The Business of Belonging: How Community Creates Commercial Opportunity

Southwestern has been investing in people and building businesses for over 150 years. From its origins as a door-to-door book sales company in 1855 to a family of companies spanning multiple industries, its story is one of community, entrepreneurship and lasting connection.
It’s also writing its own blueprint for what alumni can mean to a business.

Thank you to our guest speaker:

Hans Schlegel, VP of Alumni Engagement, Southwestern

Five things we learned about building an alumni network that drives lifelong value

“Whatever you think your alumni network is worth, it is probably far more valuable than you believe …”

“Over the last three years, around 74% of our revenue has come from alumni, although they account for less than 40% of the salesforce …”

“We had interacted with only about 12% of our alumni. That showed us how much opportunity remained …”

“The platform means I no longer have to be the conduit. Alumni can find one another and create those connections themselves …”

“We are not just calling alumni to sell to them or recruit them. We want to partner with them and win together …”

Q&A

What is Southwestern?

Hans: Southwestern was founded in Nashville in 1855 as a Bible publishing company. In 1868, it began a summer sales program that allowed university students to pay their way through school while developing entrepreneurial and leadership skills. That program continues today. Around 1,200 students are currently working across the US and Canada, selling educational products to families. They learn how to communicate, set goals, motivate themselves, control their attitude and run their own businesses. Southwestern has since grown into a family of more than 20 companies spanning consultancy, real estate, travel, insurance and executive search. The majority of those businesses were started by alumni of the summer program.

How did Southwestern’s alumni program begin?

Hans: It developed organically. In the early 1980s, we created a career services division to help graduating students with résumés, applications and career planning. We soon realised that employers understood the value of the skills these students had developed. That ultimately helped create our executive-search business, ThinkingAhead, but we retained the career services function.

We almost built our alumni program backwards. Rather than creating a network and then looking for ways to generate value from it, alumni were already starting businesses, hiring one another and helping each other develop their careers. We are now putting a platform and structure around something that has existed informally for decades.

Why did Southwestern need to invest in a more formal network?

Hans: We had been very successful at recruiting alumni, placing them in jobs and helping them hire other alumni. However, we realised that this represented only a small subsection of the whole community. Our surveys showed that we had interacted with around 12% of our alumni. About half go into sales careers, but the other half become teachers, lawyers, engineers, doctors, conservationists and entrepreneurs.

The remaining alumni might have family members who would benefit from the summer program. They could become customers, ambassadors, mentors, employees or business partners. They might also have businesses that could use services offered by one of the Southwestern companies. That was the big moment of realisation: there was far more potential in the network than we had previously understood.

What is the commercial value of the network?

Hans: Over the past three years, around 74% of the revenue generated by our family of companies has come from alumni, despite alumni accounting for less than 40% of the salesforce. They understand the culture and tend to perform extremely well. We also bring people back in non-sales positions. When we needed a senior project manager to help launch the EnterpriseAlumni platform, we found a former Southwestern participant who had spent the following 20 years building exactly the experience we required.

We have also helped alumni recruit for their own companies. One law-firm owner asked us to find another alum with experience in business development and legal services. We found someone who had worked at LexisNexis and was a perfect fit. Another alum runs Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, which is home to the world’s last two northern white rhinos. When he needed a US philanthropy manager, he asked us to find someone from the Southwestern network. We connected him with an alum whose background was in wildlife conservation, and she secured what was effectively her dream job. Those are multiple wins: for the employer, the candidate, the alumni community and Southwestern.

How do you create value for highly successful alumni?

Hans: Mentorship, purpose and the opportunity to give back are often more meaningful than direct career support. Many prominent alumni have a deep affection for the experience because they see it as the foundation of their success. Our role is to reconnect them with that part of their lives and find something that genuinely matters to them.

Chip Gaines, from the television programFixer Upper, sold with Southwestern for two summers. When he learned about one of our programs providing coaching to young people leaving foster care, he donated $25,000. It is about showing alumni that this is no longer simply the company they remember from their student days. There are many different ways for them to participate, contribute and create an impact.

What does a dedicated platform provide?

Hans: Historically, Southwestern was very protective of its alumni information. That may have worked 20 years ago, but people can now find one another elsewhere whether we facilitate it or not. The platform gives the network legitimacy and credibility. Alumni can use an open directory, join groups, discover events, share opportunities and connect directly. Instead of asking me to introduce them to someone, they can create those relationships themselves.

It also integrates with our CRM, allowing information to remain current rather than becoming a static list of email addresses and telephone numbers. The most important element is the relationship rather than the data. The platform allows us to host those relationships, create goodwill and give alumni something useful before we ever ask them for anything.

How can alumni become business partners rather than simply an audience?

Hans: We want to help alumni succeed, rather than contacting them only when we want to sell something, recruit them or ask for a favour. We are launching an alumni travel program in 2027, with 16 different trips across a range of destinations, experiences and price points. One will be a safari to Ol Pejeta Conservancy. Two golf trips will be organised with a UK alum who founded Golfbreaks.com after leaving Southwestern.

We have also formed a partnership with Nashville Soccer Club after reconnecting with its VP of corporate partnerships, another Southwestern alum. Different companies within the Southwestern family can derive different forms of value from that relationship, including recruitment, referrals, brand visibility and direct business. The point is to look for ways in which everyone can win.

Why are alumni stories so powerful?

Hans: People want to feel proud of where they came from. Stories show them what others who shared the same formative experience have gone on to accomplish. At a last-minute gathering in New York, we discovered alumni working as an actor in Stranger Things on Broadway, a senior video producer at Tesla, and one of Manhattan’s leading florists. The florist was preparing arrangements for major organizations involved in the World Cup. These stories bring people out of the woodwork. The more stories we share, the more alumni want to tell us their own, connect with one another and become involved.

What is the most important lesson for other organizations?

Hans: Whatever you believe your alumni network is worth, it is probably worth far more. For Southwestern, it may be the most valuable asset across our entire family of companies. But a contact list on its own achieves very little. The value lies in the relationships and in moving people from awareness to interest, connection and participation.

You cannot suddenly pick up a relationship when you need something. You have to nurture it.