“US News Best Colleges” on LinkedIn

Harvey Simmons
05/17/2013

Many recent grads this month have just one simple question on their mind:

“How am I going to land a job in THIS economy?”

With over 225 million professionals, and over 2 million groups catered to networking, LinkedIn is a fantastic place for these recent grads to find job opportunities from their new alumni community.

Shown in the infographic below, using our LinkedIn Alumni Grader we calculated how the Top 100 National Universities and Top 100 Liberal Arts Colleges of ‘US News’ would rank if their positions were based on LinkedIn Group adoption rates (i.e. the number of members in an institution’s largest LinkedIn Group divided by the full number of alumni that institution has on LinkedIn).

To discover secrets to success we asked the owner one of the highest ranking groups, Kevin Monahan, Associate Director of Business and Alumni Career Programs at Notre Dame. Kevin explained that the key to getting alumni to join a LinkedIn Group is to “make promoting the group a community effort — it’s important to get the career center, alumni association, regional chapters and lots of different people to push it.”

In our findings we also found, unsurprisingly, that institutions that are better connected on LinkedIn also tend to have a higher giving rates. For example, when taking US News’ Top 100 Liberal Arts Colleges and re-ranking them by their LinkedIn Alumni adoption, we found that the top 10 LinkedIn Groups witnessed a 46% higher giving rate on average than those in the bottom 10. Apparently those who are compelled to associate with their alma mater online are also more likely to give.

Through insights from new platforms and tying those results to more traditional measures in advancement, such as annual giving, we’re absolutely amped to release these findings, and for stronger analyses in the future.

See our full findings in the infographic below, and check out a similar analysis of Boston-Area colleges in this recent post on BostInno!

Congrats to all the higher ed institutions who made our Top 10 lists above, including our clients Amherst College and Virginia Military Institute, along with: Davidson College, United States Military Academy, Williams College, College of the Holy Cross, Wabash College, Claremont McKenna College, Bowdoin College, University of Notre Dame, Wake Forest University, Dartmouth College, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Emory University, SUNY ESF, Duke University, Cal Tech and Lehigh University.

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4. Continue to Steward Donors

Your relationship with the donors who give to your endowment doesn’t end when you secure their gifts. Because your endowment exists to make a difference in the long term, your supporters will want you to keep in touch about its progress. Ongoing stewardship means keeping donors updated about your endowment’s performance and impact. A report that strengthens your relationship with donors should cover:

The fund’s balance at the start and end of the year
Spending amounts and allocations
How the fund’s returns compare to your investment targets
A short narrative detailing the specific impacts the endowment achieved

Create a report for each endowment rather than sending an identical document to everyone. A donor who endowed a scholarship wants to hear about the students it supported, while a donor who endowed a building fund wants updates on construction projects.

5. Upgrade Your Endowment Management Tools

Your endowment management tools should make applying your spending policy across every fund easy. Investing in dedicated software is especially useful as your endowment grows. Handling unitization in spreadsheets might work for a few funds, but as you begin to manage dozens or hundreds of gifts, dedicated software can save your team time spent manually calculating gains and losses for each one.

Why Nonprofits Need Dedicated Endowment Management Software

Dedicated endowment software brings accuracy and consistency to every part of the management process, from tracking individual funds to improving security. See how these solutions compare to a spreadsheet-based approach:

nfographic table outlining the information below.

How These Methods Compare:

In managing your endowment with traditional spreadsheets, you may see:

High administrative burden: Manual entry across disconnected systems
Limited security and audit footprints: Reduced version control and audit trail visibility
Difficulty with donor transparency: Spreadsheets provide only static data that is difficult to turn into custom results.

By using dedicated software, you are likely to find the following improvements:

Lower administrative burden: Automated fund tracking and calculated allocations
Enhanced security and audit footprint: Audit-ready reconciliation with clear tracking
Greater donor transparency: Connects with reporting platforms

Dedicated endowment management software keeps your organization compliant while freeing up the time your team once spent manually managing spreadsheets.

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Connect with the tools you already use. Pair Balance with Impact by EverTrue and ODDER by EverTrue to create and deliver compelling digital endowment reports that you can send to donors with ease.
Know where every fund stands in real time. Check market values, gift history, and available spending for any fund. Then, share view-only versions with your team, so everyone stays informed.

With Balance, your team can stop spending all your time on manual management and instead add balance to your endowment workflow.

Additional Resources

To learn more about managing your endowment and other ways that technology can help your organization, check out these additional resources:

Webinar: Building a Seamless Relationship Between Endowment Finance and Advancement. In this webinar, we cover the keys to un-complicating your institution’s financial endowment reporting process. Explore how building a connection between your finance and advancement teams can lead to happier donors and happier staff.
The Best Alumni Management Software Solutions in 2026. Alumni management software allows your university to maintain an active community that supports your school in a number of ways. Review top software solutions.
Donor Segmentation: How Organizing Donors Boosts Retention. What is donor segmentation, and how can you use it to boost retention? Learn the need-to-know information in this guide from EverTrue’s fundraising experts.

Less stress, higher endowment funds. Discover how Balance provides the organization, security, and accuracy your endowment needs. Request a demo.

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