Involving Alumni
Use these tips to connect with your alumni/alumnae:
1. Time – allow alumni to determine the amount of time they can offer and match them with a task or position that can best use their time and skills. Create an advisor responsibility sheet, indicating the amount of time involved, what skill sets are useful to advising particular officers or committees, etc. To gauge interest, create an involvement interest form that has a line for “number of hours available per month”. This will assist you in identifying the level of involvement a potential advisor wants to have.
2. Foster a commitment – begin fostering a fraternity or sorority experience that encourages your members to want to stay involved. Offer members opportunities to get involved in leadership positions early in their membership. If you begin now to create an experience that is positive and inclusive of your members, you are bound to begin the development of a lifelong fraternity or sorority experience and build loyal alumni/alumnae.
3. Ask them – and be clear about your needs and expectations (see number one). Ask them questions such as “would you like to get involved on a graduate/alumni level?” and “what do you see yourself doing for the alumni board/graduate chapter?”.
4. Identify talents early on – for alumni/alumnae who work in the business community, they could fill the niche of a public relations or financial advisor. Engineers could work with the chapter on housing improvements…etc. Recruit alumni and grad members with certain talents to have a well-rounded advisory resource team.
Thank you to the University of Illinois Office of Greek Affairs for ideas on connecting with alumni and alumnae.