4 Easy Ways your High School Website Can Help you Reconnect with Alumni

April 29, 2019

Your high school’s website is your school’s central hub for news and events. However, your education community is more than just current and prospective families: it’s a place where alumni go to reminisce and gather information. Whether you’re looking to bring in more donations, spread the news about a high school reunion, or you just want to make past students feel welcome, engaging alumni is a great way to connect your entire education community. So where do you start? Here are four easy ways your high school website can help you reconnect with alumni.

1. Forms with Payments

One of the most common ways to engage alumni is through donations. Many students like to give back to their former schools and with Edlio’s Forms builder and Payments add-ons, administrators can easily collect money. A Forms with Payments tool like Edlio’s allows customers to create forms which accept payments for items such as donations, fees, tickets and merchandise. Processing goes through Stripe as well to provide admins with a dashboard to manage payments and meet financial/reporting needs. This also allows for teachers and staff to associate a different bank account to each form by using multiple Stripe accounts.

Check out Gonzaga Preparatory’s Online Giving section to see how your school could best engage alumni with Forms and Payments: Gonzaga Prep Online Giving.

2. Homepage Widgets

Another simple way to utilize the website to reconnect with alumni is through homepage widgets. Homepage Widgets like Edlio’s allow you to collect responses or contact information right from a button or a miniature form on the homepage. They’re a great way to promote special events like alumni galas or golf outings due to their eye-catching nature. The form widget alone can be used to gather alumni’s current contact information and from there, you can then send them targeted information regarding alumni events!

The Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway (HAFTR) has a great example on their homepage. Check out their Golf Outing widget in the image below to get inspired!

3. Newsletters

Alumni who have moved far away but still want to stay in the loop about what’s going on at their high school love newsletters. Newsletters are a great way to give all members of your education community - past, current, or present - a snapshot of school happenings in one, concise message. An easy way that schools like to share their newsletters with alumni is by posting them to the website. No matter which way you choose to upload your high school’s newsletters to the website, Edlio’s backend design makes it incredibly easy.

Check out Evergreen Park Elementary School District’s award-winning newsletter to see how they’ve chosen to organize and upload the files!

4. Alumni Page

The last, and probably most significant way to reconnect with your high school’s alumni is through an alumni page. An alumni page is built into your site’s navigation and dedicates an entire page to past students. This is especially useful for high schools that host a lot of alumni-related events throughout the school year and may want to really establish an alumni network or community. Many of Edlio’s partner schools use alumni pages to disseminate information about class reunions, directories, or even photo albums from past events.

Check out Mater Dei High School’s alumni page to begin thinking of what type of information you might want to include on your high school’s page!

Whatever your high school chooses to do to reconnect and engage with alumni, your Edlio website can help. Click here to learn how to engage prospective families as well!