5 Alumni Engagement Survey Sample Questions For Your Business  

Surveys are a highly effective tool to supercharge engagement in alumni networks. Yet research shows that only 22% of companies are getting satisfactory results from their engagement surveys. 

The reason for this is that organizations think engagement surveys are a way to measure employee engagement when the goal should in fact be to find ways to improve engagement. 

Like any organizational initiative, running engagement surveys is a way to assess the impact of your engagement strategies and evaluate whether they have had an influence on your network. It can provide you with actionable data to refine engagement strategies going forward. 

Let’s take a look at the importance of structuring your survey to optimize responses, and what kind of surveys elicit the most valuable feedback. 

Encourage Alumni To Participate In Your Survey 

You may encounter roadblocks when approaching your alumni to participate in surveys and questionnaires. To combat this, explain the value it adds, and why their participation matters. Here's some further tips:

• Take into account factors such as the communication platforms you use, alumni access to the technology, and privacy and confidentiality issues that may concern them.
• Announce your survey ahead of time, using all available channels on your alumni network platform, including an events calendar, emails, messaging, social media, and news or announcement boards.
• Encourage participation in your alumni survey by offering incentives for completing it. This emphasizes the value that their responses will provide, and rewards them for giving you some of their personal time. 
• Customizing survey questions for different teams and groups is a good way to gain interest and more importantly, acquire different perspectives. 

Alumni Engagement Survey Questions To Ask

A 5- or 7-point semantic differential scale is an effective way to measure respondent attitudes towards concepts, ideas, people, and events. And it is a reliable method of measuring people’s emotional attitudes towards your alumni engagement practices.

When composing questions, the rule of thumb is never to ask a question you can’t take action on. Avoid vague or yes/no questions such as ”Is the company on the right path?”, as this won’t provide any intel on how to create a path to action. 

Instead, structure your survey questions more like the alumni engagement survey sample questions listed below: they are open-ended and provide a platform for discussion. 

1. Does Your Alumni Program Deliver Value? 

Are you seeking input on the value of current program elements such as content, portal, events, and/or benefits programs? Ask questions with answer options or a rating scale to find out how often the respondent accesses the content.

Once you understand what your members value, you are in a better position to create content the community actually wants. Surveys also help clarify the return-on-investment plan to executives and are a useful way to get feedback to tailor programs and keep alumni engaged.

You Can Also Ask Questions Around: 

• Brand advocacy
• Project and contingency work 
• Diversity and inclusion
• Employment resource groups
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Global mentoring

2. How Effective Is Your Community Engagement?

Ask questions to gauge how your alumni community perceives the quality of engagement your platform provides. Questions that measure the effectiveness of your engagement strategies will focus on whether the content, opportunities, and events you offer your alumni are relevant to them. 

Other questions could include:

• Are you proud to be part of your alumni network?
• Do you intend to remain a part of the community in the long term?
• Does your alumni network provide a complete contextual experience, or do you feel the need to go elsewhere to fill the gaps?

3. How Effective Is Your Communication?

Knowing whether you are communicating with your alumni on their preferred channels is as important as the messages you’re sending. 

With so many apps and devices available, a survey is a helpful way to ask members how often they want to hear from you and through what communication channels they would prefer. 

For instance, via newsletter, portal, social media, texts, chats, or all of the above, depending on what you’re communicating. 

Here Are Other Suggested Questions To Ask: 

• How often do you log on to the alumni platform and where do you go first?
• Which type of content do you most prefer? (blog, podcast, video, etc.) 
• What are your preferred social media channels to follow your alumni network? 

4. What Are The Opinions On Recruitment, Rehire, And Referrals?

You will want to know what actions alumni are taking in terms of career growth and job prospects. 

Here you should ask questions that probe their likelihood of returning to your company, what incentives they value in return for referring a candidate, and how likely they are to refer a new business. 

Follow On Questions May Include: 

• What is the one thing that will make you want to return to our company?
• Questions that relate to the company culture and what they agree/disagree on.

5. Are There Enough Development and Networking Opportunities?

This is your opportunity to discover how your alumni engagement scores in terms of professional development opportunities, networking capabilities, and alumni-centered events. 

To Build On This, You Could Ask: 

• Open-ended questions about what they’d like to see offered by your programs 
• How easy it is to expand their networks on your platform 
• Whether they’d be willing to participate in mentorship programs for newcomers 

End your engagement survey with some open-ended questions or provide a space for participants to provide feedback on how they view the alumni, and what else could have been included in the survey. 

In Closing

By conducting an alumni engagement survey, organizations can map member feedback to their program goals. 

Alumni managers who consistently ask members for their input and constructive feedback are destined to see alumni engagement increase in all areas, from business referrals to mentoring and contributing innovative content.

For more information on why this is important, read about the impact an alumni network has on employee engagement here.