Alumni Relations

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How George Mason's CASE Award-Winning Golden Quill Society Engages Young Alumni

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George Mason University has what every school wants: young alumni who want to remain engaged.

But until 2011, GMU young alumni felt there was no easy way for them to give back to their community after graduation. That was the year George Mason created the Golden Quill Society, a young alumni leadership group that went on to win a CASE Circle of Excellence award in 2014.

Since then, the Golden Quill Society has created a pipeline for alumni leadership, volunteering, and giving, and helped the GMU Office of Advancement and Alumni Relations better understand the wants and needs of its young alumni community.

We asked George Mason's Associate Director of Alumni Relations, Adrienne Teague, to recap the presentation on the Golden Quill Society that she made at the CASE District 3 Conference in Nashville.

Alumni Association from Scratch: How Bennington Is Building Its 'Alumni Cooperative'

For years, Bennington College operated without a structured alumni association.

Now they have an ambitious and innovative plan to create a new one with the participation and input of their alumni community. They call the association the Bennington Alumni Cooperative, in an homage to the school's foundational ethos. The Cooperative sets an example for all schools working to adapt the structure of their alumni associations to their own culture.

We asked Bennington's Director of Alumni Programs Marie Leahy and Vice President for Institutional Advancement Paige Bartel to tell us more about their ongoing efforts to build the Cooperative. They presented on the subject at the CASE D1 Conference in February.

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Why Elon University Created a Dedicated Position for Alumni Engagement Officers

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Bridging the gap between advancement and alumni relations can be hard—even when one office is asking something of the other.

To solve this problem, Elon University created a unique hybrid position: the Alumni Engagement Officer. Elon has used its AEOs to increase rates of attendance, volunteering, giving, and retention.

We spoke with Tricia Teter, senior alumni engagement officer, and Jill Hollis, coordinator of alumni engagement and special events, to tell us more about the Alumni Engagement Officer position and the strategy behind it. They recently presented on the topic at the CASE Divison III Conference in Nashville.

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How Gill St. Bernard's School Re-Engaged Alumni After Decades of a Changing Identity

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Keeping alumni invested in their alma mater is hard work.

Gill St. Bernard's School, an independent school in Gladstone, New Jersey, had to work even harder to re-engage alumni after a merger and decades of change.

It fell to the school's development and alumni relations teams to make their older alumni feel welcome again. We talked to Chanelle Walker, director of alumni relations, and James Diverio, director of development, about their efforts to honor their alumni's history without losing sight of the future. They recently presented on their work at the CASE NAIS Conference in New York.

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Marquette University has alumni relations down to a science. Here's how they do it.

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Events? They're on top of them. Mentoring program? Enormous success. Measuring engagement? They have a 16-point model for doing just that.

In short, Marquette has it figured out.

We were fortunate enough to have the chance to catch up with Marquette's Engagement Director, Dan DeWeerdt, after he spoke at the CASE V Conference in Chicago back in December.

We asked him about facilitating mentorship, measuring engagement, and revising your strategy along the way.

"It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are." —Wendell Berry