#LoveAlumni, Lost Alumni

What motivates alumni to reconnect?

Dear Friends, 

As #LoveAlumni month draws to a close, my mind focuses on the alumni not yet feeling the love. 

These are our lost alumni.

(and this isn't the first time I wrote about alumni lost and found- check out an archive Alumni Friday piece here)

We ourselves may be lost. We may have fallen out of touch with our alma mater. In my role as President of the Alumni Association at the University of St Michael's College in the University of Toronto we identified that we have limited e-mail addresses from our alumni community.

So we initiated Lost Alumni Campaign. We called it #FindMeSMC

The traction on social, especially LinkedIn has been very good. As the campaign continues, we hope to see a conversion of 1000 alumni providing their updated details.

What makes for a successful campaign?

Leadership: Our Alumni Board is sharing the campaign in their communities, the University leadership is sharing too. 

Make it easy: Is it a two minute click and add process? In this case (our first time!) too many clicks, but we can easily fix that! 

Acknowledge the obvious: Many alumni don't see themselves as lost. They connect with their St Mike's friends regularly, maybe even daily! They connect with them on LinkedIn. Disintermediation is real. Check out Kieran Hanranhan's article here explaining it well.

Your challenge this week:  

This campaign shows what we already know: what value does our alma mater offer that would make alumni want to reconnect with us?

 For alumni professionals: Review your alumni offerings - write a bullet point list of these offers/events/initiatives in an e-mail to yourself. Snooze the e-mail to send to yourself on a Sunday afternoon. Were you tempted to open it? Did it make YOU want to reconnect?

For alumni and students: Stay connected - this seems counterintuitive to the arguments presented here, but if you are not in, you can't win (with potentially awesome university events!). Do ask yourself: Why I am not motivated to do so? This might reveal a lot about yourself and what's on offer from your alma mater to date. 

As a quote from my favourite band Blue Rodeo: Let's be Lost Together!

With alumni lost and found,

Maria

Photo: Here's the original poster from our Lost Alumni Campaign - (and if you graduated from St Mike's do reconnect- we have exciting events - including an 8T0s/9T0s St Mike's Pub throwback event to meet old friends! Yes nostalgia can be a motivator too!)