Crafting a Life-Changing Rehab Alumni Program
Creating an alumni program at your drug or alcohol treatment facility can be a great way to attract new clients and get referrals. It’s also an incredibly powerful tool for helping past clients avoid relapse and network with peers to find new support systems.
Because they’re beneficial to past clients and the organization, alumni programs are a popular program to implement in the marketing strategy of most drug and alcohol addiction treatment centers. Ads Up Marketing offers a complimentary audit of your digital presence and can help with everything from driving organic search to setting up a thriving alumni program.
Keep reading if you are considering creating your own alumni program and get our full guide along with a few tips to help get you started!
What is an Alumni Program at Drug and Alcohol Treatment Centers?
Simply put, alumni programs consist of a graduating class of clients from your treatment center who stay connected and participate in monthly events. Your alumni will also interact during everyday life, encourage others to maintain long-term sobriety, maintain long-term sobriety and offer a support pillar during times of struggle.
In addition, they provide an outlet for sober activities and may even stay connected with new entries into your recovery program and encourage them to finish treatment. The main purpose of these programs include:
- Help clients maintain recovery goals
- Promote lasting recovery
- Help breathe new life into graduating clients and encourage them to be proactive in recovery.
- An overall support pillar upon leaving treatment
- Act as resources for local recovery efforts and be active in the community
Having an alumni program at a rehab facility is a great way to encourage people to maintain sobriety. It also helps prevent relapse, which is probably the most intense struggle graduates of any treatment program will endure. The social support system you have during this time is vital.
A Built-in Sober Support System for Your Alumni
These programs allow people to share their experiences, build sober social networks, and gain valuable insight into how to cope with difficult situations. They can also help encourage people to become mentors or advocates for addiction prevention.
An alumni program provides resources and structured activities to help clients transition back into their normal lives with a new set of sober friends and peers. They may also offer volunteer opportunities for past clients to continue to play an instrumental role at your treatment center or within the community. These programs also have a social media presence and may be able to provide a 24-hour hotline.
In terms of aftercare opportunities and a method of continuing efforts for recovery, an alumni program can be a powerful tool and a great way to extend additional support to your graduates.
How Can an Alumni Program Be Effective?
An alumni program is effective for any treatment center in several ways. First, let’s look into how it’s beneficial for your clients.
Creating a Recovery Support Community
Creating an alumni program for addiction treatment facilities is a great way to strengthen the recovery of clients. These programs help clients connect with others in early recovery and encourage them to continue to pursue their long-term goals. They can also help clients improve their relapse prevention techniques.
The alumni coordinator can help deploy these programs as part of an aftercare program. These programs can also be proposed to clients while they are in residential treatment.
After treatment, clients often feel isolated and may need a new social circle. An alumni team can offer support for newcomers, and they can provide suggestions for activities and meetings. They can also help clients develop new skills and honor their recovery by offering peer support and acting as a sober community for clients to turn to.
Alumni Coordinators and Activities for Alumni Groups
Alumni coordinators can also encourage people to become mentors. Mentors bring personal experience to the recovery process. They can help newcomers find jobs and can even help them with rides to support groups.
Emotional support is the primary benefit for your client. It ensures they remain active in their recovery efforts and avoid turning back to substance abuse.
Having sober friends and finding a way to maintain relationships from treatment not only forges lifelong relationships but also provides a sober environment that helps them maintain accountability.
The alumni coordinator may even suggest implementing a family program or developing a relationship with your local recovery community organization. This is another great way to get family members active in a client’s recovery, as well as providing local resources that can support Aftercare planning.
How Can Alumni Activities Benefit Your Organization?
When these programs go out and spread awareness in the community of the existence of the alumni program, it brings positive attention to your facility. This makes it an excellent way to show the locals that you’re a force for positive change in the area and provide benefits for residents and those who travel from out of town for treatment.
These types of things are great to highlight on your website or social media page to build trust with future clients and establish a positive rapport. Just offering a similar program can bring you an uptick in new client enrollments.
Many facilities have found success using app-based check-ins, and alumni gatherings, and these can also offer advantages to your Admissions team in terms of data provided and lead generation.
For your clients, a lack of aftercare support is a big issue, especially for those who have attended treatment in the past and relapsed. The chance to take part in something post-treatment that helps extend a lifeline once daily living resumes outside your facilities is an attractive addition to any program, one that can help you attract and retain new clientele.
Attract New Clients & Boost Your Brand
Your alumni coordinator can help structure a referral system that helps you bring in a new class of clients looking for help. Simply by maintaining a role as an active force in the community, your alumni team can become a source of strength or a place where those who need help can turn that otherwise have nobody to confide in.
This gives clients in your program a chance to play an instrumental role in helping someone else enter recovery, giving them the gift that they received. In turn, this also strengthens the conviction of the client, as providing help to someone is a natural feel-good remedy.
Not to mention that you can expect a higher degree of brand loyalty to your rehab, increased referrals, and better connections with both clients and their grateful family members.
How Do I Create My Own Rehab Alumni Program?
Creating your own program is not overly difficult but requires some strategy sessions and careful planning – appointing an alumni coordinator and a team to back them is the first step. You will need a dedicated group to manage the program, or the services of an external support staff.
Keep in mind that programs use a wide variety of methods to encourage participation, create and announce events, and contact their alumni network. No matter what your intended approach is, we can help. With our assistance, your program can be client-ready within weeks!
Our team of professionals has helped set up such programs in the past and can make the process easier, and your program that much more successful!
For help and even more resources on deploying your own program and strategy, reach out to our experts at Ads Up Marketing, and get actionable assistance along with the resources to drive immediate results!