Alum involvement

[FlyPhi]

My Chapter is having a very hard time getting our alums involved. Anybody have suggestions?

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Don't look to the future
or dwell in the past
But live for the moment
and long it will last

[Finer Woman10-A-91]

If your collegiates do not have a personal relationship with your alumnae, that would be the first place I would suggest beginning.

Perhaps the collegiates can host a reception or luncheon of sorts just to introduce or reintroduce members old to the new and new to the old. Using the good old fashion personal touch of a phone call certainly helps. Always follow up with a nice invitation. And make sure you keep your database current.

Good luck! I hope this helps.

Originally posted by FlyPhi:
My Chapter is having a very hard time getting our alums involved. Anybody have suggestions?

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Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Incorporated...Every Finer Woman's Dream!

[JaguarDiva]

One idea my collegiate chapter is trying this fall is a millenium celebration. Basically, we are sending an invite to the ladies born in our chapter to come home and to meet the young ladies such as myself that are within the chapter now. I must say we are lucky because both alumnae chapters in our city are located on my college campus, but I think this will give us a bond with other chapters across the company. In addition, we make sure we keep in touch with the ladies who are currently leaving our chapter. Once they join alum chapters, we make sure we keep up with them.



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~Jaguar Diva
43-AT-109
Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated
Alpha Tau
Southern University - Baton Rouge

[AXPAlum]

A simple start for anyone wanting to get in touch with their alumni is to start an email listserv. You can use one of those free ones, like onelist.com or listbot.com (I prefer listbot) and just start getting emails of everyone and add them to the group. Eventually the list will grow as well as communication with inactive members. This will help organize events and get people involved since you can get a much quicker response as well as discuss ideas with a large group. As for getting people involved with more events, you'll have to think up some new innovative ideas that will spark an interest to them. Perhaps look into the kind of things they enjoyed back in college (if this is an older crowd you're dealing with) and try to re-create them in some way. I don't know, just a quick idea I thought of, just be creative and you'll do fine. Alumni always appreciate effort, no matter how small it is.

- AXPAlum

[mwedzi]

Well, I'm not sure if you are having a hard time getting your alumni involved with the collegiate chapter ongoings or if you are trying to get them involved in an alumnae chapter.

some alumnae from my area just started a group on AOL. It's so nicely set up. you don't have to be a member to use the group, but the person who starts the group has to be a member. we can put pictures, post messages, view upcoming events. the whole nine yards. you might want to try that as a first step.

[NoLongerGreek]

One way we increased alumni involvement was to involve them with new members. Sometimes alums feel they can have more of an impact if they catch the pledges right away when they join the house.

We started a "Slightly Older Sis" program, where we assigned one alumni member to a pledge, and they would exchange letters, cards, gifts on holidays, whatever was appropriate. It got the alumni directly involved with the members and it kept the pledges interested because they got all the "good stories" from "back in the day".

[PenguinTrax]

As President of my alumnae chapter, one of my goals has been improving our relationship with the local chapter.

I recommend the first step be for your chapter to set some goals and really think about what you want. For example, are you lacking in advisors? Do you just want to socialize with them? Do you need their financial support? Do you need their assistance with recruitment activities?

The next question I have for you is, how active is your alumnae chapter? If you alumnae are not organized into a chapter, it is going to be very difficult to get them involved with your chapter. If there is no alumnae chapter, talk with your regional leaders to form a chapter. Let them plan an event each month for the alumnae and let the alumnae chapter get stabilized for 6 months. Maybe invite the alumnae to participate in your Founder's Day or at a philanthropy event. Then, appoint a alumnae liason and ask the alumnae to do the same. These two women can meet and plan a few events that allow the collegians and alumnae to interact.

If you need support from the alumnae, be specific about it. Don't just say "We need help with Rush", say "We really need alumnae to fill and clear water/punch glasses and tidy up after each party, that way our members can concentrate on getting ready for the next group of rushees."

Barb

[Tom Earp]

One of the ways we used to keep alums involved(30 yr ago) was to have the assoc. members contact an alum. We have just recently re started this and from the response from the actives and the alums is a GO! We had a retreat and 7 Alums went down for a retreat to work with the chapter and the officers. It was a BIG HIT> there must be leadership from the alums to keep the flame of Brothrerhood or Sisterhood alive to keep our individual chapters functioning. We are gearing up how about you?

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Tom Earp LX Z#1
Pittsburg State U. (Kansas)

[matthewg]

Hi FlyPhi,

for my fraternity chapter here in Germany, contact between actives and alumni is considered one of the most important features of fraternity life. That's why I understand your problem very well since my time as president. I am sure that the situation is somewhat different but maybe the following hints help a little bit.

If the alumni don't come to visit you, visit them!
Make a weekend road trip with active members and notify all the alumni of your chapter in the respective area - they will probably be happy to host you. That is much easier than finding the time to come and visit your chapter on campus, since most of them have to work and/or have family, that keeps an alumni pretty busy....

Send birthday cards at least for the birthdays ending with a 0 or a 5. See how they respond! They (the older the more) will be glad that the active chapter remembers them and might want to get in touch with the chapter again.

Invite especially successful alumni to give public talks, on campus or at your fraternity house - that will have the positive side effect to give your chapter a good reputation as being very academic....

And then, as others stated previously, try to get local alumni involved by inviting them personally with a few phone calls, make them organize a social for members only, a get-together for young and old, a family day involving the actives, whatever - it may be strange for them at first, to be called, but the more often you call the more they will think: hey, they really want me to get involved.....

Good luck, I know how hard it is,
Best, Matt

http://www.kdstv-bodensee.de

[ZChi4Life]

Hello everyone,
My sorority is an up and coming GLO and we have been having a hard time keeping alumnae involved as well. However, one thing we do that tends to bring alum out is when we have our associates contact them either by email, snail mail or phone. Most associates do either email or snail mail as they are shy to call. We usually have them tell the alum about themselves and why they wanted to be a member of the sorority. Then we make sure the associates asks at least 5 questions--detailed ones--and that usually sparks some nostaglia w/in the alum. Afterwards, I can say we get a lot of email or phone calls from alum that haven't been in contact for years! It works well, but we still need other ways of keeping them involved instead of just contacting us for a short time. I really like all the suggestions mentioned here. I will definitely suggest them to our Nationals!