagement. Some of these were passive disengagement – factors that prevented them, logistically or practically, from being engaged, or simply a lack of desire to participate. Other factors were more systemic and represented an active choice by participants to disengage. These factors started as a student, when the now alumni had a negative, traumatic, or suboptimal experience. Such a time set the tone for alumni feeling that they would not be listened to by the administration, so engagement would be futile. Both as students and as alumni, participants described a sense of distrust of the institution. Not understanding, necessarily, how decisions were made and also not feeling represented by the decision makers has created a situation where some young alumni do not feel that decisions are being made in students’ best interests. They therefore are disappointed with the direction in which they have seen the administration lead the institution, feeling that there exists a disconnect between the values that attracted them to Grinnell and the institutional actions in the most recent decade. They also have experienced negative interactions with other, older, alumni—both in person and on social media—which deters them from engaging further. Underscoring several of these factors motivating active disengagement is a perceived lack of transparency in communications.

Participants made a variety of suggestions of what may be important areas of focus in forging the path forward. These included how best to recognize individual engagement preferences; the benefit of focusing on the strong relationships that make Grinnell meaningful to so many alumni; and recognizing the contributions alumni can make, as well as how these contributions can be organized within the structure of alumni activities. Participants saw a role for the Center for Careers, Life, and Service (CLS) in engaging more young alumni. They also made a number of suggestions regarding communications. Because of the perceived lack of transparency in recent years, participants felt there is substantial room for improvement in this area of college operations in terms of engaging young alumni. Having received a Grinnell education, alumni wanted to be engaged in a manner that recognizes the way they have been taught to think: to question, to debate, and to understand. They saw room for different modalities of communication and engagement, and requested more timely communiques about note-worthy campus policy changes and events.