Solihull School, founded in 1560, with its alumni association founded in 1921, celebrates nearly 100 years of a strong alumni community. The Development & Alumni Relations Office joined with ToucanTech to create a community site that has taken off with enormous success, over 1500 alumni signed up in nine months!

During these last few months, the Development & Alumni Relations Office (DARO) has seen their engagement and sign up rates soar, with 240 sign-ups in 30 days. They have been promoting their site through virtual careers seminars, quizzes and social media channels to maximize their reach, and encouraging members to share the website with others. 

"We launched our new alumni community powered by ToucanTech in late 2019 and have achieved 1k+ sign-ups with a 96% opt-in consent to receive email and fundraising communications from the school. We really like the events feature, which helps us plan, organize and promote our events, easily marking people as attended/ no show at the click of a button. I also like the news feature with the ability to see which articles get the most views to help us decide on future stories to cover."
Lynn Moseley, Development & Alumni Relations Assistant, Solihull & Saint Martin’s

Engaging with 2020 leavers

Ordinarily, school leavers would have a series of events which demonstrated to them the benefits of staying in touch with their alma mater. Though the class of 2020 missed out on these experiences, DARO has made every effort to connect with this class in new ways. They sent a special gift to each alum that joined their online alumni network, as a reminder of their time at the school. They have also seen a great response by engaging their recent alumni by social media, using Facebook and Instagram as their main platforms to incite registrations, and link to their community site through their signature in any email they send out. 

Providing value through their community

An interesting way that DARO has been providing value for their alumni community, particularly more recent alumni, is through their career seminars. They are currently running a series covering different types of industries, from medicine to marketing and everything in between, featuring alumni working in those fields in a panel format. With the ability to organise these events from start to finish through the ToucanTech system, sending out promotional emails and sharing webinar links, it’s wonderful to see such a proactive initiative to help many younger alumni who may have been affected by the current job market. 

In addition to these events, they have been producing a round up of each seminar, providing helpful guidance for those who couldn’t attend the session as well as a taster for the types of content that are being discussed during the panels. 

Raising promotion of fundraising events

96% of all alumni online profiles have consented to receive fundraising communications, which will help to significantly boost future fundraising campaigns to their 1500 strong alumni community. Discussing their most successful feature of their alumni network, Lynn Moseley, Development & Alumni Relations Assistant at Solihull & Saint Martin’s, said:

“I really like the Events feature, it has really helped me plan, organize and promote our events. I can easily send an email to all attendees to confirm details and mark them attended/no show at the click of a button. I also like the news feature; we can see which articles get the most views/hits which helps us with future articles.”

Using their ToucanTech system to oversee their communications and development strategy, from event sign-ups to fundraising data, their online community has grown from strength to strength, and they have been innovative and quick-thinking to provide value for their members during this turbulent time. By expressing this value to their alumni, they have achieved a high level of growth and engagement which will help them enormously when they plan their next fundraising campaign.

Find out how we can help you tap into the value your alumni community holds by providing a place for alumni to network, share careers advice and maintain a lifelong connection with the school and with each other, as well as making your life easier by integrating your CRM, database and communications to run your development strategy through one system. Get in touch with one of our team to book an introduction or ask any questions.