Clubs and Socs Alumni
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This is a page to help combine a few ideas about keeping Alumni involved in clubs and socs activity.
Question
- Are we interested in only a clubs and socs initiative, or a general alumni initiative? (if that were possible)
- Are we okay with working directly with the college on this, or do we want to keep it student-centred and separate from the Alumni office?
-The new Alumni Officer (barbara.wiseman@dcu.ie) would like to work on a joint initiative. Would this strengthen our work or undermine it?
Brainstorming
Just getting started with this, throw down any ideas you have:
- An Alumni Clubs & Socs Evening, encouraging them to come back, re-join and talk to DCU societies
- This could be done by the SPC in conjunction with the Alumni Office - Societies could treat it, like C&S Day, as a once-off, high-traffic occassion when they sell membership benefits to Alumni. It gets them more cash and a dedicated list of alums to call on. - Crucially, this all encourages societies to think about alumni and to form their own independent list of oldies who have shown genuine interest, rather than spamming the all-graduates list etc. - Should this be done outside of DCU, maybe in town, maybe supported by DCU?
- Working with the DCU Alumni Relations Officer on projects
Possible suggestions for her to work on are: - An FAQ on what DCU Alumni are offered by the college (purely because it will make her think about how little is actually offered and might spur her on to change that) - Discounted postgraduate courses / further education for Alumni, to encourage more study at DCU?
- An official list of DCU societies/clubs with active Alumni membership (Redbrick a good example)
- "Alumni talks" series, possible monthly talk from an Alumni on a topic, could be archived
- Alumni have a lot of experience, useful for training etc.
- Could there be an alumni club in the centre of Dublin somewhere? (far-fetched I know)
Good Idea
Why is some sort of alumni involvement in a club or society a *good idea*?
- Alumni are coming back to DCU to help out with Clubs & Socs independently, and for free
- It's a good way for alumni to keep in touch with each other, DCU doesn't really facilitate that
- Alumni have a lot of experience & advice to give & could really enhance growth of club/soc
- An Alumni group could leverage useful extras from the Alumni office, in addition to "giving back" in itself
- C&S involvement by Alumni is the most likely starting point in building a strong Alumni-College relationship in general and may prompt bodies outside of the SPC and SCC to think about how they can engage the graduate community, rather than just how they can milk it for cash
Bad Idea
Why is some sort of alumni involvement in a club or society a *bad idea*?
- Most of the power needs to be with the ordinary members, it'd be bad if the oldies were throwing their weight around years after they've left
- Who's going to pay for all this lark? Current DCU students?
- Can't be current students. The DCU Alumni Office has a certain budget for activites related to an Alumni Association. Some of it would have to be self-funding I guess.
- Won't DCU just try to use this to fleece people for donations? (probably - but alumni would be donating "time" and "experience" rather than money! DCU may need this concept explained to them repeatedly, possibly with the aid of hand puppets, but hopefully should get it in the end.)
- Actually, the new Alumni Officer, Barbara, seems very clear about this, and she specifically mentioned she was very keen to get alumni back to help with the mentoring and careers programme, or training. But hand puppets might still be a good move