Lucinda Grafton, Head of Development writes:

The Pangbourne College Alumni Survey was launched in June 2024 with the aim of engaging with Old Pangbournians to better understand their views, attitudes and preferences relating to the College, OP events and communications, The Old Pangbournian Society and fundraising. The survey was designed to help shape the future strategic direction for alumni relations and fundraising at Pangbourne and inform a programme of events, communications and services to keep OPs in touch with each other and strengthen their connection with the College.

We received 372 completed surveys (a 14% response rate which was within the expected range), and 129 respondents provided their contact details and permission for the Development Team to contact them about subjects they selected such as fundraising, supporting careers and providing case studies.   

The bespoke, online survey was developed and delivered by RSAcademics (leading experts in school stakeholder research) and included a mix of ‘quick fire’ questions and open, free-form questions. The survey was anonymous which, we hope, encouraged objectivity and honesty in responses. Overall, the survey delivered a very encouraging set of results; the written comments were positive overall, and the data compared well with that from other schools (where available). A summary of the output follows.

Time at College

We are delighted to report that 86% of respondents are proud to have attended Pangbourne College, 74% were happy during their time at the College and 40% feel connected with the College today. RSAcademics has confirmed that the statistics relating to ‘pride in attending’ and ‘connection today’ compare well against responses received by other schools of a similar profile to Pangbourne.

Memories from College

88% of respondents (326 alumni) wrote comments, which covered a wide range of aspects of College life since the 1950s.  Most of the comments were either broadly positive, recalling happy memories and an appreciation of the opportunities experienced, or neutral, recalling time at the College without negative or positive association.

The most mentioned memories related to friends, camaraderie and preparation for life. Other themes evolving from the memories include co-curricular activities, teachers and the military influence. Inevitably, some comments were negative, and we are grateful for the candour of the authors in helping us to better understand life at the College across the decades and the challenges it presented for some.

Alumni Services

We asked about the importance of our alumni services. The responses told us that news about fellow alumni, careers support, professional networking and reunions were ranked as the most important services for the College and the OP Society to provide. It is heartening to report that 84% of respondents felt that fostering a sense of community between the College and its alumni is important.  Based on this we will endeavour to further strengthen levels of alumni engagement through the ongoing provision of these services.  

With regard to communications, the respondents expressed very strong preferences for content from the archives, obituaries, updates from the College and alumni news.  These will all continue to be areas of focus for us. There is also strong support for the Pangbournian Portal and the Annual Magazine and both will continue to be key foundations for ongoing alumni engagement. 

With regard to events, there was strong support for year group reunions, reunions for all alumni, as well as dinners and drinks. 

Fundraising

We were encouraged by your feedback with regard to fundraising and now have a deeper understanding of alumni views with regard to different causes and overall propensity to support the College. Respondents are, in general, in support of the full range of fundraising causes and tend to favour hardship funding, ‘enriching the academic curriculum through new facilities’ and bursaries as the most important priorities. We have noted that two areas that provide opportunity for greater focus are donor stewardship and raising awareness of legacy giving and its associated tax-efficient benefits.

One size does not fit all

As the survey responses have been analysed by year group it enables us to better align activities to different generations. While some of this analysis may not be surprising, (e.g. careers and networking events are particularly important for leavers from the last 20 years; Pangbourne College history is of most interest to leavers from earlier decades), other segmentation is more revealing (e.g. OPs who left in the 1970s and 1980s use The Pangbournian Portal proportionally more than OPs from other decades; the most recent leavers feel least connected to the College).  

More broadly, we have noted that within the 372 respondents, there are three minority responder groups:  28% left the College after 1990, 21% live outside the UK and 8% are female. We are therefore particularly keen to engage with more recent leavers, our international OPs and our female OPs.  We will carefully consider how we can do this but if you fall into one of these groups please feel free to get in touch if you have further thoughts and ideas.

Thank You

Thank you again to all who completed our survey. Your insights, views, memories and opinions have collectively provided vital intelligence to help us deliver services, events and communications that will be of most interest to you.  

We are particularly grateful to the 129 OPs who left their contact details so that we can stay in contact about a range of subjects from providing careers support to making a donation.