[24071] in APO-L
Re: [APO-L] Forming an Alumni Association
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jason Risner)
Tue Dec 23 20:20:50 2003
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 20:16:07 -0500
Reply-To: Jason Risner <zoomer69@mail.com>
From: Jason Risner <zoomer69@mail.com>
To: APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
You have about 260 alumni that you can poll about starting an association -
that's where I'd start. Find out what needs they have that an alumni
association can serve for them, and what resources you have to make that
available to them.
More importantly, will the involvment from your alumni that's needed to make
this happen be worthwhile for the benefit they receive? If the association
can't provide a valuable service, it'll never get off the ground.
Being a chapter-based association, it's going to function differently than a
geographic-based association would, because the vast majority of your
chapter's alumni are not local. Therefore, it's going to be less about how
many activities you can meet together to do, and more about keeping in touch
with each other and providing opportunities to provide service to the
chapter, the actives, and to the alumni from afar. If your goal is to have
alumni participating in lots of activities in your area and with your
chapter, you may be better served with a geographic-based association
instead, drawing alumni from your area.
Not knowing all the details about your chapter history, I'm not sure if your
alumni from before the rechartering are going to find value in an
association representing a new and different chapter. However, alumni who
have been involved since the rechartering will be a much easier sell,
because they are more likely to have a need to be involved that your
association can address.
I'm sure none of that has answered your question - your question is more
focused on getting the structure of an alumni association together. The
structure won't be there, though, until you get a good read on what your
association needs to accomplish and, provided it works, who will buy into
it.
Hope this helps!
In L, F, & S for Life,
Jason Risner
Epsilon Lambda alum (& former Alumni VP & Historian)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Gallagher" <famtree@UDel.Edu>
To: <APO-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2003 3:42 PM
Subject: [APO-L] Forming an Alumni Association
> As Alumni VP of the Zeta Sigma Chapter, it just occurred to me that this
is
> my chance to start a Zeta Sigma Alumni Association. Ever since pledging
at
> the beginning of Fall 2001, I have contemplated this idea, especially
being
> Historian (which suited me naturally). A list obtained somewhere along
the
> line lists 269 Brothers, of whom 12 have bad addresses. Since their
chapter
> numbers are low and/or I know them to be early members, those are probably
> deceased. 134 are in Delaware or Maryland, with the rest in NJ, PA, & NY,
> predominantly. We just crested the 603-Brother mark. Many of the
remaining
> 300-some are available from yearbooks (I've done that) in name, but how
> would I find them? One of our restarter alums has maintained contacts
with
> many, but there may still be gaps.
>
> Anyone who has started an Association in a predominantly male but
> balancing-out (it should take several decades at least) chapter, or anyone
> with experience in getting involvement going in a new Association, please
> contact me.
>
> Zeta Sigma restarted in Spring 2001 as a co-ed chapter & recently
initiated
> its 7th female Brother (2 transfers in the previous regime bring us to 9).
>
> In LFS,
>
> Michael Gallagher
> Zeta Sigma Historian & Alumni VP
>
