Richard Lucas · November 2022 (updated March 2026)

Introduction

The benefits of bringing alumni into contact with both each other and the life of their school or university are clear and underappreciated. In November 2022 I was visiting Australia, volunteering to run entrepreneurship workshops in schools and universities. The situation there was no better than in Europe — and perhaps worse — when it comes to wasting the potential of alumni to inspire and educate future generations. I am publishing this 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.

A launch event for the Sydney Group of the Cambridge University Alumni Group I founded.

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 or university — and especially those 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 a shared culture, which is a powerful potential bond. Even in cases where the school or university experience was difficult or traumatic, an alumni group can be a means for discussion and recovery.

3. Alumni bring post-school experience that has value to current students: applying for universities, finding jobs, mentoring and support. Usually the main reason alumni do not go back to help current pupils free of charge is that no one asked them.

4. If the school or university becomes part of the social life of its alumni, it becomes more valuable and useful to everyone.

5. Technology has changed social norms. The growth of internet technology — especially social media and messaging platforms — means that everyone is far more accustomed to the idea of communicating with groups of shared interest and identity. No one will be surprised to be asked if they want to sign up to an alumni newsletter or group.

6. An alumni group opens the door to fundraising opportunities. The best way to ensure that communications are deleted or ignored is if they are primarily asking for money. My late father John Lucas, the Oxford philosopher, said that many alumni events had the spirit taken out of them by the atmosphere of the begging bowl. Build community first. Everything else follows.

If you can think of other reasons, contact me and I will add them to this list.

What Can an Alumni Group Usefully Do?

If these reasons resonate, and there is someone who wants to take the lead, it is worth reviewing what an alumni group can do. A quick search online will generate plenty of ideas, though most results come from companies selling expensive software for managing alumni relations. You do not need expensive software. An alumni group can organise:

Interactions between alumni and students — workshops, talks, mentoring. A good early test is an “entrepreneur interview” project, where pupils track down alumni who have gone into business, conduct an interview, and publish the results on a competition webpage, the school website, social media, or a newsletter. I supported such a project in the Małopolska region in southern Poland about a decade ago. One adult needs to supervise, but most of the work is done by the pupils.

How to Set Up an Alumni Group

It is a good idea to start with a pilot project — a test — even if you are fully 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. It is also easier to close down without loss of face if it does not work out.

Review the current situation and available resources.
What, if anything, does the school already organise with or for alumni, if anything exists, what is its purpose
Who is in charge and/or represents alumni and the school/ university.
What are the communication channels
Who could to help run a pilot project

Building a Team, Setting a Date, and Getting the Word Out

A launch event is necessary to give focus, and an excuse to contact people. Set the date as far in the future as possible to give yourself maximum time to build your team and spread the word. A function room in the school, or in a convenient café or pub, works well.

There are many free event tools — such as Lu.ma/Eventbrite — which allow you to create events at no charge. I like Eventbrite/Lu.ma because of the “custom questions” feature, which lets you learn about your attendees before the event.

Custom questions for my CAMentrepreneurs Sydney Launch

Assuming the school is on board or running the project, the next step is to review data about alumni and existing communications channels. Most institutions more than thirty years old will not have complete alumni email records — many of those relationships predate widespread email use. But there may be some email address databases — for example of current parents, and sometimes a hard-copy address list of past parents. In the best case there is a full list of all alumni with up-to-date email addresses; in the worst case there are neither.

Check existing social media platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp) in case someone has already formed a group. If they have, contact them and get them on board.

A “Get Involved” form - it takes a few minutes to make one of these for free if you have a gmail account.

A “get involved” form takes minutes to create for free.

Make a poster to put on the school noticeboard with your contact details and a QR code linking to the “get involved” form.
If the school or university has other communications channels — parent newsletters, social media accounts (LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Facebook), student media, or a parent-teacher association — find out who is in charge and when the deadlines are. Put the same information in all channels.

Team Building Before the Launch

Assuming you have sign-ups in the weeks or months before your event, organise some gatherings — online or in person — with the people who offered to help. Make a plan for a second event and other activities to be announced at the launch.

One word of warning: there is a certain type of person — older, entitled, forceful, sometimes wealthy — who makes suggestions about what you should do but is totally unwilling to get involved in delivery because they are too busy. They are usually toxic. Make clear from the start that your group is run by volunteers, and that people making suggestions are normally expected to be involved in making them happen.

The Launch Event

How you host and organise the event matters a great deal.

High-level endorsement. Book the most senior representative of the institution available to give a two-minute welcome. This adds credibility and makes those responsible for webpages and communications more responsive.

Name badges. Handwrite them as people arrive. Many attendees will not know anyone else in the room.

Timekeeping and soft start. I dislike meetings that start late, but I also know that some people always arrive late. Handle this with a TED-style soft start. Have some activities going on at the scheduled start time that are not “meeting-critical” but do not leave early arrivals hanging around. I use a projector to post housekeeping reminders on screen, including messages like “introduce yourselves to people you don’t know” and “if you have been talking for more than a minute, try to self-regulate”. Email me if you would like a copy of my housekeeping rules template.

As people arrive, welcome them and introduce them to the most recent arrivals. At the scheduled start time, clap your hands or clink a glass, and invite everyone to find someone they have never met before, introduce themselves, and share a memory of the school. After about five minutes, ask people to find someone new and repeat with a different question. Three blocks of five-minute sessions of icebreakers are enough. The enforced mingling is paradoxically introvert-friendly: it ensures shy people are integrated rather than left on the sidelines, raises everyone’s energy, and means that if you are stuck with someone a bit dull, you know it will be over soon.

At around 15 minutes in, ask your VIP to welcome everyone.

After this, introduce yourself — but before you talk about your mission and vision, ask everyone present to introduce themselves in about 30 seconds: who they are, what they do, and why they are attending. As leader, this tells you a great deal about the people in the room. For attendees, it helps them identify who they want to talk to during the networking portion

When it comes to your own presentation, keep it short — three to four minutes is plenty. Just explain why you wanted to do this, the values of helping each other and current pupils, and your plans for the future. Where people’s reasons for attending overlap with yours, thank them by name.

If you have recruited team members from your pre-launch gatherings, introduce each of them and what they are focusing on.

After this, take questions and have a discussion with tight time-keeping. Tell everyone to make their points in one minute, maximum two. After 10–15 minutes of discussion, move into about 30–45 minutes of free-form networking.

Ten to fifteen minutes before the scheduled end time, ask for quiet, summarise, repeat any calls to action, tell participants what is happening next, and ask if anyone has any closing reflections. This generates a lot of positivity on which to end. Depending on location, you can suggest that participants migrate to a nearby pub.

Once the event is over, send a summary with some photos and a request for feedback, along with details of whatever is happening next. For your team, hold a post-event debrief the following week: discuss openly what went well and what did not, and agree on who is doing what before your next gathering.

Congratulations. Your alumni group is up and running

Unless … suppose you do all of the above and no one signs up or wants to come. Reassure yourself with JK Rowling’s 2008 Harvard commencement speech: “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 only one or two people sign up, cancel the event a day or two beforehand and invite them for a coffee or beer instead.

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Richard Lucas is the co-founder of CAMentrepreneurs, a TEDx organiser, and an investor based in Kraków, Poland. He writes at richardlucas.com.

Starting an Alumni Group for Schools and Universities: How and Why