Alumni engagement is critical to an educational institution's success, and the involvement of alumni is not just limited to providing financial assistance. Alumni can help in career guidance, volunteering, partnerships, and enhancing the institution's reputation when appropriately engaged. Using personalized technology is vital for successful outreach, but it's equally essential to comprehend the donors' and volunteers' unique backgrounds and preferences to establish strong, long-term relationships.
The Education Data Architecture (EDA) is Salesforce's fundamental architecture for education that provides a baseline framework for an institution's Salesforce. EDA enables institutions to use a common language and configuration across the entire learner lifecycle without the need for customization. Since EDA is a data architecture, not a product, it allows schools to customize an advancement solution according to their unique needs and processes, such as page layouts, custom fields, and objects, without writing any code. Summit Technologies LLC has extensive experience creating customized Salesforce instances for colleges and universities with custom objects and automations.
Relationships and affiliations are two custom objects in EDA that help track various connections between contacts and accounts, making it easier for the alumni relations and advancement teams to drive constituent engagement. Affiliations are crucial for advancement teams as they allow them to see the specific experience an individual had while attending an institution and the employers and organizations they connect to after graduation.
To further customize the alumni engagement solution, administrators or your Salesforce implementation partner can create an app using clicks, not code, that groups various objects together around a function or role. If administrators don't have the bandwidth to build everything, they can explore the Salesforce AppExchange, a marketplace for pre-built solutions designed to be more plug-and-play for organizations in specific areas or engage a Salesforce partner.