Part 1 of “The Ultimate Question: Is it the Right Question for Alumni Engagement?” Series
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) has become a widely recognized metric in the corporate world, celebrated for distilling customer loyalty into a single question: “How likely are you to recommend our products or services to others?” In recent years, advancement offices and alumni engagement professionals have increasingly borrowed this approach, asking alumni if they would recommend their alma mater to others. But is this question enough for understanding and growing alumni engagement in higher education, or are higher ed’s needs fundamentally different from the corporate sector?
The Origins and Applicability of the NPS
The NPS was developed by Bain & Company and popularized by Fred Reichheld in “The Ultimate Question.” It caught on because it empowered businesses, like airlines and rental car companies, to focus on reducing “bad profits” (hidden costs and poor experiences) and promote customer advocacy. The simplicity of the NPS enabled organizations to rally around one measurement, driving both focus and organizational alignment. For many businesses, the ability to focus on a single question brought real change, especially in transactional industries where loyalty is built through repeated, positive exchanges.
However, alumni relationships are not transactional. Alumni are not customers making repeat purchases; instead, their relationship with their institution is lasting, shaped by formative experiences, nostalgia, and evolving life stages. Universities and colleges have dual objectives: increasing both short-term engagement (like event attendance) and long-term support (such as planned gifts and legacy giving). Engaging alumni early, ideally in their twenties and thirties, greatly enhances an institution’s chances of being included in future giving decisions. But unlike businesses, universities do not know in advance who will make a transformative gift later in life, so the engagement strategy must be broad and relationship-driven.
The NPS in Practice: Benefits and Limitations
Adopting the NPS model in higher education has strengths. It can energize alumni teams and provide an easy-to-understand metric to track over time. In contexts where alumni event attendance or broad institutional promotion is the chief goal, the NPS may be a useful gauge. Alumni willing to recommend an institution are more likely to attend events and share news with peers, which can indirectly support reputation building and enrollment.
But multiple years of analysis and over 1,000,000 alumni attitude responses collected by the Alumni Attitude Study show that this “willingness to promote” is not the best predictor of deeper engagement and future giving. Alumni might recommend their school for its academic strengths, athletics, or community impact, even if they themselves feel little connection after graduation. Yet, willingness to promote does not reliably identify those most likely to give or volunteer, especially over the long term.
The challenge, then, is to ask not just what makes someone a “promoter,” but what forges a lasting bond and a sense of belonging and loyalty that compels ongoing involvement and generosity.
Questions Advancement Teams Should Ask
Given the unique nature of alumni relationships, advancement leaders should:
-Evaluate all survey instruments to ensure questions align with long-term institutional goals.
-Supplement or replace NPS questions with items focused on alumni satisfaction, their decision to attend, current opinions, and most importantly, loyalty.
-Recognize event attendance as a tactical metric, but not a proxy for lifelong engagement or propensity to give.
-Target engagement efforts to alumni in their twenties and thirties, the “sweet spot” for setting philanthropic priorities.
The “right question” for higher education should be the one that most accurately predicts alumni intent to remain engaged and give to their alma mater over their lives, not just to promote events or encourage applications.
Conclusion
The NPS can bring valuable focus when the objectives are clear, but its origins in business contexts limit its predictive value for higher education advancement. The Alumni Attitude Study’s multi-institution analysis makes it clear that institutions benefit from digging deeper- by measuring loyalty, satisfaction, and the emotional drivers that build true alumni affinity. Advancement leaders must evolve beyond “the ultimate question” and embrace research-backed practices that support sustained engagement and philanthropy for generations to come.
For more content about alumni engagement data trends, check out our blog Alumni Insights.