Clubs and Socs Alumni

This is a page to help combine a few ideas about keeping Alumni involved in clubs and socs activity.

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.

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?

A LinkedIn/OpenBC style contacts website specific to DCU, to categorise alumni & their DCU contacts

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.

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 eachother, 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

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?
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)