How to engage younger alumni

While there could be entire books written on this subject (and we're certainly not experts) we're starting to have success with our younger alumni in a few key areas:

Events: A lot of our young alumni live relatively close to our campus, so we've been able to pull in more engagement with social events (Wine Tasting! Beer Tasting!) as well as professional and job mentoring events.  We use a lot of social media to advertise our social events and post the photos afterwards.

Crowdfunding: We're brand new to this and still learning, but we're finding that some alumni like giving to specific projects with a solid goal more than just giving to a "general fund" of some sort.  We've had a couple athletics projects get funded almost entirely from crowdfunding alone.  We set up the page, encourage the alumni and students to use social media to spread the word and.... it seems to be working.

Teaching Students About Philanthropy: When resources allow we actively work with our Senior Class for most of the year to keep them informed and get them excited about becoming alumni and supporters.  We have a new commitment to this and we're hoping to see tangible results in a few years.  Most of this is "scholarship focused" because students, especially seniors, understand that school is not free and scholarships are important.


Good luck!