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Alumni Designation

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The Alumni Designation enables organizations to track and manage educational backgrounds,
including schools attended, degrees earned, and academic activities for profiles in
CommunitySuite.

The Alumni Designation provides a dedicated, structured method for managing alumni data and
can eliminate the need to track this information in custom fields, organizational roles, profile types,
or spreadsheets.

Who: Community foundations, faith foundations, education foundations, scholarship foundations,
community college foundations, or any organizations that manage alumni relationships.

When to use the Alumni Designation:

  • Track alumni information without managing sensitive information, enrollment status, or
    GPA details in CommunitySuite.
  • Track multiple education records per profile: from high school through college, and
    graduate school.
  • Track non-traditional educational experiences: fellowships, internships, trade
    apprenticeships, medical residencies, and religious schools.
  • Build targeted donor development campaigns based on degrees or programs.
  • Engage alumni to support scholarship endowments with targeted messaging informed by
    their degree, activities, and interest areas.
  • Help school endowment committees engage with graduating classes for milestone
    reunions – 10-year, 20-year, 30-year reunions and more.

Alumni Designation Custom Reporting:

  • Alumni Designation custom reports provide detailed filtering for mailing lists, year-end
    campaigns, or event invitations.
  • Generate targeted outreach based on degree types, programs, or graduation years.
  • Identify alumni by specific credentials or areas of involvement. 

Profile Designations provides additional details on how to give a profile the alumni designation.

There are differences in the types of data that can be tracked using the Alumni Designation and Scholarship Lifecycle Manager (SLM) or other institutional scholarship systems.

Suggested Data to Track in Alumni Designation:

  • Final degree earned upon graduation.
  • Major/minor at time of completion.
  • Honors received (valedictorian, cum laude, summa cum laude).
  • The high school where the alumni graduated.
  • Activities and involvement that inform philanthropic interests.

Suggested Data to Track in SLM or other institutional scholarship systems:

  • Enrollment status and changes in enrollment.
  • GPA.
  • Ongoing scholarship eligibility.
  • Sensitive information (SAT/ACT scores, expected family contribution, tuition costs).

Programs, Degrees, Activities, and Honors that apply to alumni can be created as user-defined lists from the Alumni page. Once created, they can be edited or deleted as applicable. 

  1. Navigate to the Alumni page.
  2. Click Programs, Degrees, Activities, Honors in the left-side menu.
  3. Click the applicable tab of the item that will be created.
    • In this example, honors will be created in the Honors tab, but these general steps apply to Programs, Degrees, and Activities as well.
      honors tab
       
  4. Click Add Honors in the left-side menu.
  5. Enter the name of the Honor, and then click Save.
    honor name and save button
     
  6. Repeat these steps using the add option in each tab to create any relevant Programs, Degrees, Activities, and Honors.
  1. Navigate to the Alumni page.
  2. Click Programs, Degrees, Activities, Honors in the left-side menu.
  3. Click the applicable tab of the item that will be edited.
    • In this example, honors will be edited in the Honors tab, but these general steps apply to Programs, Degrees, and Activities as well.
      honors tab
       
  4. Click Edit Honors in the left-side menu.
  5. Make any applicable edits, and then click Save.
    save button
     
  6. Repeat these steps using the edit option in each tab to edit any relevant Programs, Degrees, Activities, and Honors.
  1. Navigate to the Alumni page.
  2. Click Programs, Degrees, Activities, Honors in the left-side menu.
  3. Click the applicable tab of the item that will be deleted.
    • In this example, honors will be deleted in the Honors tab, but these general steps apply to Programs, Degrees, and Activities as well.
      honors tab
       
  4. Click Delete Honors in the left-side menu.
  5. Check the box next to the item to be deleted, and then click Delete.
    checkbox and delete button
     
  6. Repeat these steps using the delete option in each tab to delete any relevant Programs, Degrees, Activities, and Honors.

Once the user-defined tables of Programs, Degrees, Activities, and Honors have been created, they can be applied to a profile with the Alumni designation. Refer to the Create, Edit, and Delete Alumni Configurations section of this article for steps on how to define the selections available when adding a degree or activity to an alumni designation.

  1. Navigate to the alumni designation of a profile.
  2. In the Details tab, locate the Degrees section and click Add Degree.
    add degree button
     
  3. Enter the applicable Add Degree information, and then click Create.
    • Schools must have an existing profile in CommunitySuite to be available for selection.
      create button
       

  4. In the Details tab, locate the Activities section and click Add Activity.
    add activity button

     

  5. Enter the applicable Add Activity information, and then click Create.
    create button
     

The scenario below provides additional context on how to apply alumni data and use the alumni designation to efficiently track alumni data.

Example Scenario: Replace Custom Fields with the Alumni Designation

A community college foundation using extensive profile custom fields to track: subject area, college
attended, academic year, degree achieved, high school attended, GPA, and graduation dates.

This approach has some challenges:

  • Difficult to manage and maintain data consistently, which impacts the accuracy of reporting.
  • Need multiple custom fields to track more than one school or degree.
  • Custom fields appear on all individual profiles, not just student records.

Displayed below is an example profile with custom fields that track school and degree information:

  • All of the fields are free text and have inconsistent entry standards across profiles.
  • The custom field for Degree Achieved includes a major, but not what type of degree or what
    school it came from.
  • All active custom fields display on the profile, including Board Contact, which is unrelated to
    tracking this profile’s alumni activities.
    example profile
    custom fields
     

Using the Alumni Designation displayed below, the foundation can track all the same information
without custom fields and track multiple schools and the related degrees. Because the Program, Degree, Activities, and Honors fields are pre-defined drop-down selections, this ensures better data quality and reporting accuracy. Geographic locations, like tracking the county where the alumni’s high school was located, can be done with service area coding already available as a profile field.
example alumni designation with data

 

In-system import templates are available to add degrees and activities to multiple profiles at once. Profile ID is required on the import templates. If a profile does not have the alumni designation, the import process will make them an alumni.

  1. Navigate to the Alumni page.
  2. Click Import Alumni Degrees in the left-side menu.
  3. Click Download Template.
    • The template will download as a .csv file.
      download template button
       
  4. Open the template, enter the degree/program information, and then save the template to your computer.
    • Instructions for how to fill out the template are available on the import page.
  5. Click Choose File.
    choose file button
     
  6. Select the .csv file from your computer.
  7. Click Process.
    • Use the Validate Only checkbox to test if the template is correct without actually processing it.
      process button
       
  8. To import activities, click List in the left-side menu and click Import Alumni Activities in the left-side menu.
  9. Click Download Template.
    • The template will download as a .csv file.
      download template button
       
  10. Open the template, enter the activity information, and then save the template to your computer.
    • Instructions for how to fill out the template are available on the import page.
  11. Click Choose File.
    choose file button
     
  12. Select the .csv file from your computer.
  13. Click Process.
    • Use the Validate Only checkbox to test if the template is correct without actually processing it.
      process button
       

Programs, Degrees, Activities, and Honors lists can also be imported to the Alumni page by using the import option in the left-side menu of each item's tab.

 

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