#LoveAlumni
A month of celebrating alumni and alumni relations!
Dear Friends,
It’s time! February is the perfect time to celebrate our alumni, the important work of alumni relations and the professionals and alumni leaders that make this possible.
If you are a regular newsletter reader, chances are you already recognize the importance and potential for alumni for our institutions, for each other, for our students and for society. #LoveAlumni is the perfect opportunity to think about how to celebrate three key groups:
Alumni Doers- those already engaging and giving their time and talent to support the institutions, fellow alumni and students
Alumni Detectives – that’s all of us!- to be alumni sleuths recognizing and seeking out those alumni opportunities to enhance our own alumni potential
Alumni Enablers – let’s celebrate the alumni professionals and alumni volunteer leaders that make our alumni programming possible. Sometimes this is the group most underappreciated and the one that needs the extra boost – more ways to celebrate this group next week!
Check out the latest blog post offering even more explanation on why we need to celebrate these 3 groups for this month-long #Love Alumni campaign!
#LoveAlumni is a great way to raise public awareness of the power of alumni as a key part of the #alumnidecade!
This week’s Alumni Friday challenge:
Promote an alumni event or initiative to fellow students and alumni – forward it on to them in a DM or on social using the hashtag #LoveAlumni
For alumni/advancement colleagues: consider starting a small group of like-minded professionals to meet regularly (even one a quarter or once a month) to brainstorm ideas and tackle problems – reach out to 2 or 3 other alumni professionals to start this motivating group- get some ideas on why this type of mastermind group can help to orchestrate alumni serendipity by checking out my updated LinkedIn article here. If you start a group take a photo and post is with #LoveAlumni – we would all love to see this!
With alumni love,
Maria
Quote from the book
"The alumni-university relationship doesn’t begin or end with the fundraising ask; it is far more nuanced and complex. Viewing alumni solely as an income stream robs the university – and alumni – of the potential of a deep, enriching relationship."
The Alumni Way, p. 2
Below Photo: #LoveAlumni abounds! As a member of Alumni Relations Expert Community of the European Association for International Education (EAIE), we met as a group to discuss our roadmap to enable international educators to be informed and inspired to engage alumni in their work. Copies of The Alumni Way floated around too! (left to right) Karin Bennmarker (SLU, Sweden), Sule Yalcin (Schulee, Turkey), me, Laura Spencer (Canterbury Christchurch University, UK) in Malaga, Spain. Missing is our amazing chair Sandra Rincón (Hivebrite, the Netherlands).
