Business Development Internship for Ross School of Business Alumni Relations

This summer, I’m working as a D-SIP intern at Office of Development and Alumni Relations, Ross School of Business. My core focus revolves around recommending new approaches for effective alumni engagement. The objectives of my project include figuring out how to collect accurate contact information from more alumni, benchmarking against peer business schools to plan reunion events, and designing an alumni engagement program for recently-graduated alumni.

Below are two screenshots of my work samples. One is the sample questionnaire designed for HBS Alumni Relations Team, and the other one is my benchmarking progress.

My project has strategic significance to future alumni engagement activities at Michigan Ross. I aim to obtain valuable and insightful expert opinions from alumni relations professionals at a dozen top business schools, and collect best practices on alumni engagement activities, which can be further used to strengthen Michigan Ross alumni programs. I also try to design reunion events that satisfy more alumni and incentivize them to engage more with the school, both with their time and money. Such events can include but not limited to: TED-style short talks, alumni panel, and startup showcase. In addition, as part of my project, the newly-designed young alumni program will also help create a pipeline of annual donors and major gift donors. It will also improve alumni’s satisfaction level on Michigan Ross, which in turn improves school’s reputation and attract more talented students. Lastly, I will also create a repository of creative, effective alumni engagement events ideas, so that other team member

s won’t have to spend too much time looking for them.

In order to complete my project in the highest quality possible, I outlined the following goals for myself: identify potential candidates from vast alumni pools to be reunion leads; plan out potential events during reunion weekends based on alumni’s demands; create a detailed action plan for young alumni engagement program; recommend various ways to improve the accuracy and quantity of alumni contact information.

As a result, I’ve already reached out to 12 top business schools and received responses from every one of them. I collected vast amount of information regarding alumni engagement from these business schools. Furthermore, I also identified alumni leads for all reunion classes and designed young alumni engagement program that is in implementation phase. Lastly, I identified 6 approaches to collect more accurate alumni contact information.

My project is both challenging and fulfilling. Throughout my internship, I have gained many valuation skills that will be beneficial to my professional development. I have learned to understand the implications of new information for both current and future problem-solving and decision-making regarding Michigan Ross Alumni Relations practices. There are many potential events and approaches that would satisfy the three objectives for my project, and I was able to use logic and reasoning to identity the strengths and weaknesses of potential solutions so that I can determine the most effective one. Moreover, as part of my benchmarking process, I had to process large amount of written sentences and paragraphs from peer schools’ websites in order to extract information that Michigan Ross can potentially take reference of. In addition, I was able to get in touch with a few AR professionals from other schools, and my speaking abilities were practiced and strengthened during these conversations. In order to solicit as much information as possible from peer schools, I designed customized questionnaires for every single school I benchmarked. My project involves complex problems that cannot be easily solved with any one single solution. Throughout my internship time, I learned to identify these complex problems and review related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions. Michigan Ross has 55,000 alumni. This system that involves alumni, staff, faculty, and students is massive. I’ve learned how to determine such a system should work and how changes in conditions, operations, or environment will affect its outcomes. In addition, I’ve also learned to identify indicators of performance for this alumni engagement system and the actions needed to improve performance, relative to the objectives of my project.

In addition, there are also imperative lessons I learned throughout my project. I must be persistent throughout the benchmarking progress, especially when requesting information from peer schools. Several follow-ups are needed. I must be very strategic in planning out my entire project, otherwise I may run into time management problem. I also need to carefully design and review all email correspondences, especially with peer schools. The last thing I want to do is to tarnish Michigan Ross’ reputation through subpar communications. Lastly, going the extra miles never hurt, and most of the time it can award me unexpected positive results.

My project has terrific impact on Michigan Ross community. It lays the foundation for future alumni engagement events and programs. My recommendations are based on insights and results from the benchmarking process for 12 business schools, and they are tailored to Michigan Ross, so they are actionable, effective, and relevant. I created a community of reunion leads for October reunion events, which strengthens alumni’s affinity with Ross. Lastly, the new young alumni engagement program will organically grow a strong, vibrant community among younger alumni, and potentially turn them into active volunteers and donors for Michigan Ross.