It’s a perennial question for advancement teams: what are the latest activities (that actually work) to engage this generation of young alumni? In the CASE Communities online discussion boards, alumni relations professionals shared these ideas. 

The most recent classes of graduates, shaped by pandemic interruptions to their campus experiences, present a unique set of challenges when it comes to reconnecting with their alma maters. Find out how alumni relations teams are rising to the challenge, with innovative programs and strategies for engaging their newest young alumni.

Institutions’ Circle of Excellence Award-winning projects used nostalgia to engage alumni in fun, new ways. Explore how advancement teams broadly balance looking back and looking forward, why nostalgia works well to engage alumni, and what takeaways advancement teams can apply to their own work.

Sharing tips for tackling TikTok and ideas for magazine special editions.

To engage Buckeyes of the past and possibly the future, Ohio State University created Brutus’ Summer Reading Challenge, which first launched in the summer of 2020. Alumni registered their children (or grandchildren, nieces, or nephews), after which they received a “passport” with stickers and bookmarks to record their minutes read and earn prizes.

The seeds of alumni support are sown even prior to enrolling in college.  Formative pre-college experiences play an important role in shaping pro-social habits, mindsets, and dispositions that predict later-life support for one’s alma mater.

What members are thinking and sharing: gifts for graduates, beloved campus locations, and more.

In 2020 the Foundation for the Los Angeles Community Colleges teamed up with the Los Angeles Valley College Family Resource Center and Imperfect Foods to deliver close to 5,000 boxes of food to students in need through the Food for Families program. 

Campus traditions bring communities together. They build alumni identity and connections. But the pandemic has disrupted the ways campus communities gather, cancelling or changing traditions that were rooted in years of history. Where do traditions stand, in times of change? Here, advancement professionals and higher education researchers share why traditions endure, how they shift, and what role advancement today plays in celebrating and shaping them

What is race equity as it applies to education institutions? How are advancement teams approaching this work, which experts say involves a wholesale transformation of organizational cultures? How are institutions and individuals moving forward in the name of equity?