How do you engage alumni all around the world and keep volunteers connected despite the distance ? How can they support the University's global strategy? In this session you can share best practices from your institutions and learn how the Notre Dame Alumni Association has expanded their volunteer base to 60+ countries. We will talk about international volunteer recruitment and stewardship and how it supports strategic global initiatives.

For ten years at Purdue University, the University Residences program has brought successful alumni back to campus where they live among students for one week. Our program’s alumni, referred to as executives, provide students with opportunities to interact with fellow Boilermakers around their areas of expertise and interests in formal and informal settings – from lecture halls to residence halls and dining courts to basketball courts. The hallmarks of our program are small group and one-on-one interactions. Since the fall of 2014, over fifty executives have returned home to our residence halls and gifted our community their time and talents. Our Executive in Residences (EiR) program includes a campus learning community, student ambassador program, a full-time live-in Executive in Residence, and both fall and spring break trips, where student travel to visit executives in their homes and workplaces, connecting our university’s past to the present.

Alumni crave meaningful engagement with their alma mater, and colleges are trying to reimagine how they engage alumni in new ways and continue to add value to alumni lives well beyond graduation. Join us for this panel discussion featuring two different institutions of different sizes for a conversation about strategies for successfully engaging alumni in initiatives across the lifespan. Specifically, we will discuss: affinity-based programming and research, career-focused alumni programming, virtual programming, and the use of data to support and assess this work.

Are you looking to build relationships between seemingly disconnected teams? Join the Northwestern Alumni Association to learn how to bridge the gap between gift officers and engagement professionals through event programming that draws both donors and alumni who have not yet given. We will share information on the development and creation of events that span a variety of topics and formats and how our shared priorities have led to success for both engagement goals and giving targets. Additionally, attendees will learn how to cultivate meaningful and long-lasting relationships with gift officers.

Discover how to transform unassigned prospects into engaged donors through strategic relationship management. This session will showcase how to keep potential donors "warm" by ensuring ongoing communication, even without immediate assignment to a relationship manager. Additionally, we'll explore the rapid growth of Illinois Tech’s regional events program, driven by targeted outreach using geographic mapping tools, which has significantly increased alumni participation nationwide.
We'll also touch on how integrating key engagement forms into their platform has streamlined volunteer management and improved data capture, enabling more effective alumni engagement.

The “great wealth transfer” is a monumental phenomenon that is already underway and will continue to impact our work. Over the next two decades, Boomers are expected to transfer approximately $68 trillion in assets to younger generations. This transfer presents a unique opportunity for transformative philanthropy and strategic adaptation within alumni associations. This session will share actionable insights on how alumni associations can leverage this as an opportunity to forge stronger connections with aging constituents while maximizing philanthropic impact.

Imagine your alumni advocating for your school inside your largest community employers, connecting you to resources and opening partnership opportunities. This presentation features insights from an Alumni Council Leader, as well as the infrastructure and relationship building ideas that helped to make this possible.

In this session, you'll hear Board members, alumni volunteers, and professional staff share how they've participated in focused, solutions-based workgroups to take a deep dive into specific opportunities or challenges in alumni engagement. From how alumni can support business strategy development to deepening connections with former Board members — you'll learn how to harness the collective energy and experience of volunteers to advance strategic priorities and initiatives. You'll also gain a better understanding of how alumni/volunteers feel about the sort of "roll-up-your-sleeves" work.

During the University of Chicago's Alumni Weekend in May 2024 there were at least 13 unique incidents of student, community, and alumni protest. Actions ranged from chalking, handing out pamphlets, disrupting events, occupying buildings, and damaging equipment.

Our campus, as so many others, had been home to an encampment on the main quads, just weeks before 2,500 attendees arrived for Alumni Weekend and Reunion events. The University of Chicago's commitment to free expression required the UChicago Alumni office to create a contingency plan that accounted for anticipated disruption, while abiding by the Chicago Principles.

Join us to review the Chicago Principles of Free Expression and the components of the Alumni Weekend contingency plan, constructed to include stakeholders across the University and beyond. Materials reviewed will include scripts to aid staff during events which are being disrupted, large scale protest plans, training materials for all staff volunteers, and the code of conduct for alumni participants. Session will review case studies using actual protests from the weekend and lessons learned.

This presentation will delve into the critical roles of the Wisconsin Alumni Student Board (WASB) and the Wisconsin Recent Grad Council (RGC) in influencing signature programs and initiatives at the Wisconsin Alumni Association (WAA). Both groups play a pivotal role in ensuring that current students and recent graduates are actively engaged in programs designed to strengthen their connections with the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A core theme of the presentation highlights how diverse perspectives of both groups enhance the effectiveness of engagement strategies.