At Binchley College, we pride ourselves with nurturing the intellect of our students and creating “sense of global citizenship” based on our mission statement. As a part of that citizenship, students who find themselves as alumni of Binchley College are prepared to make impacts in their fields. In an effort to continue the achievement of our students and fund current and future endowments, the Office of Alumni Affairs is responsible for creating fundraising opportunities. Office of Alumni Affairs maintains relationships with alumni by organizing on-campus events and electronic newsletters. As a part of Institutional Advancement, the department allows College to retain a connect and bridges the gap between current students and alumni.
Within this department are four full time position and 10 student intern positions. The Director of Alumni Affairs reports to the Vice President for Institutional Advancement. This position oversees the entire office and is primarily responsible for planning as well as promoting the events and programs created to support efforts of generating monetary gifts for the College. The Associate Director of Alumni Affairs reports to the Director. This position oversees the daily processes of the office as well as developing and implementing strategies for promoting upcoming events. Also, this position generates communications that support the annual giving programs. Also reporting to the Director is the Alumni Affairs Data Manager, who develops and runs queries in order to provide system data to both the department and college officials. In this position, managing the database while formulating solutions to complex issues is vital. The Student Intern Supervisor leads the orientation program for the interns as well as prepares their job assignments. In addition to supervising the interns, this position is responsible for preparing materials for staff meetings.
In order to determine the efficiency of the Office of Alumni Affairs, a program review has been ordered. As the function of this office is crucial in order to continue funding the college endowment. It is important that potential area of improvement or weakness are identified. In this assessment, the roles of the office, systems functionality, and goals success will be reviewed. For the College to continue in cultivating and nurturing students, we must provide increase alumni participation which would lead to an increase in potential donations to fund the education of current and future students.
Alexandra discussion:
Organizational Structure
The office of alumni affairs is organized in a tiered system. The director and an assistant director of alumni affairs are the top two tiers who are in charge of fundraising efforts and increasing alumni participation at the college. The rest of the positions within the office of alumni affairs are supplemental roles which assist the director and assistant director.
Responsibilities of Roles
Each role within the office of alumni affairs at Binchley College is responsible for completing different types of work. The director of alumni affairs is responsible for arranging plans and implementing fundraising events with the goal of increasing alumni participation rates. The director focuses on establishing new donors and maintaining old donors in order to maintain and increases revenues. The director is also responsible for evaluating the effectiveness of existing programs and creating new programs with the hope that they will better resonate with alumni. The associate director of alumni affairs reports to the director of alumni affairs. The assistant director implements programs and projects that will engage alumni. The assistant director also organizes events on and off campus that will bring positive media attention to the college. The data manager is responsible for conducting daily operations that will improve the accuracy and completeness of data in the systems used. The data manager also assists the staff and administrators when they need help using the data systems. The student intern supervisor trains and supervises the pool of interns that work within the office of alumni affairs office.
Academic, Administrative Areas, and Assessment Regimen
Academic and administrative areas throughout the college affect the office of alumni affairs in different ways. The academic programs within the college ultimately receive some of the money fundraised via the office of alumni affairs in order to afford the experimental learning style Binchley College promises in its mission statement. Other administrative units throughout Binchley may rely on the data collected through the alumni affairs office in order to make informed data driven decisions throughout the college. Inversely, the office of alumni affairs may rely on other administrative units throughout the college to do the same. Multiple administrative units throughout the college may also work together to achieve similar goals. The assessment regimen that the office of alumni affairs uses is vital to evaluating current data trends in order to make informed decisions about different programs and creating goals for programs to achieve.
Value of Assesment
The office of alumni affairs needs to be assessed along with the other areas of the school. This assessment demonstrates how many alumni they have participating in fundraising efforts and the fiscal amount of money that is donated. It is important to know these statistics in order to conduct future fundraising efforts. Based off the last evaluation the office of alumni affairs currently has goals to increase the alumni participation and the amount of fiscal money donated.
Program Evaluation and the Institutional Mission
Binchley’s mission is to “nurture the intellect, imagination, and sense of responsible global citizenship of our students to prepare them for challenges that face our planet and our global community including all indigenous people. It is committed to the delivery of curriculum through collaborative and experiential learning.” The office of alumni affairs is important to this mission because this unit is vital to fundraising efforts. Without the fundraising efforts the school would not be able to provide so many hands-on and experimental learning experiences in marine ecology and Native American studies. These types of learning experiences are vital to preparing students for the challenges they may face once they graduate.