How to start an alumni community?

Are you interested in starting an alumni community? Well, starting or creating an alumni community is not difficult but managing such community where members are equally knowledgeable and experienced is really challenging. Alumni management is as important as starting an alumni community for your organization. But the question is why and how to start an alumni association.

For starting a successful alumni association, it is important for organizations to have a clear vision and purpose as to why they want to have one. Generally, organizations want to start an alumni community for the purpose of nurturing the spirit of loyalty among the members, their professional development and to strengthen ties with the alumni for future business objectives. An alumni association supports organization to achieve intangible aspects of business and strengthen relationship among alumni, the community and the organization.

There are some basics steps which should be followed while starting an alumni community:

• Form a group of like-minded alums- for that you have to informally meet with alums to obtain names and directly ask for their interest in participating in the association.
• Communicating with the interested alumni, inviting them to join the community and requesting them to spread the word among their contacts.
• Getting organized by preparing By-Laws for the steady progression of the community.
• Arranging finances for a newly built community- it is sometimes difficult to arrange finances but there are several ways through which it can be done, like collection of dues/donations, annual membership fees, capital fund raising campaigns, and others.
• Engaging members through various activities like, blogs, forums, newsletters, events, meetings etc.