Meet your faculty and the other attendees during an energetic and interactive opening session! You will start your strategic plan by understanding WHY you should engage students and recent alumni as part of your alumni and philanthropy programs. Learn the basics including definitions, structures, resources, and your first round of program ideas for building and refreshing your engagement.

Engage your graduating students with your alumni association before they leave campus, and avoid the dreaded "I wish I knew that before I graduated". This session will highlight an 8-week "Countdown to Commencement" program that encourages students to partake in senior only traditions, connect with their alumni association, expand their networks and ease their transition from student to alumni. Learn more about how the University of Florida team leveraged this unique timeframe to bring together campus partners, students, and alumni.

Grab your purple backpack and join me on an adventure to create a customer journey map for your students and young alumni, enhancing their life-long engagement and philanthropic voyage with your institution. This elective will guide you through understanding their experiences before, during, and after interacting with alma mater. By identifying barriers and opportunities, you can craft the best possible engagement and philanthropic experiences. Along the way, we'll use interactive polls, quizzes, and questions to navigate the six landmarks of creating a customer journey map. By the end of our quest, you'll have a comprehensive map to help your students and young alumni find their way back to alma mater, ready to say, "We did it!"

Alumni surveys can be powerful tools—but only if they’re designed with purpose and strategy. In this session, we’ll go beyond basic data collection to explore how well-crafted surveys can uncover meaningful insights, strengthen engagement, and inform alumni programming. Additionally, we’ll examine how to translate survey findings into actionable steps that drive deeper alumni connections. Attendees will leave with practical tips and real-world examples to make their next alumni survey more than just a checkbox exercise.

This presentation focuses on strategies to engage recent graduates as first-time and frequent donors, emphasizing the transformative power of alumni giving in fostering institutional growth and student success. It explores the importance of alumni contributions through testimonials, highlights key insights into recent graduates' characteristics and challenges, and demonstrates the impact of donations on scholarships, campus improvements, and community initiatives. The presentation also introduces programs that bridge the gap between students and alumni, such as service-learning, mentorships, and community-focused events, while showcasing donor-driven efforts to support students in financial need. Finally, it outlines innovative campaigns to encourage first-time donations, build long-term relationships, and leverage marketing strategies like social media, personalized communication, and targeted events to inspire a culture of giving back.

Building a strong young alumni network starts long before graduation. By collaborating with student life, advancement professionals can create seamless, engaging experiences that foster a sense of connection from day one. This session will explore strategies for working alongside student affairs colleagues—including Greek life leaders—to cultivate a culture of engagement that carries students through their university journey and into their alumni years. From leveraging leadership programs, affinity groups, and Greek life connections, we’ll discuss practical approaches to strengthening the student-to-alumni pipeline. We’ll also highlight fundraising opportunities tied to these partnerships, ensuring alumni relations efforts start well before commencement. Attendees will leave with actionable insights on breaking down silos, maximizing campus collaborations, and creating lifelong engagement touchpoints.

Student advancement organizations serve as a valuable tool in engaging students and creating campus affinity. This presentation will walk you through the elements of developing a student advancement organization, outlining the core components and how they come together to frame your goals and build a comprehensive student advancement organization to fit your unique institutional contexts.

As we look to the future of alumni engagement, it's clear that GOLD alumni –Graduates of the Last Decade--are critical to the vibrancy and sustainability of our institutions. However, bridging the gap between recent graduates and long-term alumni engagement remains a challenge. This presentation will explore innovative strategies derived from a grant and research for the CAAE (Council of Alumni Association Executives) for cultivating strong, lasting connections with GOLD alumni and fostering a sense of community that persists well beyond the cap and gown.

Which part is more challenging - recruiting alumni mentors or educating students about being strong mentees? There are a variety of strategies for incorporating mentorship into your program ranging from flash mentor events to full mentor programs to technology solutions like PeopleGrove and Graduway. We will explore the different ways to define and approach mentoring, create the right campus partners, and launch a new tradition on your campus. Consider a technology solution that will help you scale mentoring and build an online community.

Join us for an engaging and insightful session that explores the transformational redesign of the Blue and Gold Society, the Pitt Alumni Association’s premier student leadership organization. In response to participation challenges and evolving student expectations, the organization was paused in summer 2024 and reimagined using a design thinking framework. Participants will gain a behind-the-scenes look at how design thinking principles were applied to foster student collaboration, enhance the student-alumni relationship, and implement an iterative, feedback-driven approach to organizational change. Attendees will leave with actionable strategies for engaging student leaders, co-creating sustainable structures with stakeholders, and reinvigorating legacy programs to better align with today’s campus culture.