What are some useful things an alumni group can do?

[yllus]

I've been poking around with the alumni group of my university and have a meeting tonight to try to hammer out a plan for the next year. What are some neat/useful things your alumni group does? This one will be starting from scratch.

What I have so far:

- Job postings

- Volunteer opportunities

- Event listings (eg. monthly software developer meet up events)

- Try to get older alumni to prefer new graduates for job positions and co-op placements

- Provide feedback to the current program: Now that we're out in the workforce, our reflections on what we think benefited us the most, what we think is missing

 

[zinfamous]

all I know is that they send me a letter ~once per year asking for some money.

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[kranky]

Mentoring high school students in poorly performing schools (one-on-one)
Alumni Dinner before selected school events (these are held at the school)
Volunteer to do talks at local high schools to supplement the admissions dept. These are either focused on the school itself, or on the person's career (not about the school as much).
Alumni email addresses provided through the school. (JohnDoe@alumni.school.edu) that autoforward to the email address of your choice.
Online alumni directory to find old friends/classmates.
Volunteer to help with school fundraisers.

We found it to be a waste of time to tell the school what they should be doing differently, as school administrators apparently know everything.

 

[Sinsear]

all I know is that they send me a letter ~once per year asking for some money.

:\

This.

 

[PingSpike]

They could stop asking me for money!

 

[kranky]

So what did your group decide?

 

[joesmoke]

im more fond of alumni group-ies.

 

[yllus]

So what did your group decide?

I'm currently under consideration to join the executive committee for the group. We did meet to discuss my ideas and theirs, and they'd like to throw one big event early year to put the alumni group on the map, so to speak. The pros and cons of that dominated the discussion.

I'm wary of those plans, as the alumni group as it exists today is extremely small and from a university where school spirit is rather lacking. (My nightmare/probable scenario would be spending a good chunk of money on getting a venue and bringing in speakers/VIPs only to have alumni attendance to be nonexistent.)

I'd rather an event that trumpets the name of the university and the alumni group, but where alumni attendence isn't crucial (this is for a computer science program, so I could target software developers in the city in general and get a much better response). So we'll see. December is a hard month to get a hold of people so I'll beginning making calls in earnest in the new year.

 

[SpunkyJones]

Ask for money.

 

[SandEagle]

Why bother¿