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Case study: Alumni relations at Adekunle Ajasin University

Establishing effective communications with student interns and young alumni

Adekunle Ajasin University in Nigeria is a young institution with a small, and new, Office of Advancement. With the support of the Vice Chancellor and a creative, dedicated advancement team, the University has been able to inform and engage their students, faculty alumni and donor community with innovative, cost-effective, digital-based techniques.

The University recognized it needed to communicate its accomplishments, but like many institutions, financial resources were tight. Developing a robust digital communications plan was their best option, but, with a small advancement team, they lacked the people needed to implement any program. The answer was to turn to their own talent: student interns and alumni.

University Advancement Officer, Prince Louis Adekola, organized a formal internship program with third year students. The job? To do what they do naturally: tweet, text, post on Facebook, Instagram post, etc. Adekola supervises the interns and provides them with basic information and messages targeting specific university priorities. After providing the students with the basic information, they are free to add photos, videos and other techniques to make the messages more “eye-catching.” In a short period of time, the University’s Facebook page gained more than 40,000 users.

Following the success of the student intern social media communications program, Adekola began a program providing the leadership of the University’s Alumni Chapters with templates of information they use in their own social media venues. While the messages complement the communications sent by the student interns, the alumni communications are tailored more to fit the specific interests of alumni: career development, alumni events and other ways to stay engaged with the university and one another. The result has been that 85% of the alumni are active in their alumni chapters.

With thanks to Prince Louis Adekola, Former University Advancement Officer, Adekunle Ajaisin University, Nigeria