As the number of young alumni grows, alumni offices must get creative to keep recent grads engaged.
By Erin Peterson of UniversityBusiness.com
May 2007

ENCOURAGING YOUNG ALUMNI TO STAY INVOLVED at Wartburg College (Iowa) has presented a thorny challenge for Todd Coleman. Coleman, the school’s director of alumni and parent programs, would love to see recent graduates take advantage of all the school has to offer them, but many of the approaches used for older alums aren’t relevant to the younger generation. “They don’t want to sit down for long dinners and listen to speeches. They don’t want propaganda thrown at them, and they don’t have the time to take off for golf outings or other events,” he says.

On the other hand, young alumni have been eager for any assistance they can find as they get their fledgling careers off the ground . . .

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Today’s alumni want increasing control over content and delivery of information. Higher ed institutions are delivering what they need-electronically.
By Caryn Meyers Fliegler of UniversityBusiness.com
December 2006

In 2001, administrators at Plymouth State University began pondering the notion of giving alumni access to their own web portal, just as undergraduates at the New Hampshire institution had since 2000. The idea was for the portal to provide alumni with a simple way to connect with the university and with each other.

Then, in 2003, a little thing called Facebook arrived on the college scene.

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A group of Delaware State University graduates is starting an association targeted at helping younger alumni stay connected to the school and contribute to its future.The Young Alumni Alliance plans to focus its programs on recruiting and retention by providing networking, social and fundraising opportunities to alumni who earned their diplomas within the past 10 years. It will work cooperatively with the existing Alumni Association, but will be its own distinct organization.

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If one were to classify college fundraising, it’d likely fall under the heading of an art, not a science.As colleges and universities find fundraising an increasingly vital source of their operating budget, it’s not surprising that they’re trying new methods to get some green. But Lindenwood University in St. Charles has devised one of the more curious schemes yet: It’ll pay for alumni to have their wills prepared, provided they bequeath at least $1,000 to the college in return.

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Calvin Tyler cut half-million dollar checks to his alma mater, Morgan State University, in 2001 and 2003. This year, the retired UPS executive upped his gift to the historically black school to $1 million.Faced with shrinking budgets, an increasing number of publicly funded historically black colleges and universities are turning to older, successful alumni like Tyler.

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A note to people who read the “Class Notes” section of their college alumni magazines: You never know where those tidbits are coming from. Two male New York graduates of American University filed a lawsuit claiming theiralumni magazine falsely stated they were just-married life partners.The Post describes the plaintiffs as “Ross Weil, 29, and Brett Royce, 28, college buddies and former New York housemates” who are now looking for $1.5 million in damages from American University’s American Magazine for “gross negligence.”The Class Notes stated that Weil and Royce had married last year and were “leaders of a nonexistent group called the Gay Rights Brigade.”

Weil and Royce’s lawyer said told the Post his clients didn’t submit the information, “No one contacted my clients to check the information…It has nothing to do with homophobia.” No – not there’s anything wrong with that! Anyway, American Magazine says it does checkthe information, but that’s a lot of legwork for those class notes. For instance, are they going to make sure that all ten graduates ofthe same class were at the same wedding?