An International Comparative Study On Alumni Survey And Donation

Alumni are not only the product of university education,but also indispensable resources for university.Researches and practices on alumni at home and abroad show that alumni play an important role in the development of the University.However,China's current alumni work in universities is in dilemmas.On the one hand,the work is tedious and chaotic,which need more professional staff and resources to promote the work.On the other hand,from the perspective of the University,the improvement and contribution of alumni work is not significant,which don't deserve more resource investment.In order to breakthrough the binary code contradictions,the current work ideas and framework o should be reset,and the relations essence between universities and alumni should be re-established,so as to achieve the efficient development.In the “University-Alumni” community,universities should center on the eternal and fundamental mission of “spreading the truth and cultivating the talents”,which is the true cohesion and original drivers of the loose and free alumni group.As the old saying goes: “No pains,No gains”.Only when the university tries best to provide its alumni good education and high-quality service,can it be expected to get the payback from successful alumni.Facing with the multiple and scattered resources which alumni may provide to the University,it is impossible to develop them all.Otherwise,alumni work in the university will become more and more diffused and unable to operate.From three criteria:(1)can be provided by most of alumni;(2)can be dominated by the university or the alumni association;(3)can effectively promote the development of university,alumni resources can be selected and classified into to two sorts:(1)alumni information feedback resource collected through alumni survey,which can be used to improve university quality;(2)alumni donation collected through the professional fundraising,which support the steady development of the current university operation.On the collection of alumni information feedback,a comprehensive and in-depth comparison of alumni survey is conducted among Britain,Spain,Holland and Germany four European countries,and the United States.Some major experience and enlightenment can be learned:(1)alumni survey can be used to evaluate the quality of College Alumni survey,but,alone,cannot be the basis of administrative decision;(2)a practically effective alumni survey should be implemented in the university level;(3)alumni association maintaining the alumni information and undertaking the daily liaison work with alumni should be actively involved in alumni survey,which can contribute to the immediate and flexible results feedback,and carry out surveys in multiple ways.Accordingly,the undergraduate alumni donation rate as a universities and colleges assessment indicators are widely used in the United States,since its inception two decade ago.On the collection of alumni donation,this paper focused on cases in the United States which carry out the earliest and most mature the first and the most mature implementation of universities fundraising.After analyzing and excluding the influence of religious cultural,social and legal background as well as development of US university endowment history,alumni donations external influence factors and intrinsic psychological motivation,which are suitable for the alumni work in Chinese universities,are presented.Based on these conclusion,this paper develops a 10-dimensions Alumni Donation Model,which can be applied to the alumni work in our counties:(1)the cultivation and influence of future alumni;(2)the convergence of all kinds of alumni resources to enhance the quality of university;(3)the transfer of positive energy to publicity;(4)the optimization of organization and staffing of alumni association;(5)the construction of comprehensive alumni database;(6)the classification and arrangement of alumni data;(7)the establishment of various alumni community;(8)the supply of full-range alumni services;(9)the thoughtful contact and service to the donators;(10)the design of attractive donation project.Literature research and a series of successful fund-raising cases are also provided to make clear relative strategies and specific methods of each dimension.Finally,this paper analyses the alumni survey,alumni donations,and work in alumni association in the field of China's higher education from the aspects of status quo,problems and development vision.Based on the research results,this paper develops an alumni Service and donation platform to explore the effective ways of leap forward development our alumni work using the information technology.