If you intend to fund raise, you must also “friend raise” - before, during, and after a capital campaign! A comprehensive alumni program is the means to achieve this.

What is not as obvious is that a chapter with no fund raising plans is well served by maintaining a consistent alumni program - it is an important part of furthering and maintaining a strong brotherhood.

The “Five I’s” of Successful Alumni Relations
Identified
The first step to good alumni relations is knowing who your alumni are, including more than simply addresses and phone numbers. Career information, and details about community and fraternity involvement are key. Records management becomes the backbone of your entire alumni program.

Informed
Keeping alumni up to date on the actions of the chapter is important, but pales in comparison to keeping them informed about each other's whereabouts and other current news. As you can see, this relies heavily on your ability to gather and maintain information about your alumni. Informing them simply involves disseminating that information.

Interested
Offering alums information about others, and issues they are concerned with, is the key to getting and keeping them interested. This depends greatly on the amount of loyalty and dedication that was developed during the undergraduate years, but need not be limited by that.

Involved
The opportunity to affect the future of the chapter, or just the opportunity to share in the present activities, are the keys to alumni involvement. All alumni programming should seek to get alumni participating in planning, decision making, and activities. Involvement represents alumni volunteering both time and expertise to the program.

Invested
In terms of involvement, the pinnacle is having alumni actually invest their money in the alumni program. This can be as simple as paying for attendance to a function, or participating in the annual fund, all the way up to donating to the House Corporation and the Educational Foundation for their programs. When you stop to consider what could be offered if there were the resources available, you can see why having a large base of alumni willing to invest is very exciting.

Elements of An Effective Program
Brotherhood Development
The foundation of any alumni program is the chapter's ability to develop the bonds of brotherhood. Without loyalty and dedication, there is little to work with.

Records Management
Centralizing all information about your alumni and actively researching to keep it updated forms the framework from which all other efforts grow. Information is power.

Communications
In order to inform alumni and keep them interested, communication is very important. Consistent newsletters that offer value to the reader, as well as a regular alumni directory, are the major written communication items. Encouraging phone contact amongst alumni is also part of the strategy.

Events
Offering value, such as the opportunity to renew old friendships face-to-face and to rekindle memories of college years, is the aim of alumni events. Two events a year, with a greater focus on the fall event, is what we advise. Alumni from all eras should be sought for each event.

Recognition
The mission of most fraternities centers around the idea of building better men. Alumni who have distinguished themselves in their communities, careers, and service to their fraternities deserve recognition from their brothers. The program also allows undergraduates the opportunity to see the long-term benefits of membership.

Annual Fund
In order to give alumni the chance to contribute and feel involved, and to pay for the programs just discussed, it makes sense to charge alumni dues or solicit voluntary annual contributions.

These elements work together; there is a synergy that results from doing all of them consistently over a period of time that cannot be duplicated with any other effort we have found.

Commitment to a consistent program that contains all of these elements, regardless of your fundraising history or plans for the future, will pay off in many ways.