Introducing the Alumni Playbook

  • Team Schusterman

August 24, 2015

We are excited to introduce a new community resource!

We know that many organizations and initiatives in our community have developed an extensive, sophisticated collective of programs and opportunities to encourage young adults to connect and engage with Jewish values and Jewish life in meaningful ways.

But as programs conclude and “graduates” join their respective alumni networks, these organizations are faced with the daunting task of keeping these networks active.

That is why we are so excited to offer just that—a tool to help professionals tasked with alumni engagement tackle what comes next.

The Alumni Playbook is an online compendium of best practices, strategies and case studies designed to connect with and activate alumni networks and provide them with ongoing opportunities for meaningful engagement.

While the Playbook emphasizes the tremendous community-building work being done by Jewish organizations—including AVODAH, Birthright Israel Excel, The Bronfman Fellowships, JDC-Entwine, Moishe House, ROI Community and Tevel b’Tzedek—it contains ideas and models that are applicable to for-purpose, nonprofit and philanthropic efforts beyond the Jewish community.

“Alumni represent a tremendous asset, and we should be devoting as much time, effort and resources to keep them engaged as we do to attract them,” said our president, Sandy Cardin.

“When provided meaningful opportunities for further engagement, many well-connected, action-oriented alumni are eager to help strengthen those organizations with which they are involved by volunteering, serving as goodwill ambassadors and otherwise sharing the institutional values they found so compelling in the first place.”

We built the Alumni Playbook around one guiding principle: there is no one-size-fits-all approach to alumni programming. To that end, the Playbook offers a multi-tiered approach so that users can tailor their alumni strategy to their specific needs and capacity, including:

  • A list of best practices to help Jewish organizations build an effective alumni strategy;
  • An idea menu with suggestions for high-impact programming;
  • A series of case studies that showcase seven organizations’ vibrant alumni communities;
  • A toolkit with additional resources and reading material; and
  • A discussion guide to involve stakeholders.

Drawing on the successful approaches of higher education institutions, which have long been utilizing innovative, tech-savvy means to motivate their alumni and build robust communities, the Playbook features insights and perspectives of experts from Teach for America, Yale University and more.

As Mark Dollhopf, Former Executive Director of the Association of Yale Alumni, expressed: “It’s not the plan, it’s the planning. As interest in this field continues to grow, the Alumni Playbook is a much-needed resource for professionals tasked with this critical work, whether they are just starting to develop alumni programs or are looking to revitalize their established alumni networks.”

Visit the Alumni Playbook at www.schusterman.org/playbook.

Join us on September 3 to dive deeper into the Playbook’s content and hear from quoted experts in the field of alumni engagement! 

Click HERE to register for our #NetTalks: Explore the Alumni Playbook webinar!