The University of Brighton conducted an alumni survey in 2013 to understand alumni needs and interests. 523 alumni responded. The survey found that alumni are interested in staying connected to the university through communications, networking and events. They also want to become involved by assisting current students and considering donations. The university plans to expand alumni networks, offer more online resources and tailor communications based on alumni preferences and interests.

1. 2013 University of Brighton
Alumni Association survey

2. Background to the survey
• Once your course comes to an end, you become part of a 115,000
strong community of former students in over 100 countries
worldwide, helping you share your knowledge and broaden your
personal networks.
• At the alumni office, here in Brighton, it’s our job to match the
university programmes and activities with your needs and interests.
• To help us do this, we asked you, our alumni about your needs,
interests and connection with the university.

3. You spoke, we listened!
• Every couple of years we reach out to our alumni community to give
you the opportunity to shape the future of our service
• Thank you to everyone who responded to our 2013 University of
Brighton Alumni Survey
• Here’s an overview of what we learnt, as well as how we plan to
respond.
• We are currently working on meeting and exceeding your
expectations

4. Who completed the survey?
• 523 of you fully completed the survey
• 54% of the you were female and 46% were male
• Ages ranged from 21 to 84 Ages Number of alumni
20s 160
30s 87
40s 125
50s 77
60s 46
70s 12
80s 3
Not answered 13

5. 1%
3%
6%
11%
13%
28%
38%
1950
s
1960
s
1970
s
1980
s
1990
s
2000
s
2010
s
Year of graduation
Who completed the survey?

6. A brief summary of what we learnt
• We know that you would like to:
• Keep up to date with university news
• Access a variety of networking opportunities
• Be invited to university events
• Use your alumni discount to return to undertake a postgraduate
or continuing professional development course
• Have the opportunity to assist current students
• Keep in touch with one another and receive news about your
fellow alumni.

7. What we learned – communications
• You would prefer to hear from us by email on a quarterly basis and
some of you mentioned that we could email you between those
times if we had important news.
• A number of you are also happy to continue to receive an annual
magazine by post.
• You will shortly be able to choose from a suite of interest related
emails and information emails, and can now decide how to receive
major publications like The Brighton Effect magazine.
• You will also be able to tell us more about yourself…

8. What we learned – your alumni involvement
• You are keen to remain connected with your university and its students
in some way although you are generally time poor.
Yes, 82%
No, 18%
“Would you like to be involved with the university and its students?”

9. What we learned – how you want to give back
• You would also like to assist current students, using your own
experiences
8%
1%
1%
2%
3%
4%
4%
6%
8%
9%
11%
19%
19%
22%
27%
Anything
Promote the university
Set up regional alumni group
Assist with community project
Academic advice
Provide a testimonial
Job/Placement offers for students
Assist with student events
Assist with alumni events
Online advice
International ambassador
General student advice
Mentoring a student
Career advice
Giving talks
“How would you like to be involved?”

10. What we learned – your philanthropy
As well as your interest in remaining a part of the university
community and helping current students, a number of you would
consider a charitable donation if:
• You were in a better financial position to do so
• You knew your support would have a direct impact on a defined
project
• The charitable project was relevant to your area of study
• There was an easy donation method
• You could donate through attending an event.

11. What we learned – events
• Unfortunately almost three quarters of you have not attended a
university event since you graduated.
• If you haven’t attended, this is mainly due to distance, lack of events
that appeal to you, being unaware of the events we offer, time
restrictions or lack of interest
• Those of you that have attended events, have come back for talks
and lectures, reunions, careers events, alumni gatherings overseas
in your country and open days.
• We will be looking at our events programme for 2014 to include
online events for non-local alumni and will be organising more
regional social events for you.

12. What we learned – professional development
• Although half of you do not require our assistance, the other half
would appreciate a professional development service.
• You’d like us to provide general careers advice, CV
assistance, support on how to change your career, and a job
vacancies board. The good news is we already offer all of this!
• You’d also like some tailored professional courses, more networking
opportunities and internationally relevant advice.
• Some of you would like to be invited back to careers fairs and
events and access to an online library would be helpful too.

13. What we learned – services and benefits
• The majority of you are aware of the benefits and services we offer
and nearly half of you have made use of one or more of them.
• Unfortunately a quarter of you are still unsure of what our offer is and
we will be doing more promotional work in the coming months to
clarify this.
• You enjoy our email updates, appreciate our careers service and
have attended some events. Some of you have also used the library
since graduating and have purchased the NUS extra card.

14. What we learned – services and benefits
Even though you have used some of our services you would like to
see:
• An online network or directory of alumni
• More careers and networking events for alumni
• Online courses and online access to our library
• More promotion of what we offer.

15. Our plans to bring you the service you want
• While you agree that The University of Brighton provides you with a
tremendous social and professional network, sometimes you just
don't know how you can take advantage of this.
• We’ll be forming more regional and international networks for you to
join, and our Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts can also help
network you with our grads.
• If you would like to help students gain insight into what you wish
you’d known when you left university, you can join our Alumni
Advice Network.

16. Our plans to bring you the service you want
• You told us you would like more access to academic content through
events and on line resources as well as educational opportunities
and emails tailored to your subject and interests
• To help us do that we are working on making more events online so
they are accessible to you wherever you are..
• We know you are a varied group of people with a wide range of
interests so we are looking at giving you control of the information
you can access via the website and will also further targeting our
communications based on your preferences
• Come to our website to learn more about what’s available.

17. Thank you
• Thank you for your thoughts and opinions and congratulations to
Ms Tejal Mistry, BA(Hons) Accounting and Finance 2004 who was
randomly selected as the winner of our iPad prize draw.
• We will be spending the next couple of months reassessing our
offer and making improvements to support our valued alumni.
• You can follow our progress through social media
@brightonalumni
• Or search for University of Brighton Alumni Association on LinkedIn
and Facebook