Investigating the best practices for alumni relations in business schools

Abstract

Alumni are considered the most important assets of any university, business schools included. As such business schools need to find a way to stay in touch with their alumni. With the growing technology and the presence of social media it poses a communication game changer. As such business schools will need to find the most suitable platform with which to communicate with their alumni. The aim of the study was to investigate the best practices for alumni relations at the business schools. In order to achieve this objective the top ten international and local business schools were analysed on how they manage their alumni relations in order for that to be a guideline for this study; previous studies on alumni relations were also investigated. A self-administered questionnaire was developed in a manner that it could assess the needs of alumni, and was distributed to NWU Potchefstroom Business School current students and alumni as the study population. Current students were included in the study because they are prospective alumni. Through the results it became evident that newsletters and Facebook was the most preferred communication channel for the business school use while Twitter was the least preferred by the groups involved. The study also indicated that most respondents are not reading the NWU PBS communication because of time constraints. Prestige days, networking, and sharing industry experience were the most preferred benefits and activities that were rated high. Lastly through the information obtained the profile of each group involved was drawn which will aid business schools in meeting the needs and knowing the best communication channels to use for their audience. Major findings and conclusions were discussed and recommendations made.