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.
 - 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?

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.
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

 - I think this is crucial. To some degree, I think it's up for the alumni to come together independently of the college first...which isn't really happening at the moment. If there's critical mass then the college should be well disposed to supporting it.

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)