Engagement and Affinity
In my time in the industry I’ve seen a dramatic shift. Conferences used to feature sessions on “Events on a shoestring budget” and “How to start a chapter.” Those sessions still exist, and can have great value. But you can’t attend a conference without seeing at least a couple sessions on engagement metrics, programmatic evaluation, or identifying ROI.
Engagement is the word de jour. The logic is sound: we build engagement, and engaged alumni are more likely to give. This has been proven time and time again. Perhaps I’ll share some stats in a future blog in case you don’t believe me.
But what is engagement? Defined by dictionary.com, engagement is “the act of engagement or the state of being engaged.” Great. Thanks dictionary.com! But what is it to be engaged? Ah hah, here we have the crux of the matter. The verb engage means:
1) To occupy the attention or efforts of (a person or persons)
2) To secure for aid, employment, use, etc.; hire
3) To attract and hold fast
4) To attract or please
This is what we mean. To occupy our constituents’ attentions, to attract and hold them fast, to please them, to secure their aid. In other words, to secure and create relationships.
So our job is to foster relationships. Our job is to make people think about their alma maters (with positive perceptions, of course). And by doing so, they will support us financially.
Let’s talk a little bit about engagement at the highest levels. There are challenges here, even in defining it.
Engagement and affinity are intertwined. You can be engaged and not have affinity (those folks who will criticize everything you do on Facebook fall in this camp) and you can have affinity but not be engaged (this is the quadrant we want to play in). Matrixed out, it may look like this:

You may want to look at each group like this:
Moved Ons — For whatever reason, they no longer care about the University. They neither love it nor hate it. It is just irrelevant to them. They are ambivalent, they are apathetic. Perhaps their experience was mediocre, maybe they viewed their education as a purely transactional experience. It’s hard to say why, but you will have an uphill fight to get them engaged, and that includes securing gifts. You have to show them why the University is relevant to them today, and why they should be involved. First you have to get their attention, however, and that can be very difficult. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t play in this space, but rather you may expend tons of resources and get nowhere.
Never Happies — These are the people who are never happy. In my experience there are not usually too many of them out there, but the ones that are tend to be vocal. They leave mean comments on facebook posts. They show up to trustee meetings to talk about all the things the University is doing wrong. The good news here is that they are this way because they care. The bad news is that some will never be won over. They have an axe to grind. They felt slighted. Frankly, sometimes they are just miserable people. But if you can win them over, you may have some of the most vocal advocate you can imagine. If you can.
Silent Supporters — If you want growth, this is a great area to focus on. They love their alma mater, they just aren’t engaged. Or perhaps they are not engaged in a way that you know of. Maybe they have season tickets to a sport or theater, but you don’t get those lists. They actually read the emails but you can’t track that. They visit campus but nobody knows they do so. They put on a university t-shirt when they go for a run, but how in the world do you tabulate that? These people do care about, and maybe even love, the institution, you just don’t know it, or you haven’t provided them a way to connect that is as meaningful for them. Here is where you can really make your gains. They already love you, they just need to be connected.
Closest Friends — The name of the game with this group is stewardship. Most of the time board members fall in this category. They are involved with the institution and they love the institution. In an ideal world, everybody would move to this category.
I think it’s important that we understand the nature of the relationship between affinity and engagement. The fact is, if a person has high affinity and is not yet engaged, then they fall under the category of missed opportunity. And you can spend all of your time and resources trying to win over the Never Happies, only to find yourself no closer to building affinity than when you started.
For the purposes of this blog now and going forward, when I talk about building engagement, I am referring to improving both affinity and engagement. I am assuming that you are building engagement and affinity as a goal. I won’t say it word for word every time. It is assumed.
