| dc.description.abstract | Braven, a national nonprofit in the emerging college to career space, offers underrepresented college students a credit-bearing, university-based, one-semester course that builds job search and career-readiness skills as well as follow-on development opportunities for program completers so they are ready to secure and thrive in a strong first job after college that will anchor a meaningful career and life of impact. Braven’s strong programmatic results have fueled opportunities to scale. This project sought to help Braven leaders prepare for their growing participant network size by taking stock of how Braven’s communications work currently shapes participant experience and informing the extension of current strategy through the alumni phase of participation, which begins after college graduation. This mixed-methods formative evaluation is grounded in customer journey theory and used data gathered from document review, content analysis of email and social media communications, digital marketing analytics, participant surveys and focus groups, and interviews with staff, participants and peer organizations. This data provided the building blocks to construct a participant journey map that illustrates the typical pathway of engagement for current Braven participants, to identify moments in the journey strongly influencing participant experience, and to inform the development of an alumni engagement strategy. Analysis of these findings informed four recommendations: 1) Develop a logic model for alumni programming; 2) Create an ideal participant journey map; 3) Apply sensegiving theory to the arc of participant communication; and 4) Expand the use of centralized digital marketing tracking and measurement tools. | en_US |
