Alumni play a vital role in a college or university’s future success. Strong alumni engagement goes beyond simply asking for financial support. Alumni are an educational institution’s greatest ambassadors, and when engaged properly have the potential to provide career support to students, create partnerships with external organizations, and raise the profile of the institution.

Major challenge is configuring a solution which can capture validated information around alumni and to establish such solution we need to have correct knowledge about what information to capture. Let’s understand how using salesforce’s objects can leverage our need of Alumni information.

Object Name- Lead

Features

• Lead creation – Web to lead/ Manual creation / Import
• Lead Auto-assignment
• Lead Duplicate check
• Mapping Leads fields
• Add Lead to Campaign
• Send List Email
• Convert to Contact

Fields

• Demographic Data– Name, Mobile, Email, Gender, Birthdate
• Lead Source- Webinar, Phone Enquiry, Trade Show, Others [To understand through which channel leads are coming are in so as to better track and qualify them]
• Lead Status- Open, Closed, Contacted, Not Contacted, Qualified, Unqualified [Lead status helps to acknowledge where is our lead and what series of action is required to get lead qualified]
• Lead Owner- the user to which creates or owns the record [Lead owner value is important to acknowledge who owns the lead so that further actions with respect to that lead can be assigned to its owner. Using change owner, we can change the owner of the lead record]
• Lead Record Type- helps to understand the role or nature lead belongs to. Example lead can be donor or lead can be a volunteer.
• Ratings- Hot/Warm/Cold [indicates certain value of the lead and allows sales reps to acknowledge hot leads easily]
• Industry– Agriculture, Education, communication, Channel [helps to understand the primary occupation of the lead]
• Company– name of company lead belongs to

Validations- Validation can be configured on any particular fields as per requirements so as to maintain accuracy of information and avoid replications of records. Customization- As per requirement lead object is customizable.

Leads here are prospects Alumni or students who holds potential to be Alumni soon, as they haven’t been qualified to be Alumni. Once they complete lead stages and gets qualified, Alumni lead gets converted into Alumni Contact.

Object Name- Contact

Features

• Send List email
• Import contacts
• Add Contact to Campaign
• View Relationship
• Merge Contact

Fields

-** Demographic Data**- Name, Mobile, Email, Gender, Birthdate, Address

• Account Name- the organization or household the contact belongs to
• Contact Owner- identifies the user who has ownership of the contact record
• Preferred Email
• Work Email
• If contact is Donor then records contain donation information fields- Average Gift, Best Gift, Total Gifts, Latest Gift
• If contact is Volunteer then records contain volunteer information fields- Volunteer Skills [marketing, fundraising, landscaping], Volunteer status [active, inactive, new sign up] Volunteer Availability [weekdays, weekends, morning, afternoon]
• Decease- Gives information that contact is deceased [it is important to know that contact is deceased so that we can stop further engagements actions]

Validations- Can perform validation on any particular field like email address, batch year, etc. to maintain accuracy of data and avoid replications. Customization- As per requirement contact object is customizable.

Alumni contact are those alumni who are qualified leads. Contact gets associated with Account object which gives idea about Contacts personal demographics, social as well as professional background history.

Object Name- Account

In Salesforce 2 types of Accounts exits

Household Account- [describes Alumni’s family background] Organization Account- [describes Alumni’s Social and personal background]

Fields

If account record type is Organizational

• Account Name
• Primary Contact
• Business Email
• Business Phone
• Number of members
• Account Type
• Address [business physical address]
• Industry [primary occupation]

If account record type is Household

• Account Name
• Primary Contact
• Address
• Phone
• Number of members
• Formal greetings
• Informal greetings
• Total gifts [amount of total donations received from particular household]
• Average gifts [average number of gifts from particular household]

Validation- As per requirements can perform validation on any particular fields to avoid replications of records and maintain accuracy of the information. Customization- As per requirement account object is customizable.

Our Alumni contact can be related to multiple contacts [friends, colleagues, wife, daughter] & alumni can be part of or was part of various companies or sports club. To gain 360-degree view of your Alumni’s each relationship with individuals or accounts, salesforce Custom Objects – Relationship & Affiliations is an ideal option.

Object Name- Relationship

Features- this object identifies how a contact is related to other individual or multiple contacts. Also, it creates reciprocal relationship so as maintain accuracy between two contact’s relationship

Fields

• Contact- alumni contact
• Related Contact- contact alumni is related to
• Type- Father, Mother, Wife, Husband, Daughter, Son, Friend, Co-worker
• Status- Current or former
• Relationship Explanation- description of the relationship
• Related Opportunity Contact Role- required for soft credit distribution Validations- Contact value cannot be same as of Related Contact. Customization- As per requirement relationship object is customizable.

Object Name- Affiliations

Features- this object specifies the role of an alumni in particular organization or club. It will identify the current as well as former organizations, department or clubs that alumni had been part of so that we gain insight about complete social and professional background of the alumni.

Fields

• Organization- the company or club alumni belong to
• Contact- the alumni contact
• Role- designation of the alumni
• Status- Current or Former
• Start Date
• End Date
• Primary- check box value which identifies if Alumni is primary contact for particular organization
• Related Opportunity Contact Role- required for soft credit distribution Validations- Job role/title and job level are required when entering employment type affiliations. A start date is required for programmatic affiliation. The start date should never come after the end date. Customization- As per requirement Affiliation object is customizable.

Just maintaining Alumni directory, their relationships, their affiliations is not sufficient for Educational institution as they always aim to engage and maintain relations with their Alumni. So, on a frequent interval Institution conducts enormous events or activities where they invite alumni to make huge contribution diversely. In such events Alumni can be guest, partners, event organizer or even Volunteers.

Object Name- Campaign

Features

• Add Contact [add desired Alumni contact]
• Add Leads [add desired Alumni Lead]
• Manage Campaign members [can import campaign members]
• New Group [create and manage groups for campaign members]
• Send List Email
• Shift Calendar [view upcoming events in calendar]
• Find Volunteer [assignment of volunteer for respective jobs]
• Volunteer Roster [visualization and reporting of volunteer’s jobs and performance]
• Mass Email Volunteer [to trigger common mail to bunch of volunteers at same time]

Fields

• Campaign Name
• Campaign Owner- User who creates and manage the campaign gets the ownership of the Campaign
• Campaign Record Typ- Volunteer or Event [specifies the nature or purpose of campaign creation]
• Start Date
• End Date
• Active- check box stating if campaign is active
• Status- Planned/ In Progress/ Completed/ Aborted [specifies what is the stage or progress of the campaign]
• Type- Conference/ Webinar/ Trade Show/ Banner Ads/ Other [specifies the nature of campaign in which the campaign is conducted]
• Description- brief information which describes more insights about campaign
• Groups- can manage groups as per different criteria or purpose and add campaign members, lead & contacts as group members.
• Campaign Member Status- Prospect/ Confirmed/ Completed/ Not Shown [helps to acknowledge number of members attending the event or to make count of members who are interested to come, who came and who didn’t show up]
• Campaign Hierarchy- Parent or Child [describes parent-child relationship between campaigns] Validations- Child Campaign can have only one parent campaign. Customization- As per requirement campaign object is customizable.

What are the best practices for Volunteer Management?

For an institution, Volunteers can be there current students, Alumni or faculties. Volunteer contributes majorly in any Alumni Engagement events or activities and institution would never like to miss to capture and track their volunteer’s efforts.

Object Name- Volunteer Jobs

Features

Find Volunteer Shift Calendar Mass Email Volunteer Volunteer shifts

Fields

• Volunteer Job Name
• Campaign Name
• Start Date
• End Date
• Number of shifts
• Ongoing- check box values specifies if job is ongoing
• In-active- check box value specifies if job is inactive
• Skills Needed- Fundraising, Marketing, Landscaping, Accounting [describes skills required to perform the particular job]
• Number of Volunteers
• Description
• Location

Validations- start date should be less then end date.

⦁ Object Name – Volunteer Shifts ⦁ Object Name – Volunteer Shifts

Object Name- Volunteer Shifts

Features

• Shift Calendar
• Mass Email Volunteer
• Find Volunteer
• Volunteer Roster
• Submit for Approval

Fields

• ShiftID- Auto-generated ID
• Volunteer Job
• Start Date & Time
• Duration
• Description
• Desired # of Volunteers- number of volunteers required in particular shift Validations- Shifts for past dates is not visible in find volunteer page

Object Name – Volunteer Hours

Features

Mass Edit Volunteer Hours- requires when need to modifies volunteer’s hours for bunch of volunteers.

Fields

• First Name- of volunteer
• Last Name- of volunteer
• Volunteer shift
• Volunteer Job
• Campaign Name
• Status- Prospect/ Confirmed/ Completed/ No Show/ Cancelled
• Start Date
• End Date
• Hours Worked- hours donated by volunteer for that particular shift
• Total Hours Worked- total hours donated by volunteer overall Volunteers hours calculated hours performed by a Volunteer for a respective job, thus same volunteer hours are reflected on volunteer’s contact record page under volunteer hours related list.

Object Name- Volunteer Reports & Dashboard

Features

• New Folder- [add reports in folders you create]
• New Folder- [add reports in folders you create]
• Share- [can share reports with different users or roles]
• Favorite- [mark reports as Favorite]
• New Report (Classic)

Standard Reports- Standard Reports

• Top Volunteers by Recent Hours
• Volunteers by Account
• Volunteers by Skills
• Available Volunteer Jobs
• Volunteer Roster (all campaign)

Custom Reports- Creating custom in easy steps is possible using objects and its fields

Dashboard- Use volunteer reports as components on dashboard to provide visualization of data