John J. “Ski” Sygielski has been raising funds on two wheels for nearly 20 years. “I’ve been a cyclist most of my life,” said Sygielski—everyone calls him “Ski”—President of HACC, Central Pennsylvania’s Community College, U.S. “I was thinking, ‘How can I turn my avocation into something beneficial for others, especially our students?’”

A Giving Year was never the plan for the American University of Beirut in Lebanon. But after an unprec­edented series of challenges in 2020—including COVID-19; devaluation of the country’s currency; and, according to the BBC News, “one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in his­tory”—there was no choice but to respond. 

In late 2020, the University of Newcastle, Australia, launched its inaugural Lost Alumni Campaign, striving to reconnect with former students with whom the university had lost touch. Newcastle reached out to alumni via email, via snail mail, and on social media by decade, capitalizing on each era’s nostalgia. 

In August 2020, the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, launched ChangeMakers, a strategy to encourage UQ’s alumni across 190 countries to engage with the university and fellow alumni from anywhere in the world. The ChangeMakers alumni community hosts events, fosters mentorship relationships, and encourages volunteerism. More than 70 alumni have become ambassadors to help spread the word.

In 2019, University of Georgia, U.S., Archivist Steven Armour launched the Black Alumni Oral History Project, a collection of personal recollections of African-American alumni. UGA desegregated in 1961, and “that milestone event changed our institution and the course of history, but the story stops there if we don’t delve deeper into what students’ experience has been going forward. What happened next?” Armour said.