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10 Engaging Ideas for Your Next Alumni Event
Beyond the homecomings and reunions, your alumni event calendar needs a whole host of events to round out the year and keep them engaged. These alumni events can either be one-off ideas or recurring occurrences that become a key part of your institution or organization’s brand.
Today, we’re helping you conceptualize those events with some alumni event ideas that you can host as their own thing, or alongside other events. So before we bore you like a nervous host, let’s get straight to the ideas!
✒️ Author’s note: The examples we list throughout this blog are purely appreciative and not a result of any promotion or partnership. If you know some good advancement work that you think deserves more attention, please let us know at marketing@almabase.com!
10 engaging ideas to inspire your upcoming alumni event
1. Family weekends
Let’s start with one of the more time-tested ideas that has evolved significantly: family weekends. Depending on your institution’s event calendar, these can be small one-time picnics, fairs, showcases, etc. or recurring major events that multiple generations of alumni come to appreciate over the years.
Family weekends are largely in-person although virtual or hybrid elements can certainly be introduced especially if you want to have your global alumni feel part of your event.
💡Looking for inspiration for your next family weekend? Check out these upcoming family weekend schedules!
- Syracuse University (link)
- University of Arkansas (link)
- Cornell University (link)
- Washington University in St. Louis (link)
- University of Colorado Boulder (link)
2. Career and skill-focused workshops
A popular notion that’s taken root over the past couple of decades is the fact that learning in your alma mater doesn’t stop after graduation. With job boards, mentorship programs, and placement opportunities, institutions have become springboards for career growth.
Career and skill-focused workshops can take this direction to the next level by providing valuable networking and upskilling opportunities (especially for recent graduates) that many people across industries often have to pay money to access.
3. A themed day of service
Philanthropy is not just about financial donations. Service-based events attract alumni who want to make a tangible difference and live out the institution's mission. Think of a day of service centered around a theme that reflects your institution’s values or a current campaign. Examples include an environmental cleanup at a local park, a literacy drive for local schools, or a build-a-thon for a community housing project.
4. Health and wellness-focused events
With both physical and mental health awareness becoming more widespread, institutions can lean into this by providing health and wellness focused events. These can be something educational (webinars, awareness sessions, etc.) or activity-focused (marathons, healthcare visits, care center volunteering, etc.).
Healthcare or health department alumni associations in particular are well suited for these events but they can extend their reach and invite more participation by collaborating with other departments or associations.
💡 Over time, these events can become recurring series and form support groups
5. An Alumni Pitch Competition
For institutions that want to take their alumni’s career advancement a step further, an alumni venture acceleration event is a great idea to show how much your institution cares about inspiring innovators and creating jobs.
Take for example the Edward L. Kaplan, ‘71, New Venture Challenge (NVC) by the Polsky Center under The University of Chicago (that’s a mouthful 😝). The NVC invests more than $1 million in startups each year through the generosity of donors and investors. As a result, it claims to have graduated more than 600+ startups and created thousands of jobs in the process.
💡You can start small and help small or local alumni initiatives or businesses get their footing. An accelerator program doesn’t necessarily need to have a “shark tank” feel to it.
6. Outdoor movie screenings
A casual, family-friendly, and low barrier of entry event you can consider is to host a movie screening on a suitable field, park, or similar campus area. It's an easy way for alumni to reconnect with the campus in a relaxed setting and is highly suitable for families and recent graduates. The communal experience of watching a film under the stars also makes for great material to promote on your social media channels.
💡 Movie screenings can also be an additional event on top of other events, say, a family weekend picnic or scavenger hunt.
7. Behind-the-scenes tours
Offer alumni exclusive access to a place not open to the general public. This could be a tour of a cutting-edge university research lab, the athletic team's new training facility, the university's special collections archive, or a local landmark led by a revered alumnus.
8. Cultural alumni outings
Looking outside the institution, you can plan small-scale outgoings for alumni to visit showcases, performances, museums, etc. You can book meals and other activities around the outings themselves so that your participants have time to bond and share their experiences.
💡 Need inspiration on what kinds of outings you can consider? Here are some examples you can look at:
- Wagner College - Moulin Rouge Alumni Outgoing
- Brown University - Private Tour of Stanford’s Cantor Museum
- Columbia College, NY - Asian Columbia Alumni Association’s Annual Lunar New Year Banquet
- USF Chicago Alumni Chapter - Millennium Park Summer Music Series
- Joint Ivy League (and select other university) Alumni - SF Opera’s Performance of Mozart’s Idomeneo
Based on your institution’s cultural heritage or alumni talents, you may be able to create a variety of incredibly personalized events for both general and specific alumni groups.
9. Alumni dinner events
Dinner events can be surprisingly flexible. From small, recurring dinners for local alumni to reunion dinners as part of award ceremonies, you can make them as grand or as budget-friendly as you need them to be. These dinner events are also a great opportunity to build partnerships with local businesses and services. Even better if you can partner with an alumni-affiliated business!
10. Town halls and Q&A sessions
Not all events need to be large parties or massive volunteering opportunities. Sometimes, a simple unfiltered town hall-style meeting between alumni and institution leaders or prominent alumni can help build trust and rapport within your community.
The best part is that these events can just as easily be in-person, virtual, or hybrid, making them one of the more flexible ideas on this list. It can also be a great follow-up to some of the other ideas we’ve presented throughout this list.
💡 These sessions can be repurposed into podcasts and key snippets can be used for other marketing material.
Powering your events with the right tools
Pretty much any major alumni event today is powered by tools that handle minute details such as ticketing, giving, event pages, and more. Almabase offers a zero-code yet advanced set-up environment that streamlines how you plan your events from setting up pages and forms to integrated communications and enhancing guest experiences.
Yet Almabase is just one of many options available for advancement teams today. Depending on your needs and resources available, you may prefer a specialized tool just for events, or an integrated tool for which event management is just one of many modules.
Conclusion
Events remain one of the core pillars of alumni and donor engagement and the ideas and tools behind them have only continued to evolve. It’s certainly heartwarming to see that people and their experiences remain the ultimate goal of events and advancement teams as a whole.
If you’re looking for a partner to level up your upcoming events, request a personalized demo with us and we’d love to help!
Beyond the homecomings and reunions, your alumni event calendar needs a whole host of events to round out the year and keep them engaged. These alumni events can either be one-off ideas or recurring occurrences that become a key part of your institution or organization’s brand.
Today, we’re helping you conceptualize those events with some alumni event ideas that you can host as their own thing, or alongside other events. So before we bore you like a nervous host, let’s get straight to the ideas!
✒️ Author’s note: The examples we list throughout this blog are purely appreciative and not a result of any promotion or partnership. If you know some good advancement work that you think deserves more attention, please let us know at marketing@almabase.com!
10 engaging ideas to inspire your upcoming alumni event
1. Family weekends
Let’s start with one of the more time-tested ideas that has evolved significantly: family weekends. Depending on your institution’s event calendar, these can be small one-time picnics, fairs, showcases, etc. or recurring major events that multiple generations of alumni come to appreciate over the years.
Family weekends are largely in-person although virtual or hybrid elements can certainly be introduced especially if you want to have your global alumni feel part of your event.
💡Looking for inspiration for your next family weekend? Check out these upcoming family weekend schedules!
- Syracuse University (link)
- University of Arkansas (link)
- Cornell University (link)
- Washington University in St. Louis (link)
- University of Colorado Boulder (link)
2. Career and skill-focused workshops
A popular notion that’s taken root over the past couple of decades is the fact that learning in your alma mater doesn’t stop after graduation. With job boards, mentorship programs, and placement opportunities, institutions have become springboards for career growth.
Career and skill-focused workshops can take this direction to the next level by providing valuable networking and upskilling opportunities (especially for recent graduates) that many people across industries often have to pay money to access.
3. A themed day of service
Philanthropy is not just about financial donations. Service-based events attract alumni who want to make a tangible difference and live out the institution's mission. Think of a day of service centered around a theme that reflects your institution’s values or a current campaign. Examples include an environmental cleanup at a local park, a literacy drive for local schools, or a build-a-thon for a community housing project.
4. Health and wellness-focused events
With both physical and mental health awareness becoming more widespread, institutions can lean into this by providing health and wellness focused events. These can be something educational (webinars, awareness sessions, etc.) or activity-focused (marathons, healthcare visits, care center volunteering, etc.).
Healthcare or health department alumni associations in particular are well suited for these events but they can extend their reach and invite more participation by collaborating with other departments or associations.
💡 Over time, these events can become recurring series and form support groups
5. An Alumni Pitch Competition
For institutions that want to take their alumni’s career advancement a step further, an alumni venture acceleration event is a great idea to show how much your institution cares about inspiring innovators and creating jobs.
Take for example the Edward L. Kaplan, ‘71, New Venture Challenge (NVC) by the Polsky Center under The University of Chicago (that’s a mouthful 😝). The NVC invests more than $1 million in startups each year through the generosity of donors and investors. As a result, it claims to have graduated more than 600+ startups and created thousands of jobs in the process.
💡You can start small and help small or local alumni initiatives or businesses get their footing. An accelerator program doesn’t necessarily need to have a “shark tank” feel to it.
6. Outdoor movie screenings
A casual, family-friendly, and low barrier of entry event you can consider is to host a movie screening on a suitable field, park, or similar campus area. It's an easy way for alumni to reconnect with the campus in a relaxed setting and is highly suitable for families and recent graduates. The communal experience of watching a film under the stars also makes for great material to promote on your social media channels.
💡 Movie screenings can also be an additional event on top of other events, say, a family weekend picnic or scavenger hunt.
7. Behind-the-scenes tours
Offer alumni exclusive access to a place not open to the general public. This could be a tour of a cutting-edge university research lab, the athletic team's new training facility, the university's special collections archive, or a local landmark led by a revered alumnus.
8. Cultural alumni outings
Looking outside the institution, you can plan small-scale outgoings for alumni to visit showcases, performances, museums, etc. You can book meals and other activities around the outings themselves so that your participants have time to bond and share their experiences.
💡 Need inspiration on what kinds of outings you can consider? Here are some examples you can look at:
- Wagner College - Moulin Rouge Alumni Outgoing
- Brown University - Private Tour of Stanford’s Cantor Museum
- Columbia College, NY - Asian Columbia Alumni Association’s Annual Lunar New Year Banquet
- USF Chicago Alumni Chapter - Millennium Park Summer Music Series
- Joint Ivy League (and select other university) Alumni - SF Opera’s Performance of Mozart’s Idomeneo
Based on your institution’s cultural heritage or alumni talents, you may be able to create a variety of incredibly personalized events for both general and specific alumni groups.
9. Alumni dinner events
Dinner events can be surprisingly flexible. From small, recurring dinners for local alumni to reunion dinners as part of award ceremonies, you can make them as grand or as budget-friendly as you need them to be. These dinner events are also a great opportunity to build partnerships with local businesses and services. Even better if you can partner with an alumni-affiliated business!
10. Town halls and Q&A sessions
Not all events need to be large parties or massive volunteering opportunities. Sometimes, a simple unfiltered town hall-style meeting between alumni and institution leaders or prominent alumni can help build trust and rapport within your community.
The best part is that these events can just as easily be in-person, virtual, or hybrid, making them one of the more flexible ideas on this list. It can also be a great follow-up to some of the other ideas we’ve presented throughout this list.
💡 These sessions can be repurposed into podcasts and key snippets can be used for other marketing material.
Powering your events with the right tools
Pretty much any major alumni event today is powered by tools that handle minute details such as ticketing, giving, event pages, and more. Almabase offers a zero-code yet advanced set-up environment that streamlines how you plan your events from setting up pages and forms to integrated communications and enhancing guest experiences.
Yet Almabase is just one of many options available for advancement teams today. Depending on your needs and resources available, you may prefer a specialized tool just for events, or an integrated tool for which event management is just one of many modules.
Conclusion
Events remain one of the core pillars of alumni and donor engagement and the ideas and tools behind them have only continued to evolve. It’s certainly heartwarming to see that people and their experiences remain the ultimate goal of events and advancement teams as a whole.
If you’re looking for a partner to level up your upcoming events, request a personalized demo with us and we’d love to help!
Blackbaud, the leading provider of software for powering social impact, and Almabase, the digital-first alumni engagement solution, have announced the expansion of their partnership to the education sectors of Canada and the United Kingdom. The partnership will provide institutions with a modern, digital-first solution to improve constituent data, drive self-serve engagement, and boost event participation.
A Unified Vision
The partnership aligns with Blackbaud’s commitment to customer-centric innovation across digital engagement, Advancement CRM, and financials.
“Partners bring integrated capabilities that extend capabilities and outcomes for Blackbaud customers. We are thrilled that Almabase’s offering, integrated with Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® and leveraging Blackbaud’s best-in-class payment solution, Blackbaud Merchant Services™, is now available to even more of our customers around the world.”
- Liz Price, Sr. Director of Global Partners at Blackbaud
