← Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell
Nonprofit Nation with Julia Campbell
Alumni Engagement & Ethical Storytelling with Cecilia Lee
00:38:08
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- [00:00]
Julia Campbell
Convincing your board to invest in nonprofit tech can feel like a challenge. And that's why Neon1 created Six Steps to Sell your board on nonprofit Technology. This guide walks you through identifying your needs, showing how technology can streamline operations, and tackling common objections, all to make your case confidently. Just visit neon1.comjulia to download it free and empower your mission with the right tools. That's neonone.com Julia. All right, on to the show. Hello and welcome to Nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell, and I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the Nonprofit Nation PODC to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently find your voice, definitively grow your audience, and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie or an experienced professional who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people, and create even more impact, then you're in the right place. Let's get started. Hello. Hi, everyone. Welcome back. Welcome back to Nonprofit Nation with your host, Julia Campbell. And today we're going to talk about alumni engagement and how to increase community outreach, event participation, and donor engagement through leveraging alumni. And I'm joined by Cecilia Lee, Alumni Relations Principal at Communities in Schools, to discuss the powerful role that alumni networks can play in driving your success. So CIS is a national organization ensuring students have the resources they need to stay in school. And they've built a robust alumni engagement strategy that connects participants beyond graduation, turning them into lifelong supporters, advocates, and ambassadors, something I think every nonprofit would want. So, Cecilia, welcome to the podcast.
- [02:22]
Cecilia Lee
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
- [02:24]
Julia Campbell
I'm thrilled that you're here. Let me know. Tell me, tell my listeners a little bit about your journey and about what you do at cis.
- [02:34]
Cecilia Lee
Absolutely. I have been involved with communities and schools for 16 years. I actually started at my local affiliate in Houston as a case manager, which is a second person CIS person on a campus. And I was there for about a year and a half at a high school. And while I was there, I really enjoyed just engaging with young adults. I think when you're in high school, you are a young adult, you're in the process of really trying to figure out what your next step is. I then transitioned into our central office and fell under the development department, where I was actually hired to lead our major events. But throughout my journey, I still had a passion and sort of a desire to continue to work with young people. There was an opportunity that came about from the CIS national office to our Houston affiliate about engaging with former CIS students. There was no roadmap, there was no plan. It was just one of those things that was handed to me and said, let's see what this looks like. So I ended up using some of the resources in community schools of Houston. My best resources were the CIS staff who worked at high schools. And that's how I sort. I started to recruit alumni into this space we were creating. I remained at communities and schools working with alumni. And the last few years of my stay with Houston, I was. I wore many hats. So one of them was alumni. And I will say that was probably the most challenging but the most rewarding. And I got involved with our national office just by participating in some focus groups and engaging some of our local Houston alumni with the national office. And I was given an opportunity to apply for a role at the national office. And here I am. I have been with the national office for two years now, and as the principal of alumni relations, I have the opportunity to work with alumni from all over the country. We have about 110 CIS affiliates. We have tens of thousands of alumni who are out there. And the goal is to try to reach out to as many as possible to engage them back into cis. Whether it looks like giving back financially, whether it's volunteering, whether it's serving on a board, just, you know, CIS means a lot to our students, it means a lot to our alumni. And that's. That's how I'm. Why I'm here.
- [05:34]
Julia Campbell
Oh, I think that's a fantastic story. So your CEO, Ray Saldana, actually started as a CIS student himself and now he leads the whole organization. I think Ray's story is a perfect example of alumni leadership. So from your perspective, why are alumni uniquely positioned to help increase impact and spread the word about an organization?
- [06:02]
Cecilia Lee
Ray is such a great example of what our mission statement says. It's empowering students with a community of support, wanting to see them achieve in life. And Ray is, he's modeling that for so many alums. I think what the benefit that alumni have is that lived experience. They are able to talk about communities and school based on how they experienced the program when they were in school themselves, whether they. Something may have impacted them at a younger level. For example, in elementary school, where many of them received CIS services all the way to your high school years, when you may have been needing some extra support, extra help with looking for a part time job and figuring out how to apply for grants for financial aid to go to school. So they are alumni. I like to call them our ambassadors. They are the best resource that we have to be able to go out there and talk about what community schools really does. And they bring it, like I said, from a perspective of sharing how it impacted them, them. We have several students who've shared. I've been in spaces where you hear a lot and they don't get old. You continue to. I sit there and I'm like, I thought I heard it before, but I didn't. So it's just that loyalty that they also have to this organization, it meant so much to them that they want to remain loyal, not only to cis, but. But they remain loyal to those who were there, the individuals who helped them along the way when maybe they were struggling or facing some challenges. And I think that's one of the things that stands out to a lot of our alums is CIS played a huge role in their lives, and now they want to figure out and they want to be part of giving back.
- [08:11]
Julia Campbell
How do you engage students before they graduate to help build a stronger alumni network, one that they'll want to participate in after?
- [08:22]
Cecilia Lee
There's a couple of ways. At the national office, we support the network, what we call the network. Our local affiliates and many affiliates are doing their own outreach through the high schools. We have some affiliates that are focusing on college career military readiness, so focusing mostly with juniors and seniors in high school. So their goal is to introduce them to the alumni network just simply by providing extra support and resources that the site coordinator, we call site coordinators, CIS staff on campuses, the site coordinator is providing, and then the alumni program manager, alumni director, corporate coordinator, comes in and provides additional services. And what we try to do, encourage them to do is to promote what the benefits are post high school and locally, it's going to look different. It's going to basically depend on what the local efforts look like. On the national level, we engage with alumni to remain involved through resources that we offer to them that align with some of the goals that they've expressed to us that they want to focus on. In particular, professional development. That's a huge thing that so many of them are seeking, and that's how we. We start to promote that from, you know, the junior level on. I've had the privilege for the past couple of years to attend alumni induction ceremonies at some of our affiliates and graduation events. And this is an opportunity where they bring. Where the site coordinators and the affiliates bring these seniors who are about to Go into alumni programming and really celebrate them, celebrate their success. And they normally have alumni who are currently part of their program to talk about how they've benefited from remaining involved with cis. And that is the goal. The goal is for them to know that we are still a community of support. Whether you decide you want to go into education, post high school education, whether you say, I don't really know what I want to do. And that's when the people and the individuals from the affiliates who work with alumni play such a big role because they're the ones who can say, what do you need help with? I see that you're struggling, and let's try to figure out. Let's maybe set you up with a mentor. Maybe we need to. We need to help you put your resume together. Do you have any experience or. I do want to go to school. I just don't know how to look, how to find money, because I can't afford it. So that's the partnership that the national office has with our local affiliates in the network is really what is going to continue to drive us to recruit more alumni and to bring them into these spaces so they can be more engaged.
- [11:36]
Julia Campbell
And there are. You provide a lot of incentives. You have the Distinguished Service Alumni Award, if you could tell us about that. But also beyond the award, sort of, how do you offer these, like, meaningful opportunities to stay engaged? I think that can be challenging for a lot of organizations.
- [11:56]
Cecilia Lee
Absolutely. So the All In Award was actually renamed in 2017 after two alumni from the New Braunfels area here in Texas, which the affiliate is called CIS of South Central Texas, came to Houston, which is where I reside, during Hurricane Harvey in 2006. They came to volunteer throughout the efforts of cleaning up and during the hurricane, trying to help people recover. And unfortunately, they drowned on a boat as they were going through their efforts of trying to help others. So it was an unfortunate incident. And we felt that it was only right that this award be named after both of these individuals because they were really showing above and beyond. They were showing an active service. And what you will know and you will hear from those who interacted with both of these alums is they will say that is exactly who they were. So the two individuals, Tomas Tarrion and Alonso Gideon, that's who the award is named after. And what we look for when we are looking, when we're looking through nominations, is alumni who are going above and beyond. What are they doing in their community? How are they remaining engaged? How are they giving back not only to cis, but how Are they making themselves present and visible in their local community? Those are the things that we take into consideration when we're talking about nominees for this award. And I will say that one of the best things that I get to do in my role is to present this award to our alums at our annual leadership town hall. And it's always just a special moment, and you get to hear a little bit more about their story. You get to hear and you think, wow, I mean, talk about resilience. Talk about just putting others before yourself. It's incredible. It's incredible to hear and to see them in action. So this is something that the national office really embraces, and we embrace. We embrace all of our alumni. And it's extra special when we're able to really give the recognition to one who is just standing out above, you know, others.
- [14:33]
Julia Campbell
So storytelling is something that often comes up with my clients. The challenge, because everyone is so busy and there's just ethical challenges and challenges of confidentiality and there's all sorts of storytelling challenges. Can you give my listeners some tips on, like, how you create this culture of storytelling at your organization and maybe how you just encourage people to share their stories?
- [15:01]
Cecilia Lee
Absolutely. We've learned the hard way. Let's just put it out there. And we. By we, I mean CIS as a whole. I think we were used to asking alumni to share sometimes things that are uncomfortable. And that normally that was sort of the norm back in the day where you had an alum to say a, B and C. And I was so proud to hear our alums, individually, little by little, step up and say, wait a minute, I'm giving you this part of myself, and I don't feel safe doing it.
- [15:46]
Julia Campbell
Wow.
- [15:47]
Cecilia Lee
So we had to take a step back, and we had to realize we have to listen to them. This may have been something. They may have been. Have something traumatic or just, you know, very, very challenging that took place in their life that they may have already taken some time to heal from. And as you know, sometimes when we get up and speak, especially in big settings and settings that we're not used to being part of, a lot of our alumni are black and Brown. They're from the black and Brown community. So you put them in a space, you put them in a room with people who don't necessarily look like them and who may not really understand what their upbringing was like. So what ended up happening is they just start to talk and they start to share, and then before you know it, you know, without really thinking about it, they're they start to overshare. So we decided we need to stop that and we need to really spend some time with them before we put them on a stage, before we put them on a podcast, before we put them on a panel and really get to know them. Get to know them, get to know what they want us to know about them. I've had an opportunity to participate in panels with alumni. I had an opportunity to participate in a panel with three high school graduating seniors this past spring. And what I ended up doing is I ended up meeting with these three individuals the day before the event because I wanted them to make sure that they were, that they knew I was a safe space. But it's easier said than done. You see me, you're like, I don't know who this person is. Why should I tell her? Why should I share about myself? So taking the time to really get to know them, we can all sit here and say, well, I don't have time to do this and I already have a lot on my plate. But we make time for things that are important and for me, alumni, their stories, keeping them safe, making sure that their voices are being heard, but in a safe way is really a priority for me. So what I like to do is I like to just get ahead of it, talk a little bit about, look, this is what the event is and this is who the audience is. So let's just kind of have a conversation, share what you want to know, what you want me to know about you. And most of the time it starts off really slow, like, well, I'm here, I'm here and I'm doing this, I'm doing that. But before you know it, when you start engaging them with them more, they start to kind of let their guard down a little. And then you're having these fantastic conversations and then you've already kind of built out what you hope that they will stick to when they, when they're speaking. And I'm so happy to say that we're seeing that more and more. We're seeing more of our affiliates, more of our staff really take the time out to do that. Because everybody understands, has a sense of understanding that we do need to protect them in their speech stories.
- [19:00]
Julia Campbell
That's so important. Everything you said, ethical storytelling, non exploitative storytelling. And for organizations that do serve, like black and brown communities. And then maybe the board members are predominantly older white people. I mean, that's just a generalization, but it's based on data around nonprofit boards. I think you just addressed a lot of the concerns that nonprofit fundraisers and marketers have when they tell these stories. But as long as there's those, that trust is being built intentionally and it takes time, like you said. You know, when I was a director of development, I remember trying to get stories from program staff and trying to just sort of get stories myself. And if the trust isn't built up, then there's not that space where people feel comfortable sharing openly or, you know, they don't feel like they're. They feel like they are just being sort of used for their story to either raise money or, you know, to provide some kind of marketing effort. But I think that's incredibly important. It sounds like you really have built that sort of sense of community and belonging within your alumni network. So can you talk about your approach to that?
- [20:19]
Cecilia Lee
Sure. You know, we take a lot of pride in CIS about relationship building. Our founder, Bill Milliken, is really set the bar very high since the inception of communities and schools. And he always reminds us that programs are not what work, it's the relationships. So it's the relationship building that is really at the forefront of how we can recruit, how we can engage, how we can ask for feedback, and how we can support in many areas, whether it's through fundraising, whether it's through mentorship, whether it's input on programming. And I have always been very, very careful about ensuring that I am establishing relationships with those that I work closely with. I mentioned earlier the individuals who are working in the network who are working with these young adults, whether they're pre K, all the way to 12th grade. And of course, in the alumni world, it's those who are engaging post high school. And we offer a space for these staff members at the national office to convene on a monthly basis. And the reason for that is, is we have affiliates who are just getting started with alumni programming. And there may not be someone locally who is able to walk them through, but we have formed our own community of support with individuals who say, look, I know I've been there because I did it too. I love to share how I got started here in Houston with recruiting six alumni to attend our the CIS National's 40th Anniversary Town hall in Los Angeles. And you tell young adults, CIS is an opportunity for you to go on a trip and you don't have to pay for it. Everybody wants to know. And that was great. And it was the exposure, and it was their exposure not only to town hall and to CIS national, but it was the exposure to each other. They didn't know Them, they know who they were. I'm speaking about when I was here in Houston. And the takeaway from that was the last night we were in la, the last night of the conference, we were at a coffee at a coffee shop with these six alumni. And the very first thing they asked was, Ms. Cecilia, how do we make this happen, Lou? And I didn't have an answer. I was just trying to get to town hall and get them back safe. So my response was, how are you going to help? What do you want to see out of it? What are you looking for? How can we, how can I support you? How can CIS news and support you? And that's how we started. We started small. We started bringing in individuals who really focused on different topics. I mean, we covered topics from financial literacy, we cover top things about how to deal with trauma. We talked about just relationship building and bringing individuals who wanted to support this work and you can't do it alone. And that's one of the things that I am really proud of working for the national office is I don't feel alone. There are so many, not only colleagues, people from the network and community supporters who want to see this because they know the way we invest with alumni. We have to make sure that we're giving them the tools because they are the ones who are going to be taking over. I am a Gen Xer and I.
- [24:07]
Julia Campbell
Me too.
- [24:09]
Cecilia Lee
And I worry about who's, who is, whose hands are going to be. I mean, I'm going to. My health is huge. I worry about my health. I talk about my portfolio. What is it going to look like? Who are the people who are going to be advising me? And it's these alumni. So what we want to do is we want to make sure that we provide them as much as we can with the support, whether it's professional development, whether it's mentoring, whether it's helping them with a job search. These are a lot of things that happen more on the local level. But we're here to support it as well.
- [24:49]
Julia Campbell
How has alumni engagement shifted since the pandemic with so many different generations being involved now, I'm sure you know, you have the long term alumni that you need to engage. I'm just thinking of my dad who is 78 and he's still incredibly involved in his university. And then you have people that are just graduating probably. So what are the shifts that you have seen and how have you addressed them?
- [25:18]
Cecilia Lee
I think the number one thing that I've had to kind of take a step back and really try to hone in and learn more about is the way that our younger generation communicates. When I was their age, I would use the phone and talk to people on the phone, which means that, you know, that's not the norm as much anymore. So meeting them where they are. Texting is big. I will tell you that I will send out emails if it's time sensitive, but sometimes I have to follow up with a text just because they're more likely to check the text than they are an email more in a timely manner, especially if it's something time sensitive. So it's the communication and understanding that the world that they live in now has a lot more options as far as how you communicate versus when, you know, I was married and it was still something very new. Email was a new thing. So that. And also just again, just the safe space, it's building that trust. Again. There's. I don't know. We don't know what we don't know. And what I try to do is I try to not make assumptions about any individual because I don't know what their journey was. I don't know what their journey currently is. We have opportunities at the national office where we can engage all ages. We have two annual conferences that the national office hosts. One is in February, which is really geared more towards those who are doing the CIS work. We have many alumni who work for communities and schools at the national office. Ray's not our only alum. We have about four other CIS alumni who are also working for the national office. And then we have about 200 plus former CIS students who are working in the network. So we want to engage, we want them to have again, happy exposure and also engage with individuals who, who may be doing similar work. So that's the conference in February and then the one in the fall is our leadership town hall, which we just had last month. And we were able to send 20 alumni to this particular conference. And what we were looking for is leadership. We have alumni who are serving on boards for their CIS affiliate. We have alumni who are leading, maybe president, vice president, their fraternity or sorority. They may be in leadership roles at their job and where they're currently employed. And we sort of had a variety of those and we had a diverse group of leaders depending on their level again. And so they were able to go to Tom hall and really get to meet a lot of executive leaders from all over the network, our executive leadership from the national office. So those are some of the things that we offer that are for whether you just graduated from High school to you, maybe I don't know your late 40s and want to still be engaged. And I feel like this was, this town hall was a great example of us kind of hitting that, that you know, like that range of ages and experience and what the leadership look like. So those are things that, those are ongoing things that we continue to, to offer. And then again, we have other resources that we offer such as a platform, we have a CIS alumni platform and it is an opportunity for anyone who's a CIS alum to sign up and becoming and you know, get to know other alums. One of the features from, from the community platform is a map and it'll show you everyone who's registered and it'll show you the regions where they're currently learning.
- [29:15]
Julia Campbell
Cool. So you can do some networking. Is this on your website?
- [29:17]
Cecilia Lee
Absolutely. It is not, it is a different.
- [29:21]
Julia Campbell
Like an invite only thing.
- [29:22]
Cecilia Lee
Yes. So anybody. So if you are an alum, if you're listening, you are CIS alum, you are more than welcome to sign up. There is a verification process just because we want to make sure that we keep this space for our alumni only. And then we also have a job board. We have a job board where we are promoting jobs within the CIS network. We have many alons, as I stated, we have several who work for CIS and there's others who want to. So we have partnered up with our CIS affiliates to promote job openings. And this is for alumni to be able to sign up and see what is out there. Some of them are open to moving. So if they are, you know, we encourage them to look through these and then we're about to launch a new resource with a single stop. And this is going to be a resource where alumni are eligible to go fill out a profile to see if they qualify for any federal funds and whether it's housing, whether it's child care, whether it's grants that they're eligible to receive. So this is a, this is something we're going to be kicking off very soon. We have a little marketing plan scheduled for this and it'll be launching and this is a way of really letting alumni know like we know that it's not always easy and we know that some of them are single parents or their housing has changed or they may have to transition somewhere else. And so we want to make sure that we're providing that added layer of support to them.
- [30:59]
Julia Campbell
I think that's fantastic, the availability of resources after the fact and that probably helps create the more long term relationship with alumni like Oftentimes I see what happens at universities. I feel a lot of times, well, this is very generalized. But I think they look at alumni and they say, oh, how can we get them to donate? Like make a donation immediately? Rather than how can we create that long term engagement with them that is going to hopefully either help them get a job or find resources they need, but will benefit us in the long run? Because the word of mouth, the goodwill around the issue, around the cause, around the school is going to be so beneficial to the organization. Do you see that? Like, how do you combat that? I'm sure you get a lot of push to constantly, constantly fundraise or maybe you don't. Maybe it's a different culture at Cisco.
- [31:59]
Cecilia Lee
We are very fortunate that we do have a different culture and we understand that alumni are in different phases of their life. We have alumni probably give more money than I can. More money than you can. I wanted to point out we have an alum who was recently appointed as mayor of High Point, North Carolina, Cyril Jefferson. He's phenomenal. And he's been involved, he's been an active alum for many years. And just to be able to talk about him and share his story and just how he always stayed involved, you know, we talked about Ray being our president and CEO. We have alums who. We have an alum who is now a law professor. He went back and he's teaching law at his alma mater. We have alums who are in public relations. We have alumni who are working, who are social workers. So there's so many levels in their careers, there's many different careers. And we are in the process of trying to figure out what is the next step in engaging them and giving back financially to communities and schools. So we have not really done a big push for them to donate to us just yet. So some of them already do on their own, which is great. But we know that we have to establish that foundation and we want to continue. We know it's going to take some time. Again, it's all about the trust. It's about the relationship building. And we know they want to give back. Some of them can give back in a volunteer way, some of them can give back financially. So we're hoping that we will launch something and we'll have great participation and the levels of giving, of course, will look different.
- [33:47]
Julia Campbell
Now, this has been fantastic. So as we kind of wrap up the conversation, I would love to know if you had to give one piece of advice to other nonprofits that are trying to build or grow their alumni program, what would it be?
- [34:04]
Cecilia Lee
My advice is to remind yourself that this takes time. You are not going to build an alumni database in three months. You're not going to build it up in a year. You are not going. You are going to probably get a lot of unanswered emails, unanswered phone calls, unanswered texts. So we have to make sure that we understand who our audience is. Be patient. It takes time. And surround yourself with individuals who are going to support you through this process. Surround yourself with those, whether it's a supervisor, whether it's a mentor, whether it's the leadership from your nonprofit. And make sure that you remind them. This is important work and it's going to take time to build. It's like the house got to build the foundation up. And I have to remind myself about that. There are times that I. I get frustrated. I'm like, I should be doing more. I can't believe there's not a lot of time. But I also have come to a realization that there's only a certain amount of capacity for myself, but also for our alumni as well, have families of their own. They have their lives, they have social lives. They may be giving back to other agencies. So my biggest advice is remind yourself that this is a process. And as one of my mentors always reminds me, Cecilia, trust the process.
- [35:41]
Julia Campbell
Trust the process. That's fantastic. Where can people find you, Cecilia, and connect with you and learn more about CIS?
- [35:47]
Cecilia Lee
Absolutely. Please. You can find me on LinkedIn. Cecilia Garcia Lee, you can also follow Communities and School Schools national office on LinkedIn. We have a wonderful marketing communications department at the national office who is so supportive of alumni work and do a phenomenal job of really, like, giving us shout outs. Instagram, same thing. Communities and schools. And you can Visit our website, communitiesandschools.org you can find me. My contact information is there. Please reach out. I'm more than happy to continue conversations and really, truly, I love this work. It is, you know, I tell people, ask, how long are you going to do this? I'm like, as long as I can. And I have a heart for it. And it's a passion because I care. I was one of those students. I was one of them. And I. And I have had. I'm so grateful for the support that I had growing up through mentors and educators. And I want to see our alumni succeed in life.
- [36:52]
Julia Campbell
That's fantastic. I love talking to nonprofit professionals that are so passionate about their work and so generous with their expertise and advice. So thanks so much, Cecilia, for being on the show.
- [37:03]
Cecilia Lee
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
- [37:11]
Julia Campbell
Well, hey there. I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show and for listening all all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast app and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or a review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to and then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode, but until then you can find me on Instagram @JuliaCampbell77 Keep changing the world, you nonprofit unic.