Captive Audience
CURRENTS Article Ryerson University in Canada has created the Alumni@Work initiative to reconnect alumni with the university at their places of work.

Laws of Attraction
CURRENTS Article In an era of tight budgets and increased accountability, giving alumni what they want—and how they want it—is critical. Developing an effective engagement strategy requires alumni professionals to reconsider how alumni identify themselves, relinquish control of some programs, and meet alumni where they are—on land or online. Most of all, it requires a willingness to listen and to change.

Major League Bragging Rights
CURRENTS Article In competing to throw out the first pitch at Wrigley Field to start off one of two Chicago Cubs "Salute to the Big 10" night baseball games in October 2012, Big 10 alumni chapters in Chicago, including Michigan State University's Chicago Spartans, gained an attractive opportunity to engage alumni and demonstrate the benefits of Big 10 alumni networking to high school guidance counselors.

Office Space: Foreign exchange
CURRENTS Article In this article, Sue Rees, head of alumni relations at City University London, discusses what she learned during her opportunity to observe and work with alumni associations at six U.S. institutions and compares and contrasts the differences between alumni organization efforts in the United States and the U.K., which she concludes is mainly a difference in scale and scope.

CASE Survey Identifies Key Traits for Successful Alumni Relations
Article A CASE survey on alumni relations programmes outside of North America reveals that frequent communications via e-newsletters and alumni magazines as well as more holiday excursions and personal-interest events can increase the number of donors for these institutions.

Exhibitionist Alumni
CURRENTS Article The Wellington School showcase alumni art during the May 2011 alumni weekend.

Serious Fun
CURRENTS Article An intense campus trivia contest that began in 1980 at St. Cloud State University as an effort to give students something to look forward to in the post-holiday period of Minnesota's long winters blossoms into an event that hooks students as well as alumni and community members who come back to compete or volunteer every year.

Get App-y
CURRENTS Article Computer science students at Miami University in Ohio developed an iPad app to help streamline speed networking events the alumni association holds.

Maximizing Alumni Events for Greater Impact
Product This webinar looks at ways to build bridges between alumni relations and development to create powerful, multi-dimensional events and offers practical advice on planning and implementing events that start more relationships and engage, inspire and steward more donors. This multimedia file is a recording of a webinar originally presented Nov. 16, 2010.

Advance Work: Phone Booth Busters
CURRENTS Article Saint Mary's College of California celebrated the 50th anniversary of a photograph that made it into LIFE magazine.

Advance Work: Import-Export Business
CURRENTS Article A contingent of Yale University alumni leaders traveled to the Australian National University to pass on their knowledge of alumni relations and benefit from ANU's expertise in environmental and sustainability issues.

Advance Work: Leveraging Success
CURRENTS Article The University of Toronto has started a tradition of holding alumni events that correspond with the summer Olympics. This year in Beijing will be no different.

Advance Work: Get a Life
CURRENTS Article Ball State University alumni now have more than one life to live. The university is holding alumni events in the virtual world of Second Life.

Postcard from Beijing
CURRENTS Article A look at U.S. and Australian universities that organized alumni events for the Beijing Olympic Games.

Advance Work: You Say Tomato...
CURRENTS Article At Carnegie Mellon University, Campus Conversations bring together alumni, students, faculty, and staff to discuss controversial and emotional topics in a reasoned and informed way.

Diversity Programs: Villanova University School of Law - Gold Medal
Best Practice Villanova University School of Law: Why Diversity Matters - 2007 Circle of Excellence Awards Program gold medal-winning program in Alumni Relations Programs: Realizing the need to engage the larger legal community in the discussion of the importance of and ongoing challenge to achieving meaningful diversity in the legal profession, the Villanova Law Minority Alumni Society launched its first annual program on diversity in Center City Philadelphia.

Strength in Numbers
CURRENTS Article Some communities of practice are less about benchmarking information and more about creating an economies of scale. The members Northeast Indiana Alumni Directors Consortium hold joint events and help each other out. This sidebar is part of the article "Easy as Pie."

Advance Work: Something in Common
CURRENTS Article Smaller institutions sometimes need to think about economies of scale when planning alumni events. A group of European independent schools did just that and pulled off a successful joint reunion in New York.

Advance Work: Love, Alma Mater Style
CURRENTS Article Davenport University's alumni association created a contest to engage their alumniweds--alumni who married each other. The contest and subsequent event were a success beyond all expectations.

Advance Work: Do You Want to Be a Star?
CURRENTS Article Last June the producers of Donald Trump’s hit series, The Apprentice, called Towson officials to see if they would invite their alumni to a casting call they were holding in the Baltimore area. Towson officials went a step further and offered to organize a private campus casting call for its alumni--and to handle all the details.

AdvanceWork: A Match Made in Minutes
CURRENTS Article Alumni networking can feel a bit like "catch as catch can," says consultant and Columbia Business School alumna Linda Netherton, who wanted to make networking more efficient and effective for other CBS graduates. Working with fellow alumnus Tom Jaffee--the brains behind 8minuteDating.com and NetworkingMatch.com--Netherton organized a "speed networking" event for her alma mater's Boston Alumni Club. This article discusses the event-planning process and outcome.

AdvanceWork: Alma Mater of the Bride
CURRENTS Article The boyfriend of a University of Michigan alumna enlists alumni association staff to help him propose to his girlfriend on campus. The association created an invitation for a fictitious Class of '98 reunion to help Murray Harris get Katherine Heid to the campus, where she accepted his marriage proposal.

Joining Forces
CURRENTS Article Small colleges may have trouble hosting alumni events in locations where their alumni base is small. Three liberal arts colleges in Maine--Bowdoin, Colby, and Bates--teamed up to hold combined programs for alumni in cities nationwide. The three alumni offices now work together to organize arts and sports events, travel programs, and networking parties, as well as a joint annual retreat for alumni officers from nine New England colleges.

Road Shows
CURRENTS Article Alumni relations and development professionals often create special events for out-of-town alumni that are designed to deliver a taste of campus. These “road shows” can vary from campaign events to lectures to black-tie affairs. The author describes a wide range of successful road shows institutions have created and provides detailed advice on finding venues, ensuring turnout, and other important steps.

A Roaring Success
CURRENTS Article Julie Stone, regional programming coordinator for the advancement office at San Jose State University, tells how she has planned successful events for alumni in distant cities. She determined which cities have sufficient numbers of alumni to make events possible; surveyed alumni in those regions about their interests; and budgeted carefully to cover costs and track expenses.

Workshop: Speaking of Money
CURRENTS Article In April 1997, Goucher College alumni association sponsored a successful one-day Managing Your Money seminar that attracted 175 alumni, students, and faculty, among others. These types of seminars can be valuable ways to enhance reunions and other alumni programs, uncover new volunteers, and connect students and alumni. Enhance career networking activities by maintaining a list of alumni experts