From fundraising to mentoring current students, your alumni community is one of your school’s greatest resources. By maintaining relationships with alumni, offering engaging opportunities, and creating community spaces, you can harness the endless benefits of an active alumni network.
However, even small universities have alumni communities that are too large to manage without technology. Fortunately, there’s a wide range of tools to choose from. Unfortunately, that wide range of options can also easily lead to choice paralysis.
To help your university discover the available alumni management software solutions, this guide will answer basic questions about these tools before sharing our top recommended providers.
Alumni Management Software FAQ
What is alumni management software?
Alumni management software is any digital tool that enables your university to engage with alumni. This includes messaging software, databases and directories, online communities, event management tools, fundraising software, and more.
Keep in mind that “alumni software” can also refer to tools designed for businesses looking to engage customers and former employees. When searching for alumni management software, make sure you’re looking at tools designed for higher education institutions.
What are the benefits of alumni management software?
Since alumni management software solutions vary in features, each offers different benefits. However, a few common advantages most platforms provide include:
- Increased engagement. Alumni management software should make engaging with your school easier. Whether your tools have features for tailored communications, online engagement, or event management, they should help alumni stay connected to your campus, regardless of how long ago they graduated.
- Improved fundraising. Targeted messaging, fundraising pages, and prospect research tools all help you identify and engage with alumni donors.
- Connected community. Everyone benefits when alumni stay involved with your school after graduation. Alumni can find job and networking opportunities, current students can connect with mentors, and your school can boost its reputation by having an active community of successful professionals.
What are the key alumni management features?
The exact features each higher education institution needs from its software will vary, meaning there are no universal “best” or “must-have” alumni management features. That said, there are a few features that most universities will benefit from:
- Communication tools. Staying in touch is essential for building an alumni community. Your software should make it easy to build messaging lists, send tailored communications, and track engagement rates.
- Profile management. Your alumni will undergo many changes throughout their relationships with your university, and your software should enable you to track all of them, helping you maintain lifelong connections. Look for management software with robust alumni profile creation and management.
- Fundraising features. While not every alumni management solution prioritizes fundraising, your university will likely need donation tools. Ensure whichever platform you go with has features for accepting gifts, reviewing fundraising data, and stewarding alumni donors.
Our Top Alumni Management Software Recommendations
To help you find the right alumni management software for your organization, we’ve assembled a list of our top ten recommendations. For each solution, we’ve analyzed top review sites G2, Capterra, and Gartner to identify the pros and cons real users have experienced.
1. EverTrue – Best Management Software for Building Alumni Relationships
Whether you need alumni stewardship, research prospecting, or donor database tools, EverTrue has what you need. EverTrue is an entire ecosystem of alumni management software solutions that all smoothly integrate with one another, allowing you to invest in the exact tools you need to further your alumni management strategy.
Specifically, EverTrue offers five individual products related to alumni management:
- Signal: Signal’s donor management system makes it possible to engage all of your alumni, no matter where they are in their giving journeys. Stay up to date on career changes, identify high-value alumni, and coordinate your fundraising efforts.
- DonorSearch: Discover if any of your alumni have the potential to be major donors with the most sophisticated prospect research AI tools available.
- Pledgemine: Direct mail adds a personal touch to any outreach strategy. Connect with your alumni via mail with Pledgemine’s mail communication creation and delivery features.
- ThankView: Go the extra mile when thanking alumni supporters with custom videos. The ThankView video studio allows universities to create authentic, individualized thank-you videos at scale.
- Impact: If your university has an endowment, alumni will appreciate reports about its status. Keep them in the loop with report templates that ensure endowment updates are accessible, professionally made, and easy to create.
Pros
- Powerful data surfacing: Signal and DonorSearch pull in external data for you from social media, prospect research databases, and other third-party sources. This gives you a complete view of your alumni, no matter how much time has passed.
- Sophisticated prospect management: DonorSearch has one of the most extensive prospect research databases available. Get AI-powered, data-backed insights into all of your alumni to identify your most promising major giving candidates.
- Endowment management features: Few alumni management software solutions also offer these features. A system with both allows major gift officers to gain a deeper understanding of your donors, helping them build stronger connections.
- Mobile-friendly design: Signal recognizes that major gift officers often travel for donor meetings. The mobile app makes accessing and updating donor information while on-the-go simple.
- Strong support: EverTrue offers a wide library of information videos for all of its products, as well as a highly responsive technical support team.
Cons
- Geared towards donors: EverTrue’s products are primarily designed to steward relationships with individual donors, rather than corporations or foundations.
- CRM required: While EverTrue offers a wide range of tools, it is ultimately not a CRM. Rather, universities must connect their CRMs to their EverTrue software to get a full picture of their alumni base.
2. 360Alumni – Best for Online Engagement
360Alumni helps universities engage alumni by creating an online community. Whether your organization wants to create one centralized community or allow each local alumni group to build its own, 360Alumni provides you with the tools you need to connect with alumni online.
Pros
- Visual mapping: One of 360Alumni’s standout features is its interactive alumni directory and membership map, which help alumni find local connections.
- Multiple chapters-friendly. Manage all of your alumni chapters with ease, thanks to a centralized membership database and local connectivity tools.
- Easy setup: With 360Alumni’s straightforward onboarding process and extensive library of resources on each feature, most organizations can get set up quickly and easily.
Cons
- Limited peer interactions: While 360Alumni is great for admin-to-alumni engagement, it can be difficult to get alumni to interact with each other on the platform.
- API limitations: When compared to larger enterprise platforms, 360Alumni offers fewer opportunities for deep API integrations.
- Mobile experience: While 360Alumni offers a mobile-friendly version, its interface feels less smooth than the desktop version.
3. Almabase – Best for Fundraising Campaigns
Almabase was founded on the idea that alumni have the power to fund current students’ education, creating a circle of support and giving. As such, Almabase takes a fundraising-heavy approach to alumni giving, with tools focused on crowdfunding, annual funding, and online giving.
Pros
- Seamless CRM Sync: Reduce manual data entry by syncing Almabase to your CRM, creating a seamless flow of information between systems.
- Automated personalization: Almabase can automatically send personalized messages based on supporter giving, birthdays, and anniversaries.
- User-friendly interface: Almabase has a highly intuitive administrative dashboard, making it easy for small teams to manage events and pages.
Cons
- Setup time: While Almabase integrates with many CRMs, the initial configuration and data mapping can be time-intensive and require significant technical oversight.
- Required data cleaning: Self-reported alumni data can result in duplicate records that are difficult to clean and may require manual review.
- Mobile app depth: While Almabase offers mobile capabilities, its mobile app’s features are more limited than those of the desktop portal.
4. AlmaShines – Best for Alumni Re-Engagement
AlmaShines helps universities get online and build global alumni networks. With its free online database and data-driven insights, AlmabShines aims to make engaging with your alumni community as easy as possible, increasing the number of alumni who stay engaged and re-engage after periods of inactivity.
Pros
- Comprehensive features: From an alumni directory to voting and election management to digital alumni ID cards, AlmaShine offers a wide range of tools in a single unified interface.
- Cost-effective: AlmaShine is geared to provide small organizations and teams on a tight budget with a full suite of engagement tools.
- Alumni reporting: Keep track of where your alumni are in their careers with reports on their locations, post-graduate degrees, and job titles. Additionally, AlmaShine collects data necessary for ranking and accreditation purposes.
Cons
- Communication triggers: AlmaShine relies more heavily on external triggers, such as email and messaging apps, rather than an internal notification system.
- Analytics depth: While AlmaShine’s reports provide necessary information, its analytics tools lack advanced filtering and visualization.
- Search limitations: Some users have found it difficult to search for specific historical data or niche social media links within alumni profiles.
5. Gradnet – Best for Alumni Networking
Gradnet is designed to help universities maintain globe-spanning alumni networks, ensuring alumni can stay connected no matter where in the world they are. Its distribution map, approval system, and member group features all allow universities to cultivate flourishing alumni communities.
Pros
- User-friendly front-end interface: Gradnet has a social media-style feed for alumni users, making platform adoption straightforward.
- Secure communities: Ensure only members of your community join your platform with an approval program that allows you to review and approve members, preventing spam.
- Mentor-mentee relationships: Enable connections between alumni and current students through a streamlined, automated mentor matching system.
Cons
- High cost: Gradnet offers a wide range of high-quality features, and as a result, may be one of the more expensive alumni management software solutions available.
- Overwhelming reports: Gradnet provides a wide range of filtering and tagging options to create detailed reports. However, these reports may be difficult to navigate for some users.
- Customization constraints: While feature-rich, the UI can be rigid.
6. Hivebrite – Best for Community Building
Hiverbrite is a community engagement platform for businesses, associations, nonprofits, and higher education institutions. Its tools are designed to bring fragmented communities together into one centralized online space where they can connect with one another and your university.
Pros
- Highly customizable branding: Create a platform that feels like an extension of your university with deep customization features that go beyond simply adding your logo and color scheme.
- Global scalability: Hivebrite’s robust group-management features make it a strong choice for multi-chapter organizations.
- Strong API: Hivebrite is a developer-friendly platform with a powerful API available for users who want to build custom integrations.
Cons
- Learning curve: Because Hivebrite is so feature-dense and customizable, new users may find it more complex to master than simpler options.
- Two-step imports: When getting set up, data import processes, such as adding new users, can require multiple, time-consuming steps.
- Module-based pricing: Costs can rack up quickly as you add more modules or increase the number of users.
7. Hoopstr – Best for Identifying Top Alumni
Formerly Vaave, Hoopstr derives its name from its core philosophy. “Hoop” refers to the circle of students, alumni, and educational institutions, while “Str” is an abbreviation of “strong” and represents the momentum that connections can lead to. As a platform, Hoopstr aims to embody these ideas of connection and momentum by providing management tools that allow organizations to identify and celebrate top alumni.
Pros
- Top alumni engagement: Your most active alumni make your community feel alive. Hoopstr makes it easy for universities to identify these superstar supporters and engage them further with personalized outreach.
- AI-powered database: Called “Hoopstr” magic, the AI-powered database analyzes alumni profiles to provide actionable insights and engagement recommendations.
- Leadership program: To train your team to better manage alumni, Hoopstr offers a unique certification program. This six-part course helps teams build engagement frameworks, make better use of alumni management software, and create stronger personal connections with donors.
Cons
- Lack of visual polish: Reviewers have noted that the site design can feel a bit dated or “template-like” compared to high-end competitors like Hivebrite or Graduway.
- Notable earning curve: Some of the deeper features are not immediately intuitive and may require a few tries to set up correctly.
- Limited integrations: Does not offer as many “out-of-the-box” integrations with Western-market CRMs (like Salesforce or Raiser’s Edge) compared to US-based competitors.
8. PeopleGrove – Best for Students
Often, universities focus on how alumni can support their organization through donations, event attendance, and advocacy. However, alumni can also directly give back by mentoring your current students. PeopleGrove Engagement Hub makes it easy to set up these connections, creating a unique tool that engages both alumni and students.
Pros
- Powerful mentorship: Mentorships can be transformative for students while also solidifying alumni connections to your school. PeopleGrove makes it easy to set up one-on-one mentorships, group sessions, and both formal and informal mentoring sessions.
- Career outcomes focus: PeopleGrove aims to help students develop career prospects before graduation with tools built to help them network with alumni.
- Volunteer board: Whether alumni want to be mentors or engage in some other way, they can find opportunities to get involved on custom volunteer boards hosted by your university.
Cons
- Registration friction: Some users find the signup process too long, leading to student or alumni users dropping out of programs.
- Admin approval workflow: For large universities, manually approving members can be cumbersome if not automated properly.
- Limited social sharing. PeopleGrove lacks one-click social share buttons that would help alumni promote opportunities to their external networks.
9. ToucanTech – Best All-in-One Solution
If your university is looking for an alumni management software solution, CRM, event management tool, and website builder, consider ToucanTech. As an all-in-one system, ToucanTech consolidates all your data into one platform, making it easy to track alumni, no matter what parts of your organization they interact with.
Pros
- True all-in-one: For universities looking to consolidate their technology, ToucanTech offers a wide range of alumni management features, from an engagement portal to event management to fundraising tools.
- Modern design: ToucanTech offers a clean, modern interface that makes it easy for users to find what they’re looking for and get a high-level overview of their organization.
- Quick implementation: Compared to other enterprise-level systems, ToucanTech can get up and running relatively quickly, particularly with its team’s hands-on approach to data migration.
Cons
- Notification system: Some users have expressed a desire for more robust automated notifications when specific changes or events occur.
- Front-end flexibility: While useful for teams looking for an out-of-the-box solution, the website builder’s no-code nature means users have limited flexibility for creating unique front-end layouts.
- Filter logic: Some users find that the ToucanTech database’s search/filter logic lacks the granularity needed for complex queries.
10. WildApricot – Best for Member Management
WildApricot is not specifically designed for higher education institutions. However, its extensive member and community management features make it a viable choice for universities with many scattered chapters looking to manage themselves.
Pros
- Useful automation: WildApricot automates many basic tasks, creating convenient set-it-and-forget-it memberships. Membership renewals, invoicing, and event confirmation emails are all automated for you, reducing time spent on repetitive administrative tasks.
- Integrated website builder: Allow local alumni societies to create their own websites with a user-friendly drag-and-drop CMS.
- Strong value for small chapters: Compared to more comprehensive platforms, WildApricot is an intuitive entry-point for small, volunteer-led alumni groups.
Cons
- Dated design interface: For some users, WildApricot’s website templates and email editors might feel outdated or clunky compared to more sophisticated CMSs like Wix or Squarespace.
- Limited alumni-specific networking: Because WildApricot is a general membership tool, it lacks native alumni-specific features like mentorship connections, department updates, and university networking tools.
- Granular admin permissions: WildApricot’s user admin roles lack customized permissions, making it difficult to grant staff and volunteers access to only specific parts of the platform and potentially exposing financial and membership data unnecessarily.
Additional Alumni Management Resources
Alumni management software can help you fundraise, build a community, connect students with mentors, and more. Use our recommendations as a jumping-off point to start researching alumni management tools to find a platform that fits your school’s needs.
For additional alumni and donor management resources, check out these guides:
- 14 Fundraising Software Solutions for Nonprofits in 2026. Looking to improve alumni fundraising? Check out these top fundraising solutions.
- 10 Donor Management Software Solutions for Nonprofits. Donor and alumni management go hand-in-hand. Discover top solutions for engaging and managing donors.
- Why Your Nonprofit Needs an Endowment Accounting Tool. Does your university have an endowment? Learn whether you need an endowment accounting tool to keep your funding on track.
