Let us help you build your print magazine roadmap.
Make your flagship communications tool more strategic, more effective, and more beautiful with our 25 years of expertise and proprietary research.
Research consistently shows that print magazines are the most widely seen and trusted communications tools that alumni and donors receive from your institution — nearly always ranking above your website, social media, and emails.
Your magazine is the flagship communications vehicle for this audience, and it plays a key role in helping your alumni — volunteers, donors, advocates, and others — feel connected to the institution.
Your magazine can help readers get excited about the ambitions of your institution, the achievements in your community, and the ongoing meaning and value of a degree from your school.
Yet too often, institutions fail to maximize the true potential of this publication.
All things considered, you’re probably pretty proud of what you’ve been able to accomplish with your magazine — probably with a small staff, modest budget, and limited time.
Still.
You also know that your magazine could be better, if only you had time to take a breath and get the 30,000-foot view.
And you’ve probably tried!
The general tips and tactics you get from these sources have their place, but they’re not enough to make a real difference in your magazine.
What you really need is a cover-to-cover evaluation of your magazine, and a step-by-step plan to make the changes that will actually elevate your publication to make it worth every dollar you put into it — and then some.
You want a candid assessment from people who know the nuances of university publications and have excelled at creating them and improving them.
You want to know what you’re doing well, what you could do better, and the exact steps you can start taking today to make your magazine more beautiful, more readable, more relevant, and more loved by your audience.
Over the course of more than 25 years, I’ve worked with 100+ alumni and university publications across the country. I’ve won numerous national awards for my alumni magazine work — including the Sibley, the highest honor in the field.
In 2022 alone, my work has been recognized with a Brilliance award from InspirED School Marketers and a Gold award from CASE. I’m a regular speaker at national CASE conferences, and more than 1,300 higher ed communicators subscribe to my newsletter.
Even if they never visit your school’s website or follow your institution on social media, your alumni and donors are getting your magazine reliably delivered to their door a few times a year.
And that print magazine matters.
At its best, print is more effective, more desired, and more valued than the web — by alumni of all ages.
Shouldn’t you be doing the most to maximize the publication you’re sending to your audience?
Your institution spends tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce, print, and mail your magazine. You and your team invest hundreds of hours on every issue.
You deserve to have those hours pay off with a magazine that doesn’t just support your strategic goals, but is beloved by your readers — and gets robust engagement and support.
With the right changes, you can make sure your magazine benefits from all the time you spend on it.
We’re ready to help.
Finally, a detailed roadmap to improve your publication, from mission statement to finished magazine.
The Capstone Magazine Action Plan is a complete playbook for improving your publication.
We closely analyze four issues of your magazine, learn about your publication through our carefully developed questionnaire, and do a comprehensive call with you and your team.
Then, over the course of 8 weeks, our team of editorial experts, designers, and researchers assembles a report and action plan that covers each component of your magazine:
Our in-depth report doesn’t give generic advice. We zero in on specific parts of your magazine where you can make immediate improvements — and where you can focus your attention for long-term gains.
More important, we don’t just tell you where to train your attention. We show you specific techniques, successfully used in other alumni and consumer magazines, that you can use as templates.
The Capstone Magazine Action Plan includes:
PLUS:
Every alumni magazine, every audience, and every institution is different. You might wonder if your specific institution can really benefit from the Capstone Magazine Action Plan.
And we’ll be honest: it isn’t right for everyone. But for the right schools, we believe it can make an extraordinary difference.
The Capstone Magazine Action Plan is right for you if…
The Capstone Magazine Action Plan is not right for you if…