Contact (current)

[Alastair Lee]

Hi Marji,

I’ve had much experience in this area over the years with niche scholarships and donors (including my time at UTAS) – here are some ideas that you could consider re: promotions:

+Collaborate with local metalwork or woodworking businesses: They may be interested in supporting and mentoring scholarship recipients too. This collaboration can create a more practical and hands-on learning experience for students and provide some great promo opps.

+Community Workshops and Events: Organise small workshops or events related to metalwork and woodworking that are open to the community (even as part of tour mornings/open days). This will help generate interest and showcase the possibilities. Hands-on demonstrations and interactions with teachers etc can also provide a firsthand experience of what the scholarship program offers and generate some excitement/interest (and evergreen socials content).

+Social media: Share success stories (and often) of alumni who work in the field and highlight student projects giving behind-the-scenes glimpses of your programs. Consider too targeted SM advertising to reach potential students with an interest in these areas. Important to emphasise any unique features or opportunities that your metalwork and woodworking program offers.

+Competition: If you go down the competition route, ensure that it is widely publicised. Use all your platforms too e.g. social media, school newsletters, industry newsletters and even the Mercury, to spread the word. Consider collaborating with industry influencers or professionals to judge the competition or advocate for it in their industries (alumni connections working in the fields here can be very handy).

Lastly (and I’ve had to do this too several times), if filling the scholarship eventually becomes too hard, if might be time to sit down with the donor (be very transparent with them) and negotiate wider ranging criteria or if that doesn’t work then consider stepping away (worst case scenario obviously but sometimes it is necessary to avoid damaging the relationship beyond repair). Ultimately, it is the sign of a very mature and transparent fundraising organisation that can do this (which I believe Hutchins certainly is).

Hope this may help.

Kind regards – Alastair Lee AlumGrow Consultancy

[Alastair Lee]

Hi Natasha

I’ve worked in the volunteering space for many years in education and I’ve always found that it is important to get your ‘4 Volunteering Rs’ right to have ongoing success – so very briefly look at:

1. Research – do thorough research around what your volunteers look like, want to do, why and when. Getting this clear picture is vital to success.
2. Recruitment – how easy is it to become a volunteer, do your community members know about the opportunities available and how effectively do you promote/market those opportunities? Do you promote volunteering via volunteer or impact storytelling?
3. Reinforcement (Support) – what ongoing support, training, feedback opportunities etc do you provide and are these things really effective in meeting vol needs and listening to these needs? (research again vip to inform this)
4. Recognition – how do you steward your volunteers (including prospects), how do you meaningfully/tangibly recognise their efforts and hard work? How many volunteers come back to volunteer again, encourage others to do so (volunteering ambassadors can be very helpful here) or even move on the next stage of giving such as donating money or specialist expertise etc.

Hope this helps a little. Happy to chat offline further too anytime – via alastair.lee@alumgrow.com.au or 0458 545 184.

Regards – Alastair – AlumGrow Consultancy

[Alastair Lee]

Hi

I recommend either Meet Edgar (which I still use now in consulting) or Hootsuite. Both are reasonably priced and easy to use. If you do a google search too there are plenty of articles that compare the various platforms and their good/bad points.

Regards – Alastair

[Alastair Lee]

Check out the St Patrick’s College (Ballarat) platform. Seems to be a very good one and easy to use (at least from this alum’s perspective). Lorrie Liston who runs their alumni program would be worth a chat to.

Regards – Alastair Lee

[Alastair Lee]

Hi Margo,

From my own experience with this issue and having regard to recent research I would proceed with this course of action with caution.

There was some research released only two weeks ago by the Morgan Institute that found 53.8% of Australians over the age of 14 prefer to read a hardcopy magazine (this increased 1.8% from the year before).

In my experience too there are several important advantages that come with maintaining a hardcopy publication (and there is much industry research to support this) e.g. that hardcopy:

1. Serves as a VIP brand touchpoint- Greater impact on the reader by engaging touch/feel – impacts then favourably on reader affinity
2. Greater comprehension and recall by readers of content
3. People spend longer reading hardcopy as compared to online (almost 50% longer)
4. Increases brain stimulation and therefore willingness to respond/be compelled to answer a call to action

There is a great recent article by Executive Media worth reading on this too at https://executivemedia.com.au/about/why-print-media/.

Lastly before proceeding any further, I would recommend going to your readers and find out what they would prefer via some survey/focus group research. In the past where I’ve been ‘obliged’ to make a decision like this by senior mgt, I’ve always made the transition by giving readers the ability to opt in/out of hardcopy to at least give them a choice and soften the blow.

Happy to chat further anytime offline on this as I’ve had a lot of experience with producing magazines in educction.

Best regards – Alastair Lee – AlumGrow Consultancy.

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