The University had an historic year for alumni volunteering and engagement in 2023-2024 – generating more engagement than ever before.
The University has 285,000 alumni and supporters around the world. Over 90,000 alumni and friends engage in some way with the University. This comes in many forms and every interaction supports the University Strategy – giving time and philanthropy, strengthening our research, education and enterprise.
Making a difference – a year in numbers
- 3,000+ alumni volunteered over 17,000 hours of their time – our biggest ever year. Alumni give talks, meet prospective students, offer career advice and start-up support, take part in advisory boards, volunteer in local schools, champion community fundraising and share their inspiring stories.
- £8.9m raised in philanthropy with donations from over 1,400 alumni and supporters. Donations support our flagship widening participation programme Ignite, PhD studentships, medical innovation, plus many other areas across the University, including Turner Sims, Humanities, Ocean and Earth Sciences, Physics and Student Enterprise.
- 128k alumni regularly hear from the University (with contact data improving year on year). Over 90,000 open our emails, and 23,000 click through to links/share stories – making this the University’s largest external stakeholder group and our best brand advocates.
- 33 regional alumni networks across the world and growing.
- 5 Outstanding Alumni Award winners inspired our students at graduation ceremonies with their achievements, stories and advice.
- 7k+ new graduates welcomed into our community.
- Thousands of lives impacted thanks to the support of our community.
Professor Mark E. Smith, Vice-Chancellor of the University says:
“I cannot overstate how important this activity is to our University and our region and wider society. Our donors and volunteers are a broad and varied community, united by generosity, transforming lives.”
If you would like to learn more about our Alumni & Supporter community – who they are, where they live, what they do and how they contribute – you can check out our Alumni Population Explorer dashboard.
You can also see the results from our latest Alumni & Supporter survey on the same link, which had more than 4,000 alumni responses – helping to inform our alumni value exchange and our strategic plans for the year ahead, so we can continue to build on this success.