From the Nominator

At Punahou School, where half of alumni live outside Hawaii, the alumni relations team needed a tool that could cut through the clutter of overflowing inboxes and make a meaningful impact on alumni engagement. In spring 2023, Punahou adopted Almabase as its new online engagement platform. Taking an all-in approach, the team shifted email communication, event registration, reunion committee planning, and special programs to the platform. This has allowed Punahou’s alumni team to view engagement more holistically and get a better sense of how alumni engage with the school annually. The platform, dubbed Ka ‘Ohana Punahou, includes an online directory of all alumni with direct messaging. It also includes private class spaces, a message board for regional chapters, a job board, business directory, and a buy/sell/trade page, as well as the annual Punahou Alumni Holiday Gift Guide. Since the platform launched, an average of 8,000 alumni have used the site monthly--about one-third of the alumni that Punahou has contact info for. More than 5,000 alumni have updated their profiles with new contact or bio information and 70% of contactable alumni have visited or viewed content. Best of all, new information entered into the platform syncs to the school’s Raiser’s Edge database. Maintaining excitement for Punahou is a community-wide effort, and this next-gen platform has made it easier to capture engagement data, so the alumni team can continually strategize and adjust to meet the needs of a growing, dynamic community.

From the Judges

We believe Punahou School provided strong quantitative data that demonstrated the success of Almabase for their institution. The investment in this tool has helped maintain engagement, capture data, and best use staff resources and time. Punahou School's administration of Almabase can serve as an effective model for other institutions who might look to invest in similar systems or platforms.