[swede]

As mentioned, one of the key things to getting your alumni to come back to your events is making sure that they know some people there. Alumni want to come to the events primarily to see their friends from when they were in the chapter.

Sure they want to see the new guys, and the house, and school and town where they used to live. But most alumni are not going to take days off work, pack up or leave the wife and kids and drive or fly just for that. They want to see their friends.

That said, there are two different ways to try to accomplish getting more alumni to come to your chapters events. These two ways can be used together.

1) Get a alumni who is in town and fairly active in the events of the chapter. Maybe an official alumni officer or advisor, or someone else. It should be someone old enough to know a majority of the brothers. This works for my 16 year old chapter. You may need to recruit several of these people if you are older. One for every generation or two so to say. But what this alumni does is calls and emails all his alumni friends and tries to get them to come back for an event. This is done separate from the chapters attempt. You still have to send out invitations way ahead of time, and newsletters and all that. This alumni person will help by getting people to come though. It is kind of a snowball effect too. Once you get a few to agree to come, more and more will sign up.

2) The second way to accomplish good alumni relations is personal contract from the chapter to the alumni. I know that there is kind of a feeling, that all the alumni ever do is show up drunk and break stuff. At least that is how it is at my chapter. But if you think of the alumni, they have most likely experienced any "high drama" situation that will occur in your house. A brother wanting to resign from the chapter, a person quitting rush chair two days before rush, crap like that. So if you ask them for their help you may be amazed at how much they know.

The way to get on this good of terms with your alumni, where you can talk open with them is through personal contact. By this, you don't even have to meet them in person. But email them. That is easiest. Get to know them a little bit, let them know what is going on in the chapter or with other alumni, on a personal level. Not just via a newsletter in the mail or mass email or something like that. You will be amazed at how many alumni will respond to this kind of attention and get back involved in the chapter.

One good way to get your new members started with contacting alumni is to have a alumni and new member pen pal program. Pick some alumni and then have each new member email or write to two or three of them. The alumni will be thrilled to hear from these new members and it will get them fired up about your chapter again.