{"id":493,"date":"2019-10-10T18:42:35","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T07:42:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/educateplus-nsw-act\/?post_type=article&#038;p=493"},"modified":"2019-10-10T19:03:39","modified_gmt":"2019-10-10T08:03:39","slug":"alumni-sig","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/educateplus-nsw-act\/article\/alumni-sig\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni SIG"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Alumni Special Interest Group (SIG) was held on Thursday 13 June, and was hosted by Liz Pellinkhof, Alumni Manager Hills Grammar, and Deanne O\u2019Shea, Director Marketing, Communications &amp; Engagement Ravenswood.<\/p>\n<p>The key takeaways from the event were:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Topic One \u2013 Engaging Alumni<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Engaging younger alumni is seen as the greatest challenge for most schools<\/li>\n<li>Several have found younger alumni to be quite interested and passionate about various causes and are happy to give back to the community in support of these causes eg. Men\u2019s mental health (Riverview)<\/li>\n<li>Widespread tradition of most schools to hold 5-year reunions<\/li>\n<li>Higher success of engagement with under 25-year-olds through\u201d<\/li>\n<li>Instagram platform with a dedicated page for alumni\u2014archival and opportunistic posts to keep them engaged<\/li>\n<li>Closed alumni page on Facebook<\/li>\n<li>LinkedIn<\/li>\n<li>Sporting teams eg. Netball Association<\/li>\n<li>Networking events<\/li>\n<li>Career events<\/li>\n<li>Fundraising balls<\/li>\n<li>School rugby matches<\/li>\n<li>After work networking drinks<\/li>\n<li>Prefects return to speak with new prefects<\/li>\n<li>\u2018Value of being an old girl\/boy\u2019 talk to Year 12<\/li>\n<li>\u2018Share your wisdom\u2019 talk to Year 12 one year out<\/li>\n<li>Come back to school to collect Yearbook, catch up with staff and school friends \u2013 opportunity for school to collect contact details<\/li>\n<li>Good to regularly review what strategies you are employing to entice young alumni to engage on social media<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Topic Two \u2013 Mentoring Programs<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Examples of Mentoring formats<\/li>\n<li>Alumni to current students<\/li>\n<li>Alumni in the classroom<\/li>\n<li>Alumni return to school to share experiences one year out<\/li>\n<li>Career Expos<\/li>\n<li>Pairing older alumni with established careers with younger alumni just starting their careers \u2013 a \u2018giving back\u2019 arrangement<\/li>\n<li>\u2018Food for Thought\u2019 Lunch event \u2013 for senior students, involving an alumni guest speaker and alumni sitting amongst students at the lunch tables<\/li>\n<li>Empowering alumni through alumni<\/li>\n<li>Personal and professional development forums, providing alumni with broader life skills rather than just professional skills<\/li>\n<li>Engaging alumni and parents to be used as mentors for students as they learn about and choose their careers<\/li>\n<li>Alumni events in the CBD<\/li>\n<li>Resources<\/li>\n<li>Resourcing is a problem \u2013 suggestion of pooling resources eg. AIS running a mentoring program for schools<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Topic Three \u2013 Alumni and Fundraising<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Challenges and questions<\/li>\n<li>Can you tap into your alumni for fundraising?<\/li>\n<li>Can you merge alumni with current parents for the purposes of fundraising?<\/li>\n<li>Notion of naming things in the school and linking them to a legacy (buildings, pavers, seats etc)\u2014does this make it more meaningful?<\/li>\n<li>Push back challenge \u2013 \u2018Stop asking us for money\u2019<\/li>\n<li>Youthful cynicism creates a fear of \u2018the ask\u2019<\/li>\n<li>Findings and Practices<\/li>\n<li>A general feeling that alumni want to give to scholarships and causes and current parents want to give to buildings<\/li>\n<li>Alumni ambassadors for each year group for bursary programs<\/li>\n<li>Create a culture of giving while students are at school and extend it after students leave school<\/li>\n<li>Create the notion while students are at school that being part of the alumni Association, will have value and benefits<\/li>\n<li>Female alumni are often not asked to donate<\/li>\n<li>Promote the \u2018joy of giving\u2019, \u2018I give because it makes me feel good\u2019<\/li>\n<li>Consider bequests for the school<\/li>\n<li>Connect through a passion eg. giving an art collection<\/li>\n<li>A difference in genders of the expectations to give<\/li>\n<li>Continue to try<\/li>\n<li>Fundraising in girls\u2019 schools is increasing, resulting in a culture change<\/li>\n<li>Apps that round-up money with the round-ups going to fundraising<\/li>\n<li>Search successful campaigns where the Alumni become heroes as well as the current school communities eg. the award winning campaigns in a school in Queensland and Victoria where Alumni gave dollar-for-dollar raised<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Topic Four \u2013 Surveying Alumni<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Key Ingredients<\/li>\n<li>Keep samples even with girls and boys<\/li>\n<li>Use initial survey as a base for future surveys<\/li>\n<li>Survey topics \u2013 reunions, communications, mentoring, career opportunities, events. Keep to the topic\/s you are researching<\/li>\n<li>Allow open-ended responses<\/li>\n<li>Keep surveys short, valid and concise<\/li>\n<li>Send surveys only to those on email<\/li>\n<li>Time is often a prohibitive factor \u2013 consider an external consultancy<\/li>\n<li>Provide the audience with the knowledge of how their data will be used<\/li>\n<li>Provide conclusions of surveys to Alumni<\/li>\n<li>Thank alumni for assisting with surveys<\/li>\n<li>Keeping data up to date is an ongoing challenge for all with the additional challenge with girls\u2019 schools and female name changes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Alumni Special Interest Group (SIG) was held on Thursday 13 June, and was hosted by Liz Pellinkhof, Alumni Manager Hills Grammar, and Deanne O\u2019Shea, Director Marketing, Communications &amp; Engagement Ravenswood. The key takeaways from the event were: Topic One \u2013 Engaging Alumni Engaging younger alumni is seen as the greatest challenge for most schools [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":497,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","class_list":["post-493","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/educateplus-nsw-act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/educateplus-nsw-act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/educateplus-nsw-act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/educateplus-nsw-act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/educateplus-nsw-act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebuzz.net.au\/educateplus-nsw-act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}