Starting an alumni group for Schools and Universities, how and why?
Richard Lucas
November 2022
Introduction
The benefits of bringing the alumni into contact with both each other and the life of the school are clear and under appreciated. In November 2022 I have been visiting Australia, and volunteered to do entrepreneurship workshops in schools and universities. The situation here is no better than in Europe, and maybe even worse, when it comes to wasting the potential of alumni to help inspire and educate future generations. I’m publishing this blog post to explain how and why it is worth building an active alumni community for schools and universities. Any new initiative will take time, energy and attention if not money, which means the “why” should be clear.
Why ?
Whoever is leading the project needs to know why they are doing it. The six reasons I have identified are listed below. There may be others.
1. Alumni know the School/University and (especially the ones who enjoyed it) are potentially committed to it. If they did not enjoy it they may be highly motivated to make it better for future generations.
2. Culture is defined as shared experience. Alumni have shared memories and culture, which is a powerful potential bond. Even in cases where School/University was difficult or traumatic, an alumni group can be a means for discussion and recovery from old wounds.
3. Alumni bring a wealth of post-school experience that has value to current students: applying for universities, jobs, mentoring and support. Usually the main reason alumni don’t go back to help to current pupils free of charge is that no one asked them.
4. If the School/University becomes part of the social life of alumni it makes the School/University more valuable and useful.
5. Technology has changed social norms. The growth of all kinds of internet technology, especially social media, means that everyone is far more used to the idea of communicating with groups of common interest and identity than ever before. No one will be surprised if they are asked if they want to sign up to an alumni newsletter, or group.
6. Finally an alumni group opens the door to fund-raising opportunities. The best way to ensure that communications are deleted or binned is if they are primarily asking for money. My late father John Lucas, the Oxford Philosopher, said that the many alumni events had the spirit taken out of them due to the atmosphere of the begging bowl.
If you can think of other reasons, contact me and I will add them to this list.
What can an alumni group do?
If these reasons resonate, and there is someone (probably someone who works for the school or is an alumni) who wants to take a lead, then it is a good idea to review what an Alumni Group can do, and what they want to do in the context of their School/University. Common sense, a quick Google Search and ten minutes of skim reading will give plenty of ideas, though as the Google search demonstrates most of the content is from companies that sell expensive software for managing alumni relations! You do not need expensive software. An alumni group can organise:
Regular gatherings at the school/university sometimes around a theme (sports, BBQ, Open Day, Graduation day)
A newsletter sharing news and achievements,
Anniversary dinners 10, 20 30 years from graduation
Interactions between alumni and students (workshops, talks, mentoring). A good project to test the level of interest and engagement among pupils/students is an “entrepreneur interview” project, where the pupils have to track down alumni who have gone into business (or local business people), conduct an interview and publish the results on a competition webpage, and/or the school webpage, Social Media and a newsletter. I supported such an “Entrepreneurs from my School” in Małopolska region in Southern Poland about a decade ago. An English language description is on the website here and Polish readers can review the official government report about the project (in Polish) here. One adult (teacher or a responsible person among the alumni) needs to supervise such a project, but most of the work should be done by the pupils.
Sporting and cultural events
How to set up an alumni group
It is a good idea to start with a pilot project - a test - even if you are very committed to the idea. It is less threatening to those who find change challenging, and lowers expectations of what is going to happen. Starting with low expectations and then exceeding them is the best way to impress people. Also it is easier to close down without loss of face if for any reason it does not work out.
A review of the current situation and available resources is an essential first step. Start by asking
Who is going to be running the pilot project?
If you are an alumni, contact the school and discuss your goals and intentions. My school in the UK (Winchester College) told me to not to go ahead. Read about this here.
If you work for the school/University, discuss your ideas with leadership and get approval for a pilot.
If you are the leader of the School/University share this article among staff, asking if there is anyone among the administration or teaching staff who wants to do a pilot. An assignment like this is better run by someone who wants to do it than adding it to a job description. If you have to hire someone it will get expensive, and may turn into a fund raising body to justify its existence.
Building a team, setting a date for a launch meeting and getting the word out
A launch meeting is necessary to give focus, and an excuse to contact people.
Set the date for your launch meeting as far in the future as possible to give the maximum amount of time to get the word out and build your team. A function room in the school, or in a convenient cafe/pub is best.
A launch event for the Sydney Group of the Cambridge University Alumni Group I founded.
There are many free event tools such as Eventbrite which allow you to create events free of charge (they make money if you are charging money for your events). I’m assuming that the event will be free. I like Eventbrite because of the “custom questions” feature which allows you to find out about your attendees before the event.
Custom questions for my CAMentrepreneurs Sydney Launch
Assuming the school is either “on board” or running the project, the next step is to review data about alumni, and existing communications channels. No institutions more than thirty years old will have all their alumni email addresses, given how old the internet is. But there may be some email address databases - for example of current parents, and sometimes a “snail mail” hard copy address list of past parents. In the best case there is a full list of all alumni with emails and up to date addresses, in the worst case there are neither email nor hard copy addresses.
Check on existing social media platforms, (Facebook and Linkedin) in case someone has formed a group already. If they have, contact them and get them on board. Not only will they be helpful in getting the word out, but also the people who joined such groups are likely to be the ones who would welcome an alumni society.
1. Contact the webmaster of the School/University website, finding out what the process is to add content, and post information about your plans to set up a group, and the launch event, with your details and a link to a “get involved” form.
A “Get Involved” form - it takes a few minutes to make one of these for free if you have a gmail account.
A key point to note about “get involved” forms is that it gives the leader a chance to build a team, and get a feel for the level of interest, before the launch.
2. Make a poster to put on the school noticeboard that you are setting up an alumni group with your contact details and a QR Code to the “Get Involved” form.
3. If the School/University has any other communications channels with parents or others, find out who is in charge and when the deadlines for getting information out are. If there are official Linkedin profiles, Twitter accounts or Facebook Pages. put the same information in all these channels. Universities have student led media, Schools sometimes have Parent Teacher Associations.
Team building before the launch
Assuming you have some sign ups and interest in the months before your event, organise some gatherings either on line or in person of the people who are offering to help in the sign up/get involved form. Make a plan for a second event and other activities to be communicated at the launch. It is very reassuring to have this in place as the leader because it can be quite stressful as the founder if you don’t have any sense of how engaged or interested your community is.
One word of warning, there is a certain type of person, older, entitled, forceful, often wealthy, (sometimes male!) who make suggestions as to what you should do, but are totally unwilling to get involved in the delivery of their suggestions because they are too busy. They are usually toxic. Make clear right from the start that a working principle of your group is that it is run by volunteers and people making suggestions are normally expected to be involved in making them happen.
The launch event
The way you host and organise the event is very important.
High level endorsement Book the most important representative of the institution available to do a two minute welcome. This adds status, boosts credibility, and the presence of the School Director, Vice Chancellor etc on the event description will make those in charge of webpages etc more responsive.
Name badges give people name badges. just hand write them as they arrive. Many people will not know anyone else at the event.
Time keeping and soft start. I hate meetings that start late, on the other hand I know that other people always arrive late. Deal with this with a TED style “soft start”- which always do events near perfectly. The idea is to have some activities going on at the start time which are not “meeting critical” but don’t leave people hanging around. I use a projector to post housekeeping rules on a screen, including messages like “introduce yourselves to people you don’t know” “listen as well as talk, if you are talking for more than a minute, try to self regulate”. I can supply model housekeeping rules if readers ask. Some people will inevitably be early. As people arrive welcome them and introduce them to the most recent arrivals. At the scheduled start time (for example 18:00) clap your hands, or clink a glass, and tell everyone that one of the purposes of the group is to forge new connections among alumni, so can everyone find someone they have never met before, introduce themselves and share memories of xxxxx (it’s easy enough to choose the icebreaker topics, first day at school, favourite teacher, most memorable lesson etc), After about five minutes, clap your hands again, and ask people find someone new and do it again with a new question. Three blocks of five minutes sessions of icebreakers are are enough. The enforced mingling is paradoxically ‘introvert friendly; as it ensures that shy people are integrated and not left on the sidelines, it raises everyone’s emotional state as meeting new people always wakes people up, and lastly, ensures that if you are unlucky enough to be stuck with someone a bit boring, you know it will be over soon.
At 18:15 you ask your VIP to welcome everyone.
After this, you introduce yourself and then before you talk about why you wanted to set up the group, your mission and vision, say that you would like everyone present to introduce themselves in about 30 seconds “who they are, what they do, and why they are attending”. There are many advantages of doing it this way. As leader you find out about the people in the room, you get a sense of their character and personality, and may be able to tailor what you say later to match the reasons why people are there. For the attendees during the networking part of the event, it will help them identify people they want to meet and talk to. Inevitably many of your priorities will overlap with some of those of the attendees.
When it comes to your presentation, keep it short 3-4 minutes is plenty. just explain why you want to do this, the values of helping each other and current pupils, and your plans for the future. Where people have given reasons for being there you agree with, thank them by name, and say you look forward to talking to them during the networking part for the evening
Assuming you have recruited some team members from your pre-event gatherings, get each of them to present themselves, and what they are going to focussing on in the team.
After this, take questions, and have a discussion, with tight time keeping. Tell everyone to make their points in one minute, maximum two. You will be surprised how much positive feedback I have got over the years from not letting people waffle.
After about 10-15 minutes of discussion say that one of your purposes is to facilitate better connections among alumni, and have about 30-45 minutes of free form networking/mingling.
10-15 minutes before the scheduled end time ask for quiet, summarise, repeat any calls to action that you have, tell participants what is happening next and then ask if anyone has any wind down closing comments or reflections, This generates lots of positivity on which to end.
Depending on location and context it can be a good idea to say that participants can migrate to a nearby pub.
Once the event is over, send out a summary with some photos and a request for feedback with details of whatever is happening next, and for your existing team (and those who said they want to join the team) have a gathering the following week to do a post event summary, discuss openly what went well and badly, and figuring out who has to do what by when before your next gathering.
Congratulations. Your Alumni Group is up and running.
Unless…… suppose you do all of the above and no-one at all signs up or wants to come: reassure yourself by remembering JK Rowlings speech at Harvard “It's impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case, you fail by default."
If one or people sign up, cancel the event a day or two beforehand. Invite the people who did sign up to meet for a coffee or beer.