“The events in moment of today is a memory for tomorrow.”
Every event tells a story and such stories are a basis of life-long memories for a lot of people. A good event can make a lot of people happy and it remains in their mind for a lot of time ahead!
The above totally shows how much of an impact a well conducted event can have. The alumni association can do relevant events for the alumni network in order to increase the engagement in the network.
A huge majority of institutes believe that organizing events from time to time helps them in increasing engagement, raising more funds, building a better connect with the alumni and much more.
Thus, every alumni association must work towards conducting relevant and meaningful events for the alumni network from time to time in order to reap benefits of such events.
Let's deep dive into the importance and need for conducting events by alumni associations!
Events bring the alumni closer and helps them re-connect. Events involving a particular batch or the entire alumni community helps in keeping the entire alumni network closely knit. It helps them stay up to date with whatever is going around with the college and fellow alumni. Reunions are famous for this very reason. It gives the entire batch a chance to re-connect and re-kindle their memories. A fun-filled event is what the alumni network loves! Thus, the very emotional connect that the events help in establishing speaks a lot for why every institute should conduct events for their alumni. These could be reunions or events on special occasions like jubilees or some festivals. The association should leverage these events for purposes like fundraisers or collecting alumni database and details.
Events lead to engagement and that is a foremost goal of over 60% alumni associations. Over 60% of the alumni associations list out increasing engagements as their foremost goal for the coming years. A good engagement is very important for an alumni association as it keeps the network active and buzzing all the time. Events are a great way of allowing a good interaction and engagement in the alumni community. The events help the alumni in getting in touch with fellow alumni and they stay connected to the alumni network and to the institute too. Once the event concludes, a lot of alumni and the institute too can be seen posting the pictures from the event online across various social media platforms. This also promotes a lot of engagement as a lot of people react on these photos and post comments.
Events offer a lot of networking opportunities for alumni. If a lot of like minded people interact, it opens up opportunities. A lot of startups are born every day in the world and hence, a lot of hiring happens. If the alumni network meets up once in a while, a lot of job seekers will get a chance to interact with potential recruiters and referrers as well. Events relevant for jobseekers include job fairs, referral drives and more. These events attract largest engagement and boosts the image of the network a lot. Such events give career opportunities to a lot of young alumni and the satisfaction from the alumni network increases for them. The more the satisfaction the more the people feel like giving back to the network.
Events can be used by the association for monetary benefits too. Events gain a lot of audience both online and offline. If the institute has to run some fundraisers, they can be run around the event and publicized during the event too in order to get on spot donations. The association can sell institute merchandise to the alumni during events. This is another good way of generating some revenue for the association or the institute. Some paid events could also be conducted by the organization once a good base has been laid out with past events. Thus, events not only benefit the alumni network but also the association and the institute too.
All the top universities from world over host a variety of events and must be used as an inspiration. Universities across the world host alumni events as frequently as weekly. These events could be virtual or offline. Not every event has to be a huge one, it could be a series of small virtual webinars too which could keep the alumni network engaged and active. The only factor to consider here is that, the event should be relevant and in accordance with the needs of the alumni network. Universities like Harvard, London School of Economics, MIT all conduct a plethora of throughout the year and there are events around reunions, festivals and everything that one could imagine! These universities have one of the strongest alumni networks in the world and must be used as an inspiration for sure.
The above are the top 5 reasons why every alumni association must work towards conducting meaningful events round the year for the alumni network.
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